Quartano, with unwavering control of the floor, replied: ‘We still have some discussions ongoing. In any event, we consider this is an issue of confidentiality, and the final amount will not be disclosed.’
There was a considerable clamouring to ask related follow-ups, all of which Quartano batted away. One journalist launched an oblique attempt to elicit the magnitude of this number.
‘In light of this sponsorship,’ he asked, ‘will Ptarmigan still need financial help from other sponsors, or even Quartech, anymore?’
Quartano’s face remained neutral, even though he appreciated the subtlety invested in the question. ‘Need and want are two very different things.’
The journalist came back with: ‘You haven’t answered the question.’
‘How about that?’ Quartano replied and smiled broadly. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you all for coming. We’d like to thank the Singapore government for hosting this spectacular Grand Prix, and look forward to an exciting weekend of motor racing.’
It was to be an exciting weekend, all right.
At lunchtime on Saturday the heavens opened.
The rains, substantial even by Singaporean standards, were torrential — likened by everyone to an out-of-season monsoon.
Driving conditions were little short of treacherous.
Straker, although taking comfort from their switch away from the troublemaking Trifecta Systems to Cohens, and having been sabotage-free in Monza, was still vigilant — set up as usual in the headquarters motor home.
Being a night race, Qualifying One started at the same time of day as the race proper — therefore after dark. Singapore looked all the more impressive at night. Lights burned across the towering skyline — not for cleaning or weekend servicing — but because, in all probability, the Lion City was still working, even on a Saturday evening. Industriousness, not birthright, earned this entrepôt its respected status as an economic powerhouse
Five minutes into Q1 there were six cars out on the track. All were on full wets. And while the treads and sipes on each tyre may have been designed to displace sixty litres of water a second, they were as near-useless against the standing water around half the circuit, some of which was over an inch deep. Driving an F1 car through this was like walking in leather-soled shoes on sheet ice. Cars were sliding about all over the place.
Against the lap record of one minute forty-five, no one had completed a lap in under two and half minutes.
Six minutes into Q1 a backmarker lost control under braking into the Singapore Sling, Turn Ten. First the front left locked-up. Then it started aquaplaning, there being virtually no help from the aerodynamics at such slow speed. The car simply headed on in a straight line. Going deep into the corner, it showed no response to the direction set by the steering wheel. Then, suddenly, with full left lock on, the car hit a dryer patch of road, caught some grip, and started to turn. But the back wheels, still on the surface water, kicked out to the right. The driver steered aggressively into the slew, but in vain. The water had made the track like ice. The car started to spin.
Going at only fifty miles an hour, the driver was merely a passenger. The car spun, slammed into a section of the circuit’s unforgiving barriers, ripped off its right-front wheel, the whole of its front wing, and shattered the nosecone. Debris, from the splintered carbon fibre, skidded out across the chicane like ducks and drakes across the water.
Race Control immediately red-flagged the session. The remaining cars teetered back to the pits, the drivers soaked to the skin in their open cockpits.
Marshals were able to clear the wreckage away fairly quickly. But the rain would not abate. Down it came.
Race Control really had little choice. They called a halt to Q1 and declared that Q2 would only start when the rainfall diminished.
For two hours nothing happened.
Finally, well into the evening, the weather began to ease. Q2 was started and all teams were able to try and post a time.
In Qualifying Three, the track even started to dry out. The key decision — gamble — each team had to make was whether to run on full wets or intermediate tyres. In the current conditions, the time difference in lap times between the two types could easily be up to ten seconds. Be on the wrong tyre, and a competitive position on the grid would be lost.
Sabatino took a massive gamble.
She and Treadwell waited until the last possible moment. They opted for intermediates. Only Paddy Aston had done the same thing — managing to clock up the best time so far by six seconds, but his lap was absolutely heart-stopping. Twice he came within a whisker of colliding with the barriers.
His punt, though, had paid off.
Driving into his garage, Aston could subsequently sit back and watch the rest of the field fight for second place, no closer than three or four seconds behind him. Tyres were clearly critical.
On her hot lap, Sabatino started well. Sheares Corner was dry. Turns Three and Four were okay too. Into Turn Five, though, the car became a boat. Sabatino surfed on the top of the water for fifty yards in a dead straight — no-control — line. Miraculously, the tyres found some grip somewhere — somehow — before it was too late. With a massive yaw and twitch, she regained control, kept the car pointing down the course, and accelerated on hard down the straight to the kink at Turn Six.
Round she went. At the end of Sector One she was nearly a second up on Aston. Then there were the treacherous bends — particularly in the wet — around Memorial Corner, Turn Seven, and the one-hundred-degree rights of Turns Eight and Nine. With everyone holding their breath, she powered on, barely lifting off at all.
Another scary moment at Turn Thirteen.
At the end of Sector Two Sabatino was a full three seconds up.
Then came the extraordinarily unforgiving sharp turns of Sixteen through Twenty-one. The car was barely on two tracks throughout these bends. Only Sabatino’s feel, ability to anticipate, and her lightning reactions kept the car on the road. Water was flying off all the tyres — spray hurtling into the air, creating the classic cock’s tail in the night behind her.
Round the relatively slight bends of Turns Twenty-two and Twenty-three she brought the car into the end of the start/finish straight and hammered the Ptarmigan, as hard as she dared.
Crossing the line, she chalked up an extraordinary time of one minute fifty-five seconds. Although much slower than the lap record in the dry, her drive — in these conditions — was quite astonishing. Moreover, she was a full four seconds clear of Paddy Aston in the Lambourn.
It took Sabatino most of the following in-lap to steady her breathing and nerves as the waves of adrenalin slowly ebbed out of her system.
But the endorphins soon flowed in their place. Pole position, particularly fought so hard for in the wet, had a rush all of its own.
And for the Championship this was a good — and a very necessary — result. She needed to keep Aston at bay. Currently, she only enjoyed a two-point margin for the title. Any mistake by her over the weekend could easily see that lead slip through her fingers.
FORTY-THREE
Next day, Sunday, the weather if anything worsened. Unbroken rain fell all morning. Being a night race, everyone was hoping the change in temperature around nightfall would reduce the intensity of the rain.
That didn’t happen.
Umbrellas were everywhere, particularly on the grid; under the floodlights, the teams put the final touches to their cars.
Rainfall did nothing to dampen the usual anticipation and turnout of all and sundry — and certainly not among the fans. If anything, the crowds were bigger, everyone coming for the added excitement of seeing a race in such hazardous conditions.