‘Okay.’
Sabatino pushed hard. With the advantage, now, of a clear track in front of her, she gave the circuit everything.
Two laps on, she was rounding the Duchess of Cambridge Hairpin when Treadwell radioed her: ‘You’ve shaved off a second. Keep pushing hard.’
There was a brief pause, then: ‘Wait … wait … he’s coming in! Aston’s coming in!’
Sabatino didn’t even reply. She dug deeper and hammered the Ptarmigan.
Screaming along North Carriage Drive across the top of Hyde Park towards Cumberland Gate and Marble Arch, she had to get round there — round the corner by Oxford Street, back into Park Lane and still get down to the Dorchester — in the time it would take the Lambourn to pit and re-emerge on the track.
Round Cumberland Gate, Turn Seventeen.
Up towards Bayswater Road.
Round Turn Eighteen, the back end was trying to step out despite the massively favourable camber — she was pushing the car that hard.
Up towards Oxford Street past the Odeon.
Hanging left, she soon sliced right through Turn Nineteen hammering on the power.
Into Park Lane.
She screamed up the gears. With Park Lane’s slight kink to the left, she couldn’t yet see its second half.
‘Where is he?’ she yelled into the radio.
‘Coming to the cut-through.’
‘I see him.’
She was four hundred yards back up the road and travelling, now, at over one hundred and eighty miles an hour. Aston was accelerating fast — up through ninety, hundred, hundred and ten.
The gap between them was closing.
Would it close fast enough? Could she get in front?
He was still inside the white line — the exit from the pits.
She powered on, willing her car to go faster. She hit the rev limiter.
Aston was accelerating all the time. But he was on cold rubber.
Their closing speed, though, was now slowing.
Down Park Lane towards the Hilton she screamed.
Aston was getting faster all the time.
She was just about pulling level, on the left — he to her right.
She powered on.
She was nudging past.
Was there enough of Park Lane left? She needed to be half a car length in front to have a legitimate claim to the line.
Hyde Park Corner loomed into view.
Had she done enough?
To be sure, Sabatino was going to have to be the last of the late brakers. If that threw her out of shape, she knew Aston would capitalize immediately. He would inevitably pounce, slip past, and take the lead.
She pushed on — with absolutely no let-up — nothing less than full commitment.
NOW — she hammered the brakes — as late as she dared. She had no time to look around her, to look in her mirrors.
She pounded into the double apex, the car sliding badly through the middle. A massive yaw. She fought to keep control.
Sabatino was in Piccadilly.
Where was he? Where was Aston?
She looked either side of her — couldn’t see anything. She looked in her mirrors.
Couldn’t see anything there either.
Then suddenly — there! There! She saw a wheel. He was back there! She’d done it. She was back in the lead.
‘Bloody marvellous,’ screamed Treadwell in raw Australian over the radio. ‘Fantastic driving. Magic stuff.’
‘Phew!’ she yelled back as she raced up the gears and revs along Piccadilly towards the Ritz. ‘Let’s hope I can keep him back there for the rest.’
The crowds around Hyde Park went wild.
Twenty laps later, with Aston still breathing down her neck every foot of the way, Sabatino rounded Marble Arch for the last time.
She sliced into Park Lane and accelerated hard.
Moments later she saw the chequered flag.
It was waving for her.
She’d done it. Monaco, Singapore and now London. What a feeling.
Sabatino savoured the adulations from the crowds all the way round on her victory lap. She pulled up into Parc Fermé.
The very first to come over and congratulate her was Paddy Aston. ‘Great drive, Remy. Great stuff,’ he said. ‘You are, undeniably, the street-circuit queen.’
The celebrations were immense.
Crowds of people flooded into Park Lane to watch the prize-giving on the podium set up outside and level with the first floor of the Dorchester Hotel. Both the Prime Minster and the Mayor of London were involved in handing out the numerous trophies.
The crowds loved anything that prolonged this moment.
Sabatino, once again, had captured everyone’s imagination.
The win in London kept Sabatino in the lead for the Drivers’ Championship, her ten points bringing her season tally now to 81.
Aston, in second, scored eight points, putting him on 78 — meaning Sabatino’s lead had actually been widened to a still incredibly modest three points. Luciano, scoring six points for third, was up to 72. It was all extraordinarily close. Any one of the top three in the Drivers’ Championship could still win the title.
Formula One was in for a spellbinding showdown in Brazil in two weeks’ time.
In the Constructors’ Championship it was a very much clearer story … or was it?
Helli Cunzer’s five points for fourth in the other Ptarmigan were all the team needed. Their combined points were enough — potentially — to win the Constructors’ Championship. With only Brazil to run, Ptarmigan could not now be beaten.
At least, not on the track.
Despite all this triumph — not to mention the edge-of-your-seat excitement during the first running of the sensational London Grand Prix — the Ptarmigan Team were far from jubilant. Their Championship win was not a given. They were not celebrating.
They were mightily distracted.
Particularly Sabatino.
All were haunted by the spectre of the FIA hearing, to be held in London the very next day.
Would she — or the team — even get to keep the Championship points she had just driven so hard to win?
SIXTY
Straker couldn’t sleep that night. The threat of injustice kept him awake. What if the FIA system failed? What if Ptarmigan weren’t able to clear their name at the hearing?
Waking before five, annoyingly unrefreshed, Straker set out on a run, despite the residual discomfort from his attack in Leamington.
Turning right at Putney Bridge, and following the towpath along the Thames to the west, he tried to distance himself from everything — the saboteurs, the hearing, and even Remy Sabatino.
Straker wanted to blank everything from his mind.
The weather helped. It was one of those special summer mornings — absolutely still, not a breath of wind, already warm, hazy, with the sun barely visible through the mist and a spectacular day promising to burst through. Even the air smelled warm.
Straker ordered his thoughts for the hearing. He deconstructed and challenged the case they would make in front of the FIA later that day. Despite his exertion running, and the occasional distraction of an extra sprint or a bit of tricky navigation through a twisty or impeded section of the towpath, he went over and over their arguments. Would they be enough? How could he be sure?
An hour and a half later, running eastwards back along the south bank for home, Straker reached the end of the gravel track into Putney. Up ahead were the rowing club boathouses, enjoying the sun that had just starting burning through the haze.
It was quite a scene.
Down the wide slipway, a crew was carrying an inverted eight above their head to the water’s edge — wearing body-hugging Lycra in the livery of their club and, incongruously, wellington boots. A coxless four was already out on the river, as well as several sculls — all gliding effortlessly along on the mirror-like surface of the Thames.