Western Italia is a Very Coherent Team

Daytona 24/4 - Race Week with Western Italia

Thursday. Week of the Daytona 24/4.

The Roar came and went. Western Italia still did not have a third driver.

Dick had a few buddies living in Florida he could call on. Denny and Rhod jumped at the chance to escape their engineer, and they’d now set a new inter-team record for the longest time without a new request for technology only found in world championships or science fiction. Fourteen miles away, Erika was sleeping in their hauler, wrapped up in a tyre blanket with the rear right she’d already designated for qualifying.

Dick checked the Western Italia Tripwire page. Still no messages.

Rhod checked his texts. Ditto.

Denny felt left out. He sent a text to his mother on their situation prompting the other two to turn to him. Their eyes were wide with a mixture of hope and anticipation. Embarrassed, he just shook his head and hid his phone.

They stared at the wall some more in silence. The long drive down to Daytona, and a week of running the Roar, exhausted all topics of conversation. And neither Rhod nor Dick understood what Denny meant by, “Where are you on the Vampire-Cowboy spectrum?”

The paint on the walls of Dick’s hotel room was flaking, and a draught blew through the shrunken and deflated window seals. Together the draught carried the flaking pieces over them as cold as snow, with the texture of burnt ashes.

Despite their situation, Rhod kept a confident facade. It was all he had. “We’ve still got a day or two before we have to commit to a driver lineup. Something will happen. There’s always turbulence.” The other two nodded in deference to his experience.

Two knocks at the door, and the flimsy sheet of wood bowed with each impact. The trio looked at each other, then at their valuables, and then around the room for self defence tools. Denny was voluntold to open the door, and the intruder came eye to eye with three men wielding a stool, a desk lamp, and a coat hanger.

“Ope, sorry to startle you gentlemen,” the intruder said in a soft midwestern accent. “I was in town this week and caught wind of that you were in need of a driver.”

Rhod and Denny’s jaws dropped together. “Wendy Pope?” Rhod lowered the desklamp, and for a brief moment of weakness wore that same starstruck expression Denny for their first week together.

Denny didn’t even attempt composure. He shook his head to clear the dust and the flakes of paint in his hair. Eyes bulged. Jaw dropped. Then he placed the stool in front of her and stared at it for a moment, finding muscle control in his face, before finally deciding to gesture to it. “Can I offer you a seat?”

“Hey, nice to meet you,” she said with a genuine smile. She was wearing a racing suit, and greying hair came to her shoulders. And when Rhod thought about it, through all the collective hours he’d seen her about paddocks, and even had dinner with her once, he’d never actually seen her out of some form of suit. Denny had raced against her once, and watched countless hours of Autofad, the car review site she did some driving work for, and never actually saw her out of some form of overalls. But he was too overwhelmed to question that.

“Actually, I’m here about a seat in an Alfa Romeo,” she said, and stepped over the stool.

“Sure…” Rhod scratched his chin. “How did you find us here?”

“Oh I heard about a Pro-Am car needing a third driver and came over to see what’s what.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Dick watched the Wendy with a strange sense of Deja vu. “Why do I recognise you?” he asked and pointed.

She shrugged. “I get about. I was here racing a touring car last Saturday, maybe then?”

“No no, long ago…” After a few more seconds of umming and ahhing, the memories filed themselves at last and dropped an answer in his frontal lobe. “Oh I know. You were driving a 458 and some 911 at Willow Springs about a decade back. Rented the car from my dealership.”

She clapped her hands. “Oh! Is that so? I didn’t really deal with the management side but it’s a shame we didn’t get to talk. That Porsche was magical!”

With fists clenched and knuckles white, Dick responded flat like those Beetle engines. “No, mine was the 458.”

“My mistake! What a sound! That V8 was so bloody revvy!” She raised her hand out of some racing driver reflex to mimic the accelerator pedal, and without warning Denny took her hand and shook it.

Denny was breathless and jittery, “HiI’mDennyPeakeIt’sanhonourtoformallymeetyou.”

“Well it’s lovely to meet you too-.”

