Simulator

You fall asleep at 3 a.m. with the phone on your chest, the conversation still open.

When you wake, gray Melbourne light in the window and a hangover from nothing but adrenaline, you scroll back through it once. You wince at a few of your own messages. You don't delete any. You read his three times, which is two times too many.

You don't save the number under his name. You save it as T3, which feels like a joke only you are in on.

On the flight home you watch your onboard from turn three. You were four meters early. Every lap.

You'd sooner eat your helmet than tell him.

The simulator at Silverbrook lives in a dark room in the basement, and it looks like the cockpit of a spaceship that has crashed into a cinema. A real chassis on hydraulic legs. A curved screen wrapping two hundred and seventy degrees around it. When you're in it, strapped in, wearing your helmet, there is no Northamptonshire in March, no drizzle, no motorway outside. There's only Suzuka, in high definition, and a whole bank of engineers behind glass watching your every twitch.

"Again," says Ilkka through the headset. "Sector one. Esses. You're overdriving."

"I'm not overdriving."

"You are overdriving like a man with something to prove."

"I have something to prove."

"Copy. Prove it slower."

You laugh despite yourself, and go again.

Between runs you sit on the edge of the rig in your fireproofs, drinking electrolyte that tastes like a melted lollipop. The door opens and Reshma Ramdas comes in with a tablet tucked under her arm. She doesn't usually come down here on your days.

"Morning, Ethan," she says. She holds out a single sheet of paper, printed, folded once. "Setup notes for Suzuka. Rear anti-roll bar, two clicks softer. Brake bias forward half a percent for the hairpin."

You take it. "From you?"

"From nobody." She meets your eyes for a beat too long. "Nobody spent most of last night on it, apparently. Nobody would like you to stop locking the inside front into the hairpin."

Then she's gone, and Ilkka, behind the glass, is studiously looking at a monitor.

You unfold the sheet. Every line is in neat capitals. The same capitals as the tape on your steering wheel.

You try the setup on the next run. The car stops fighting you. The hairpin, which has been eating your front tires all morning, simply opens up like a door.

"Point three faster," Ilkka says. A pause. "Whoever nobody is, they're good."

"He's insufferable."

"Copy. Insufferable is good at setup."

When you climb out at lunch, someone's leaning against the wall in the corridor, scrolling his phone. Gianluca Banfi, in a crisp Kaltberg polo, black hair styled within an inch of its life. He's handsome the way a car advert is handsome. Everything about him is polished and a little bit for sale.

"The rookie," he says, without looking up. "How's my seat?"

"Comfortable."

He smiles at his phone. "Enjoy it. Kaltberg's paying for a lot of things this year. They like their investments to pay off." He finally lifts his eyes, and they're cold and amused. "I'm driving FP1 at Silverstone, by the way. In your car. Leave it tidy."

"I'll leave you a mint on the pillow."

He laughs like you've told a joke at his expense and he's already decided how he'll pay you back.

The meeting at two is in a glass room on the top floor, and it's Radka's show.

She's got a screen, a slide deck and two phones face-down on the table like loaded guns. Heloise sits at the end with her glasses on her nose. Matthis is in the chair farthest from you, in a black team sweater, one ankle on his knee, wearing an expression of profound boredom.

"Melbourne," Radka says, and taps the screen. The garage clip plays: your hand on his race suit, the shove, Zoltan hauling you back. "Thirty-one million views across platforms. The single most engaged piece of content this team has ever produced."

"Congratulations," says Matthis to the ceiling.

"So." Radka smiles like a shark who's been to finishing school. "We lean in. A content series. Working title, Feud. Short-form, behind the scenes, the champion and the rookie who can't stand each other. Staged moments, real tension. Driver challenges. Sim races. Press-conference side-eye."

"No," you say.

"Yes," says Heloise, mildly. "Sponsor wants it."

"We're supposed to be teammates."

"You are teammates," Radka says. "Who hate each other. On camera. Twice a race weekend. It's not lying, darling. It's packaging."

You look down the table. "Do you want this, Matthis?"

It's the first thing you've said directly to him all day. Matthis turns his head. His face is perfectly still. In the white light of the meeting room his eyes are paler than ever.

"I won't need to act," he says.

Radka claps her hands once. "Wonderful. First shoot in Miami."

Zoltan drives you home in his terrible car with the broken heater. The motorway is a smear of brake lights and rain.

"Won't need to act," you say, for the fifth time. "Who says that? Who actually says that out loud in a meeting?"

"A man who sends you setup sheets at midnight," Zoltan says.

You go still. "How do you know about that?"

"Reshma's my mate's cousin. Nobody in that building can keep a secret, except maybe Heloise." He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Then he goes quiet in a way that Zoltan never goes quiet. "There's something else. Didn't want to tell you during testing. Thought you'd do something stupid."

"I always do something stupid."

"Yeah." He sighs. "Two years ago, when I was still at Veloce on the junior program, there was a request came through the data office. Somebody wanted all the onboard and telemetry from the Academy Series. One driver. Every round."

The windscreen wipers thud. Your mouth is suddenly dry.

"Which driver?"

Zoltan looks at you sideways, and the streetlights strobe across his face.

"You, Ethan. Nobody'd heard of you yet." He pauses. "The request came from car 1."