‘Okay. Can we do the tease on the first in-lap of Q2?’
‘She’s not going to like it.’
Qualifying Two started seven minutes later. This time, the field was to be reduced from sixteen cars to ten.
Sabatino put in a good lap early on. They were confident it would be fast enough to get her through, so she wouldn’t need to pound the car unnecessarily. Coasting home on her in-lap, she reached the tunnel. Straker heard Backhouse come up on the radio again: ‘Remy, we’re looking at the hard compound and a three-stop strategy.’
Straker waited to see how well she would participate in their ploy.
‘Okay,’ was all she grunted in response.
Backhouse kept going with the pre-agreed script: ‘We’ve just run the numbers, Remy. If we go for three, we’d need to make up nine seconds per stint. What do you think?’
Sabatino did not reply.
‘Remy?’
Straker groaned.
Finally, she mumbled: ‘Okay. Go for three.’
‘We might have to play with your brake balance midway through Q3…’ Backhouse went on.
There was no further response from Sabatino.
Straker sucked his teeth, not sure how convincing that had been. He hoped that with the competitive significance of their transmission, though, they might have done enough to bait his trap. The next — and final — round of Qualifying was critical.
The shootout.
For Q3, it was mandatory for cars to be in race trim — the very set-up in which they would start the race the next day — no fundamental adjustment being permitted under the rules from then until the start of the Grand Prix itself. Backhouse’s and Sabatino’s discussion over the radio, therefore, was meant to sound like they were finalizing their set-up for the race. On a three-stop strategy, the Ptarmigan would be considerably lighter than the other competitive cars, giving it an advantage. However, running that light would alter the car’s balance; the team’s only chance to test and adjust the set-up would come over the air during this last Qualifying session. Straker hoped that news of the three-stop strategy — and expected radio exchange in Q3 — would excite the jammer to act.
When Sabatino got back to the pits, the soft compound tyres were replaced. Under Backhouse’s instructions, the fuel rigger deliberately fumbled the hose — attaching it and removing it several times — to disguise the fact that he was actually fuelling for a two-stop strategy.
Towards the end of Q2, things were put dramatically into perspective.
Helli Cunzer, Sabatino’s teammate, was out on a hot lap. Something wasn’t quite right. The car was yawing noticeably under braking.
Straker quickly switched one of the screens over to watch the feed from Cunzer’s Ptarmigan. Down into Mirabeau, the German clearly locked-up his front left, sending a plume of blue smoke into the air. Round Loews, he could be seen jabbing at the brakes again, and flat spotting the front right.
Through Portier, TV viewers could see the car’s rear end step out and Cunzer snatching at the wheel, trying to keep the car from hitting the wall. He was clearly having a torrid time of it.
Under the Fairmont Hotel tunnel, the car finally seemed to settle. Cunzer wound the Ptarmigan up through fourth, fifth and sixth gears. Except that, as his speed increased round the long right-hander, he found himself wafting to the outside of the corner.
From the relative darkness of the tunnel, he was soon back out in the glare of the Mediterranean sun.
Was he momentarily blinded? Did he blink? Did he squint?
Did he take his eyes off the game — even for a moment?
No one knew for certain. Hurtling down the slope by the harbour wall towards the Chicane, though, the car suddenly jinked.
Badly.
The back end stepped violently out to the left.
Unweighted by the crest of the road there? Who knew?
Cunzer, himself, had no time to think about the cause.
Right then, all he could think about was one thing.
Survival.
As a reflex, the driver snapped the wheel the same way, to correct the slew. But too much. By now, though, the car was on the marbles — the small spheres of cooled molten rubber thrown off the tyres of the other cars and littering the edges of the circuit. On this dirty part of the track, the car became almost unsteerable.
Worse, the unweighting of the car had disturbed the natural airflow under the front wing. And, with the attitude of the car, its aerodynamics were not working. Air seemed to be getting underneath it. Instead of downforce, the wing started to generate lift — to fly. The car was soon imitating a blown piece of paper skimming across the surface of a table. Cunzer’s car was starting to hover. Ground effect. Doing one hundred and eighty miles an hour in a confined space, surrounded by steel Armco barriers — he was completely out of control.
The world watched on in horror. The car skimmed on down the hill towards the Chicane, still not responding to any controls.
Its left rear hammered the barrier. Bits of the car exploded outwards. That collision saw the car bounce off, veering out to the right and back down the middle of the track. Viewers watched aghast as Cunzer’s head whiplashed like a rag doll in the impact despite the restraint from the tethers of his HANS — Head And Neck Support — device.
Even after that ricochet off the barriers, the car was still travelling at over one hundred and fifty miles an hour. There was an ear-splitting crack and wrench as the car passed over the raised kerbs of the Chicane, ripping off parts of the undertray. That jolt also broke the suspension in the front right, causing its wheel to collapse inwards. Sparks scattered in all directions as the resultant lower ride height brought other components into contact with the road making it easier for them to be wrenched from the bodywork — bargeboards, the front wing, and fancy aerodynamic trimmings like fins and blades.
Everyone held their breath. Eyes flicked from the car and then on down the track and back again, it being all too easy to plot Cunzer’s likely trajectory.
The outcome was all too obvious.
It was too horrible to watch.
But impossible to turn away from.
Cunzer was heading for the end of the solid, bewalled and tree-lined island that was the central reservation of the road normally used as the Avenue Président J. F. Kennedy. A tyre wall had been constructed for the race to soften the sharp point of this island in the road. A car hitting this on a slight angle was meant to glance off — be deflected away without serious impact — down either side.
But Cunzer wasn’t going to glance off. Everyone could see that.
They could see exactly where he was heading — straight for the apex, perpendicular to the narrowest point.
His impact was going to be head-on.
It happened.
Blam.
Cunzer’s car smashed into the end of the central reservation. From one hundred miles an hour it decelerated to zero in a millisecond. The G-force on the car — and the man — was unimaginable. Cunzer’s head flopped around like a ball tied to the end of a stick. As the inadequate tyre wall did its best to absorb the massive kinetic energy — bulging and erupting under compression — it somehow started to lift the car, so that it was soon standing up — improbably on its gearbox, its front wheels held up like hands in surrender. It began to pirouette on its rear end. In agonizing slow motion, the car soon lost its balance and started to fall back, crashing down onto the road — upside-down, resting at an angle on the air intake above the driver’s head. All the car’s extremities were snapped off as it crashed down, creating a turquoise explosion of broken parts radiating out from the impact.