Page 109 of Double Apex

At the one-minute signal, engines are started, tyre blanketsremoved, and the car is lowered from its stands. Mechanics are trotting away—each car’s personnel and equipment must be off the track at the fifteen-second mark.

We go out for the formation lap, and my focus is concentrated like a live wire humming the frequency of every detail—the movement of other cars, the angle of light and shadow, the sound and tactile sense of my car, the connection of my own body, which feels plugged in—an extension of the machinery.

Right down to the most subtle scrap of minutiae, I’m present, living this process.

I weave to get heat into the tyres, responding to operational cues from Lars, his staid voice dropping effortlessly into my ear through the radio. I give the team firsthand feedback on track conditions, and we make a few last-minute setup adjustments.

Back at the grid, we line up again, and the starting sequence is initiated. As my eyes lock on the five red lights on the gantry, a thought spreads in my mind, smoothing and leveling everything:if my focus is a live wire, seeing Phaedra minutes ago was the insulation around that wire.

It’s stabilizing knowing she’s here, watching from the garage with the other engineers, crowded around screens of data, graphs, camera feeds, and circuit maps.

The lights go on one at a time and fall dark, and we’re off.

Drew Powell is on pole, and we both get off to a clean start, running on soft tyres. Neither of us knows whether the other team will be using a one-stop or two-stop strategy. There are countless variables that could make each the better approach.

Responding to the decisions made by the other teams—in addition to evolving changes in track conditions, weather, and the myriad mechanical details not only of your own car, but your rivals’—is like a chess match played at 200 kilometers per hour. Anything has the potential to upend the game when one is playing with thousandths of seconds.

Eight laps in, Powell and I have pulled ahead of the pack. I attempt an overtake and fall back when he blocks.

“Pe dracu,” I mutter in frustration.

It shocks me when Phaedra speaks over the radio.

“Ai grija ce vorbesti,” she says with a smile in her voice, scolding me to watch my language. “What if the kids at Vlasia are watching?”

“Fancy meeting you here, draga mea,” I reply. I’m silent while navigating the next few turns, then ask, “Where is Lars?”

“One seat over. Musical chairs—Klaus is in the garage. Ready to tackle this together, Legs?”

“Beautiful.”

I can’t resist teasing her, because she once told me it used to annoy her when I said that. Her hum of laughter in my ear harmonizes with the engine to produce the potent music I’ve badly missed hearing since July.

Our communication is so light and direct, as natural as gravity. She’s part of me, present in every motion, look, breath.

Emerald’s plan A is one-stop, with a single change to hard compound tyres around the twentieth lap out of fifty-eight. Things such as the safety car going out could change these plans at a moment’s notice.

We’re confident Powell’s team—Allonby—is going one-stop as well when he sails past the pit entrance at lap 20, wringing everything he can get out of the aging soft tyres. Each team is keeping an eye on the other’s pit crew for signs the car will box. Powell is known for good tyre management, and I’m feeling the degradation on mine.

“Tyres are holding up,” I tell Phaedra, confident she can read the extra bit of information in my tone and phrasing.

“Copy—understood.”

Powell pits on lap 21 and I fly past, finally enjoying the brief respite of clean air after chasing him at close range for so long. Seconds later Phaedra speaks up.

“Four-one,” she comments, her voice light as a leaf.

It’s all she needs to say, and it’s almost conversational—the way one might note a cloudless sky and say, “Nice weather” to a stranger. Part of the beauty of our effortless communication is that I instinctively recognize the smallest changes in her delivery. It gives me as much detail as the words themselves.

“Copy,” I reply.

Powell’s pit stop was a bit long at 4.1 seconds—a gift for Emerald, if our crew sticks to the better-than-average time it’s managed for most of the season.

“Box this lap, Cos,” she tells me.

My stop is poetry—a flawless 2.3 seconds—and I zip through the tunnel section of Yas’s pit lane exit and rejoin the track smiling inside, though my face is impassive, focused down to the smallest muscle.

My tyres are one lap fresher than Powell’s—a negligibleadvantage, if any—and I’m hunting for an opportunity to overtake. Neither of us puts a foot wrong as our cars dance with each other.

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