Arriving at the Ptarmigan garage in the pit lane he was confronted by a surprise. Three large security men were standing there in black overalls, each carrying a night stick and wearing a coiled wire from their right ear. Straker was encouraged, though. Beauregard was clearly delivering on his extra security screen. But was this really going to be any defence against such sophisticated saboteurs?
Qualifying One was now minutes away. Standing in the door of the garage, Straker waited to see Sabatino walking down the pit lane towards her car. Wearing her full turquoise racing suit and carrying her helmet under her arm — no longer prepared to leave it unattended — he was reminded of an astronaut heading for the launch pad.
Sabatino smiled as she approached. ‘Keep them away from me,’ she said, punching him on the arm as she walked into the Ptarmigan garage.
Straker, back in the headquarters truck and watching via her on-board camera, saw Sabatino head out of the pit lane and feed herself onto the circuit to start her first out-lap of Qualifying One.
She needed to post a fast time.
Sabatino found her Ptarmigan well and truly on song. She put in an early hot lap, and found the set-up to be as near right for this circuit as she could hope for. By way of confirmation, her time in Q1 was the fastest of all the cars by some margin.
‘Fantastic, Remy,’ said Backhouse shortly afterwards over the radio. ‘You’ve taken it by point-nine!’ he shouted. ‘Better still, you’ve pissed all over the Massarellas.’
Straker heard Sabatino’s upbeat reply. He could sense the rising anticipation among the team for what lay ahead.
She prepared herself mentally for Q2. While only a stepping stone in the process, she could not afford to ease off. There was no carryover of previous times. Her scorching lap in Q1 would be lost — reset to zero. Only by staying fast in the next session would she be assured of getting through to Q3 — the stage that mattered — the top-ten shootout. That was the clincher, when the competitive positions at the front of the grid were determined. The closer to the front at the start, the fewer the cars that would have to be overtaken under combative conditions during the race.
And to be sure of securing the biggest advantage, Sabatino was out for nothing less than pole. Not only would that be good for tomorrow, it would also help defend her six-point lead at the top of the Drivers’ Championship.
Straker, once again, was sitting in the headquarters truck next to Oliver Treadwell — Ptarmigan’s Australian Director of Strategy — monitoring the team’s radio and CCTV coverage. Straker inhaled deeply and refocused, hoping they weren’t going to have any trouble.
A number of cars went out onto the track immediately Q2 started.
Sabatino hung back in her garage, composing herself, psyching herself up for a peak effort. Presently, she fired up the engine and pulled out of her garage, turning sharp right into the pit lane. She ran on the limiter down to the end, and, crossing the line, powered up, feeding herself out onto the track. Several cars bombed past, trying to notch up their flying laps to secure good positions on the grid.
She put in a hot lap. But, running into traffic around Malmedy, she was four tenths off her best time. It put her only sixth fastest at that moment — and half the field had yet to post their best time. She would have to do better to be absolutely sure of getting through to the top-ten shootout.
She was ready, now, for a big one.
Building up speed, she felt good very quickly. Temperatures rose well in the Ptarmigan’s oil and hydraulics, helped by some aggressive zig-zagging followed by a burst of top speed down to Turn Twelve. Sabatino saw all her metrics climb easily into their windows of operation.
The car felt ready.
She felt ready.
Heading down to the Chicane, sunlight flashed and flickered through the trees and across the track as she squinted to see the beginnings of the circuit’s buildings, tents and infrastructure up ahead. Thirty seconds later and she was in the pit straight, building up the pace to start her flying lap.
Radioing the team, she declared: ‘Here we go!’
In fifth gear and still accelerating as she crossed the start line, she focused on the run down to La Source, the famous three-twenty-degree Turn One. Pulling over to the left of the start/finish straight to open up the corner as much as possible, she braked as late as she dared and changed down four times to second gear before turning in hard right. Into the turn, she accelerated hard. Her right front clipped the inside kerb as she pumped power into the engine through the apex and then the exit, all the time feeling for any lightening of the back end as she turned the corner. The power was phenomenal, so much so she had to make two minor flicks with the steering wheel — of opposite lock — to correct her exit from La Source.
In a blink of an eye she was through and across to the other side of the circuit, clipping the red and white stones of the outside kerb, this time with her front left. She managed to straighten the car up while still on the black stuff, not flinching from feeding in as much power as the grip would take.
Changing up three gears and hitting eighteen thousand RPM each time, she pointed the car down the hill.
Now she was heading towards the most exhilarating section of any Grand Prix circuit. Anywhere.
Eau Rouge.
As she cleared the slight kink in the track, she could look down and see the famous part of the track stretched out below her. This was it. The corner combination of Formula One.
She was in sixth gear and still accelerating — up through one hundred and sixty miles an hour.
Sabatino’s heart rate rose to a similar number as she breathed deeply, her eyes boring into the landscape ahead. She studied the topography as the road fell away to the bottom of the valley, with its left-hander and then right curve swooping away up the hill on the far side.
Sabatino was still accelerating. Seventh gear and two hundred miles an hour. Her eyes were flicking between various points of the road, trying to map out exactly where she needed to be to enter this roller-coaster of a complex and emerge the other side without losing line, speed — let alone contact with the surface of the track.
Hurtling on down the hill, she moved over to the right, still pushing the car as fast as it would physically go, beginning to hug the imposing white brick wall down the right-hand side. Then, as she seemed to be getting too close, almost brushing it with the wall of her right-rear tyre, she committed to slicing left. Darting across the circuit, she made for the first apex of Eau Rouge, her eye still focusing on the road ahead, already looking for the exit to get the best entry into Turn Three.
Her foot was absolutely flat to the floor.
She clipped the kerb on the apex, exactly where she intended, causing a jolt through the car, just as the massive downforce of bottoming out through the compression pushed her down heavily into her seat. Sabatino felt the air squeezed out of her lungs. Her line was spot on though, and, holding straight for a fraction of a second, found the perfect entry to Turn Three, slicing back across the track the other way, up through the apex of the right-hander — and on up the hill.
Eighteen thousand revs, seventh gear — reaching two hundred and five miles an hour — and Sabatino was completely committed.