“We raced on the 21st of July, 2019 in Miatas at Watkins Glen. You finished second that day. You were amazing.”

“Ehh, couldn’t have been that amazing if I only finished second,” she replied, and Denny felt his heart and ego crumple together like paper when he thought about his ninth place finish.

While Denny and Dick backed off to recover their bruised egos, Rhod got back to business. “So you’re game?”

“It’s Daytona! Who can say no to that?” she said, and offered her hand. Rhod took it, pleased to seal the deal so quickly with an established racer.

With a third person perspective on a driver signing it occurred to Dick just how out of character it was to bring on all his closest employees through handshake deals. He sent a text to his lawyer to discuss contracts when she got back from her timeshare in Tahiti. Then he searched up Wendy’s name. She was mildly famous, and had the kind of cred that sold performance cars. It took only a few seconds before he had a shortlist of commercial ideas, but when he looked up from his phone again, she was gone.

Rhod pointed him down the hall. “She’s going to meet Erika now,” he said, and Dick caught sight of her walking towards the front door. But when he got to the door, she was gone, as if she was never there.

---

Erika awoke with the smell of beer filling her nostrils and the taste of aluminium in her mouth. The rattling can bouncing down the hauler was deafening under the hangover she was experiencing. Out of pure habit, she reached for her laptop and checked the latest race simulation data.

Everything was pointing to the hard tyre.

There was a knock against the tailgate of the hauler, and she groggily got up to check who it was. “I’ll-I’ll… s-soften the rear anti-roll bar when you let me put more caster in,” she mumbled instinctively, possibly to whoever was bothering her, but too quiet to actually be heard. She collapsed against the door to feel for the handle.

After struggling for a few moments, Wendy took the initiative and opened it for her. Erika fell out and stayed down. Wendy quickly crouched down to help her, “Ope, sorry, are you okay?”

“Who the fuck are you?”

Wendy stopped her efforts and put her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m now a driver for a foul mouthed race engineer.”

Erika rolled over to look at her. The lights were off at Daytona, and the stars were in full display tonight behind her. Ten months ago she was under a similar sky, waiting for a taxi to take her to Western Italia to pitch her skills to Dick. In a few days, all that work, trust, and effort would pay itself off with a race win. She started laughing, until her eyes refocused on Wendy.

Ugh, racing drivers. You’ve gotta brief them on everything.

“Rule one.” She said, sitting upright and raising a finger. “Don’t bother me, I know better than you,” she heard herself say. What came out was something significantly less coherent.

Wendy couldn’t understand whatever she tried to say, and wasn’t sure of what to make of a raised pinky finger. She looked about for security or… literally anyone else to help take care of the disorientated woman.

But then Erika stood up and stamped about to try and ground herself. “Now. Let. Me. Go. Sleep,” she said with each stomp.

“Can I see the car?” Wendy asked.

Erika stopped turning to face Wendy, “Nice…” She smiled wide, “Nice-nice try, sp-spy,” she slurred, and stepped backwards into the hauler. Or aimed to, but hit the side of it, and awkwardly rolled against the wall until she slipped through the personnel door. She waved, and then jammed her middle finger in the door as she closed it.

Her laptop had the blinding white spreadsheet left on in an otherwise unlit room. It beckoned her, along with the unopened cans that caught the light and glistened in gold. She opened an air cooled beer and hunched down in the tyre blanket.

Five minutes of analysing new strategies wouldn’t hurt.

---

Friday, practice one.

Dick found Erika surrounded by empty cans, groaning like a zombie, unblinking in front of her laptop. “What’s the plan?”

“Aaaaaaaayyyyy,” Erika mumbled in a half answer, half vocal exercise. “Beeeeeeeee…” she continued, and trailed off. Dick scratched his head and opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted, “Aaaaaaaayyyyy.”

He waited a few beats to confirm she was done. By now he was getting used to her antics. The day she measured the range of settings on the anti-roll bars was worse, and when Rhod and Denny checked her workings, they found she’d done it perfectly… somehow. “Is the car ready?”

