Page 1 of Overtake
CHAPTER ONE
SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX | SUNDAY | RACE DAY
The massage tablefeels too bloody soft tonight. I can’t find the usual dips in the padding for my shoulder blades, and every adjustment I make is pissing me off. I’ve been lying here for twenty minutes, but my pre-race visualization isn’t sticking.
Come on, Petra. Dial it in.
I flatten my palms against the table, fingers spread wide, grounding myself. This routine should quiet the static in my head, but tonight the focus I need is elusive.
Singapore’s Marina Bay Street Circuit skips through my mind in fragments instead of clear lines, and I have no feel for the apexes. This is one of my favorite tracks. It’s where I won my first F4 championship, but tonight all its familiarity and flow are missing.
This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, but I’m distracted thanks to Kelley Hayter-Morrison, the woman who birthed me. She pops into my life every so often to remind me what an irritant she is. Like she did today with a series of online posts about my “natural beauty” and how she made sure to teach me “the importance of self-care and proper hygiene from an early age.”As if she’s hadanyinvolvement in my life since she disappeared from it twenty years ago.
Vomit.
“Take your time, Tonka.” My elder cousin, Jacintha, uses the nickname she gave me when were still kids—yes, after the supposedly indestructible American toy trucks. She’s leaning against the wall of my driver’s room, ready to help me with whatever I need. But Cin knows better than to push when my brain’s locking up.
Beside her, my gear is organized with military precision. Helmet on the left side of the counter. Balaclava rolled tight beside it. Earpieces looped cleanly. Gloves folded together, socks rolled and tucked into my right racing shoe, ruby zoisite worry stone in the left. Every piece has its place because every detail matters to me.
Fuck it.
I sit up. “I’m ready.” Lie. But I need todosomething. The room’s white walls feel closer than they should tonight.
My cousin’s dark eyes find mine in the mirror as she pockets my spare gloves. Cin’s been my physio—my performance coach—for a decade. Long enough to recognize every micro-expression I try to hide. “Want to discuss her posts?”
“No.” I look down at my nails. Eight are dark green, the two in the middle are pink—PNW Nitro’s colors. That’s the F1 team I drive for. Freshly lacquered this morning, a race day ritual.
“Petra.” One word, gentle but firm. The same tone Jacintha’s used since I was fifteen and convinced I could survive on protein bars and spite. I was wrong, of course, and paid the price for that stupidity. In some ways I still am. Wrongandpaying the price, that is.
Anxiety skitters across my scalp with cold little feet.
Not tonight, brain.
I roll my shoulders back, force my spine straight, and hop off the table with more confidence than I feel. “All I want is to get in the car.” Getting onto the track is the surest way to shut up the harpy voice of the woman who abandoned Dad and me when I was six.
Cin studies me for another heartbeat—cataloging, assessing, and deciding. Then she hands me my shoes and socks. On they go, and I tuck the flat green and pink worry stone under the laces of the left boot while my cousin puts the earpieces and balaclava inside my helmet. She opens the door and steps out like a bodyguard checking for threats.
Though I have one of those too—a bodyguard, I mean. Rodrigo Jimenez. He’s six feet six inches of absolute sweetness, unless you’re in my path and don’t move fast enough.
Dad and the team insisted on upgrading my security last season after someone got into my hotel room in Barcelona and stole some of my shit. I pushed back then because I hated the idea of being shadowed all hours of the day. But I changed my mind when photos from my summer break showed up online. They were of me running with Cin, Dad, and the dogs on our estate near Buckingham. That’s private property and miles from anywhere. Some fucking wanker had sat in the woods for hours with a telephoto lens. It felt like being hunted, and that’s when I agreed I needed someone to watch my back.
Rigo’s been with me ever since, and the fans have dubbed him “Fort Rigo”. It’s a nickname he pretends to hate but I think secretly loves. And, yeah, having the Fort around makes me feel safer. Dad was right.
Cin is a different kind of bodyguard, I suppose. She oversees every aspect of my health. She keeps me focused and protects me from the madness that comes with being one of the top drivers in the world and the only woman competing in Formula 1. She’s thebuffer between me and a sport that demands perfection while offering no margin for human frailty.
We move out, my cousin in the lead and Rigo falling in behind as we leave the team’s temporary business unit for the paddock and the larger pit building that houses the team garages and larger F1 hospitality suites.
Most of the crowd here are well-heeled fans, members of the media covering the race, or associated with corporate sponsors. People pay a lot of money for access to this part of Formula One. I smile and nod, but I don’t have to be social right now. I’m getting into the zone, focusing on the sixty-two laps ahead.
There’s a time to woo F1 fans and sponsors.
This isn’t it.
Singapore’s October humidity slaps us as we step outside into the paddock that separates the team business units from the garages where all the Formula One cars are being readied for the upcoming race. Cin puts up her umbrella. It’s been raining on and off all day.
The sound that greets us is astonishing. Even after twenty-six years of being around the racing world, the noise of race day still hits me viscerally. And Iloveit. I grew up with this, the only child of three-time world champion F1 driver, Coy Hayter. I’m determined to follow in his footstepsandbe the first woman to do it.
Twenty cars growl thunderously in their garages, the vibration traveling through my body. The sound of the crowd partying and the DJ cranking out the tunes vies for a close second in volume and impact, two hundred seventy thousand spectators all excited for the upcoming Grand Prix.
