The other commentator laughed dismissively. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about her nerve, Ben. Our rookie woman has definitely got the anatomy for this game.’
The other commentator — and Straker — chuckled. ‘Indeed, and neither’s giving way. Neither’s giving way. But they’re going to have to brake soon — one of them’s going to have to back off.’
Straker suddenly saw a puff of blue smoke off one of the front tyres between the cars, but they were so close and it was all so fast that he couldn’t tell whose tyre had locked-up. The commentators were none the wiser.
‘Who was that braking?’
‘Who knows — but Luciano’s pouncing. He’s now definitely staking a claim on the line. He’s moving over — moving across.’
‘Luciano’s going to shut the door — going to hold her off.’
Then Sabatino very clearly hit the brakes.
‘Yeah, there he goes — taking the chance to cut right across in front of her. He’s got it — he’s secured the line.’
‘But he’s cutting right across her path. What about Sabatino’s understeer? Is she going to be able to slow down fast enough?’
‘Hang on — hang on. Oh no, look at that!’
‘That’s understeer. Sabatino’s got the mother of all understeers.’
‘The front end’s going away from her. She’s going to end up T-boning him — isn’t she?’
‘She might, she might…’
‘She’s almost on full right lock — but its having no effect. She can’t avoid him. She’s going to ram him, smack in the ribs.’
The TV picture switched to the camera on Sabatino’s front wing. The shot put the viewer right in the middle of the action. There was dramatic convergence. An almighty crunch. Bits flew off both cars. The Ptarmigan’s front left bashed into the Massarella’s radiator pod. The cars juddered on the impact. Both cars’ back wheels interlocked — and bumped — momentarily bouncing the Massarella off the ground. It fell back down — heavily. The two cars intertwined, and slid ignominiously off the circuit onto the run-off on the outside of the corner, grinding to a halt. A cloud of dust enveloped the scene.
Both sets of suspension were degraded, and Luciano had very obviously suffered a punctured front right.
The Massarella and the Ptarmigan were well and truly out of the race.
Sabatino made her way back to the pit lane on foot, still wearing her helmet to conceal her fury at being forced to drop out of the race. Keeping her helmet on was also the clearest possible sign that she did not want anybody to talk to her.
Once safely inside the Ptarmigan garage, she took it off. Clearly agitated.
Ten minutes later her mood exploded. The stewards announced a formal investigation of her crash with Simi Luciano.
FORTY
Massarella, they soon learned, had lodged an official protest, accusing Sabatino of unsportsmanlike behaviour — deliberately taking out her principal rival for the Drivers’ Championship. Ptarmigan was summoned to Race Control.
Sabatino was incandescent at the slur. Without even smartening herself up, she strode out of the motor home, straight off to see the FIA steward with Treadwell jogging behind, anxious to catch her up.
Mario Pinolla, a tall, thin, elderly Italian with an aquiline nose and angular face, called them into a meeting room and asked Sabatino to explain herself at Turn One. Peering over his half-moon glasses, Pinolla made her and Treadwell feel like a couple of naughty school boys in front of the headmaster.
‘It was a racing incident. I went for the inside of Luciano. He closed the door on me. I tried to brake. Locked-up, and just slid into him.’
Pinolla looked at her with a completely sceptical expression on his face. ‘What about the threat you made to Mr Van Der Vaal, then? At Spa. That you would run his cars off the road?’
Sabatino bristled but remained silent.
She happened to glance at Treadwell. He closed his eyes and shook his head — as if to dissuade her from raising the whole sabotage story — before quickly stepping in himself: ‘Mr Pinolla, please look at the course of the whole race. For eight laps, Remy exited the Parabolica, ready to mount a challenge. Both cars were very evenly matched in straight-line speed. Remy had a legitimate shot at holding the inside line into Turn One. Our telemetry — all weekend — shows the Ptarmigan’s downforce is severely affected when any lock’s applied to the front wheels. Every time Remy went to turn in, the downforce fell away. Into that corner, where the surface on the inside is still dirty, a combination of low downforce and dirty track caused a complication in a justified racing manoeuvre.’
Pinolla removed his half-moon glasses.
Before the steward could respond, Treadwell went on: ‘I would ask you, please, to point to any action on Ms Sabatino’s part that you think was deliberately intended to destabilize her car?’
Pinolla’s expression hardened. He looked Sabatino in the eye. ‘What about this threat you made in Spa?’
Yet again Treadwell stepped in before Sabatino could speak: ‘Mario, you know Eugene Van Der Vaal — he dishes out this sort of stuff all the time. Remy was indulging in nothing more than a bit of a psych-out.’
‘What is sick out?’
‘Psych-out — psychological playfulness. Words, Mario. They’re just words.’
Five minutes later Sabatino and Treadwell re-emerged into the brilliant Italian sunshine as the noise of the race continued all around them. Walking back to the paddock they had to fight their way through the inevitable media scrum.
‘Did you mean to crash?’
‘Did you deliberately take Luciano out?’
‘Are you going to apologize to Massarella?’
They had to wrestle their way through a jostling press pack all the way to the Ptarmigan motor home.
‘How did it go?’ asked Straker as Sabatino and Treadwell climbed the stairs and shut the door on the rabble behind them.
‘Those bastards at Massarella never let up, do they?’ she growled.
Treadwell tried to be philosophicaclass="underline" ‘We were cleared by the stewards. The system worked properly,’ he said calmly.
‘Massarella’s little game didn’t work,’ offered Straker. ‘We were exonerated.’
‘We can’t brush all this off so easily. It’s fucking up my Championship.’ She turned to face Straker. ‘None of this would be happening — at all,’ she snapped at him, ‘if you had succeeded in getting rid of the sabotage bollocks from Massarella. We’re always on the fucking defensive. Why aren’t we exposing their sabotage incidents and chewing their arse?’
Straker reacted viscerally to her outburst. It hit him like a body blow; he felt her accusation even constrict his chest. How could she lash out at him, let alone in public like this — not to mention after their night together? Straker fought hard to retain his professionalism. He looked her straight in the eye. ‘We don’t have the evidence, yet.’
Sabatino made for the cabin at the end of the motor home. ‘Well for fuck’s sake, get some. I’m tired of being the victim,’ after which she stormed inside and slammed the door behind her.
PART FOUR
SINGAPORE SLING
FORTY-ONE