She nodded like a bobble head, and stood up. “I said-I say A/B setup testinggggggg,” she slurred, bouncing off the walls of the hauler like a DVD screensaver on her way out.

“Hey wait, I need you to sign this!” he said, and offered a piece of paper. He pinched the paper and slid his fingers over it, just to confirm it was real to himself. He was in awe of the total commitment to deviousness his lawyer demonstrated, cutting off a day of jetskiing to work on contracts binding the team to work for free. He got it all printed up on the way to the track.

The size and spread of the pile of cans was impressive in its own way. Inspectors and officials certainly would make a big deal out of it, especially at the crown jewel of endurance racing. There was enough that if they were to stamp down on each beer can hard enough, they’d probably spread out enough to retexture the hauler’s floor. “Hey Denny!” Dick yelled. “Get this shit cleaned up, okay?”

Certified racing helmets are notoriously difficult to get on. Especially while wearing gloves that fit just a little too tightly, that took a few minutes to wriggle on. But pro racing teams are even more notoriously difficult to get into, even while you’re paying them your life savings just to stay onboard. And even easier to leave when janitorial duties are written into the contract you signed before breakfast. Denny looked at the Alfa in their pit box, fuelled and booted in fresh rubber, and then at the clock counting down to practice start. “Tell Wendy she can have my first stint,” he yelled, and sulked into the hauler.

After just a couple laps, Wendy came back in. It was fortunate that her and Rhod had similar heights and builds, so she could mostly get by using his seat mould. They practised a live driver change and got Rhod out for his stint quickly.

Wendy couldn’t wait to give her feedback. “I just don’t know what you’re thinking. This is Daytona, I need some top end speed,” Wendy complained when she was up on the war wagon with Erika. She kept her distance, cautious and anticipating an incoherent, drunken response.

So Erika’s response was as unexpected as if the little engineer picked up Wendy and threw her off the war wagon. “I’m thinking shut up and get comfy slipstreaming,” Erika said, firmly giving her the cold shoulder to keep staring at the lapcharts. They were already three tenths up on their pace at the Roar. “We were slow as shit through sector one last week. The last thing we need is to drop time again.”

“But we’re losing time everywhere anyway,” Wendy said, and pointed at their lowly position on the timing sheet.

Erika took a sip of a flask, now labelled E100 Race Fuel. “Then find a car to hook onto the back of and don’t let go. I’ll pull the headlight fuse out to make sure you stay close to their tails.”

“You don’t get it,” Wendy’s voice strained up an octave, and she developed a case of racing driver hands to demonstrate two cars in a slipstream. “I can’t use the draft if we can’t gain on the car ahead. We’re too slow to make a pass.”

Erika wanted to sit down and go through the data between this session and the next. But she had a feeling she was going to get the same complaints from Rhod, and probably from Denny if he ever showed up for this practice. Because racing drivers always felt entitled to setting up the car, just because they’d be driving it for twenty-four hours. And that kind of uppity behaviour was exhausting.

Maybe it was weakness. Or sleep deprivation. Or the alcohol. Because Erika was going to give in to their demands. She nodded slowly, but spoke with intensity. “Fine, I’ll back off the wing. Raise the nose up to balance it. And if it’s slower, we go back to my setup.”

“And how do I know you won’t just rig it?”

Erika didn’t usually go for beer. Anything less than ten-percent was hardly a drink. But the vendors around the track made it all too easy for her to swipe a few cases in the evenings. Her nails were bitten to stumps, so she wedged a flathead screwdriver underneath the tab to open it. “Because…” she said, as a pack of Mustangs came through the trioval, rumbling too loud to bother trying to express herself, so she chugged until the can was empty and the Mustangs were out of earshot. “I’m in the business of making cars go fast.” She pitched the can as hard as she could, and it flew through the air straight and true at Wendy’s head height, one seat over from where she was sitting. Disappointed, Erika walked to the ladder and started to climb down, silently cursing that she missed. “If there’s speed, I’ve got no ego. But you’re wasting my time.”

Practice two.

The changes were surprisingly quick and painless to make. The front ride height went up ten millimetres and the rear wing came down a few degrees. Together it shed a little bit of downforce for an even littler bit less drag, such were the curses of weakening the very efficient aero devices. Nobody taught racing drivers how to look at a plot of pressure coefficients, or what an Oswald’s efficiency was. Instead they asked Erika to adjust the wings to make the car all these distracting words or phrases like ‘stable’ and ‘easy to drive’.

Erika had a firm view on this. The point of aero is to find the point where the wings pushed down the hardest, and change everything else to use that force. So even though the changes were too subtle to tell, the car looked so wrong and ugly to her as it drove away down pit road, in the way it might look wrong to anyone else if there was double digits of toe angle. It had been made inferior. And now the stopwatch was going to back her up.

Except it didn’t, exactly. The minutes passed by as if they were seconds. While the rest of the team moved about, swapped drivers, exchanged notes and changed tyres around her, she gawked blankly at the timing screens, contemplating all the possibilities and explanations. Her disbelief was so immense she was contemplating the supernatural before the chance she misread the aero maps and made a wrong change on the spring perches. Her setup was faster, but only just. A rounding error of difference, well within the range of inconsistency she had come to expect from her two drivers. She seriously doubted Wendy was any better.

Wendy took one look at the timing sheet and, drawing on decades of experience, came to her own conclusion. “So it’s about the same?”

Erika yawned loudly. Tiredness was already setting in. Still, she refused to mince words. “A little slower.”

“Just give me straight line speed.”

“No, we agreed to go for the fastest setup,” Erika snapped, and took a shot as she braced for a response.

“What’s a couple hundredths worth anyway?

She hadn’t eaten in how long? The alcohol hit her fast, even if she could only be feeling placebo. She flipped her fingers as if she was counting on them, but it was more like some force of habit. “Three-three seconds… over two-hundred laps.”

Wendy put her hands on her hips and shook her head, “So that’s nothing, as I said! And you want us to run the hards, even though historically the medium’s been the best tyre!”

That was a lot of words for a very tired Erika. She stammered, just trying to move her jaw. “N-no? When’s three seconds ever been nothing?”

“We’re starting behind anyway, we’ll have to make passes. I want straight line speed.”

“We’ll be starting less behind with the fastest setup. Besides, we’re going long in the later part of the race, and the mediums are slower over a stint.”

“Says who?”

“Says my spreadsheet.”

Wendy tapped her head, “Well I got forty years up here that says you don’t know a thing.”

They mutually gave each other the finger and went their separate ways.

---

Qualifying Day

Dick marched up to Wendy with a trimmed piece of paper. “Hey, go stand on the pit wall.” He pulled out his phone camera and debated between landscape and portrait.

“Hmm?” Wendy hadn’t actually spoken to Dick. Not since the incident where she mistakenly assumed he supplied the Porsche for a review over a decade ago. He did slide her a short term contract, which she eventually signed, but they didn’t speak over it.

“What’s this? I’m not gonna sign for more races.”

“Hey now, I get it, you’re a busy gal. I’m not asking for that, but I need you to know you’re contractually obliged to film a commercial for the showroom.”

Wendy rolled her eyes and skimmed the paper. For any other team, a bit of media work would’ve been the least she could offer in return for being paid to drive a racecar. But Western Italia had proven to be a sinking ship she quickly wanted to distance herself from. “What? Since when?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the contract, magnifying glass already clipped in place over the precise line. Truth be told, even he didn’t understand the precise phrasing. But he trusted that it would absolutely hold up in court.

Wendy peered at it, and thought about the confusing phrasing, and the section in Latin. Was fighting this out in court worth thirty seconds of standing on a pit wall with a fake smile? Defeated, she stood on the wall in the prescribed pose.

Denny was chosen to qualify, on the setup he didn’t get a chance to try. It didn’t bother him. The car had felt identical every session. He just pointed the wheel and sheer instincts took care of the rest.

Rhod leaned in and yelled through his visor over the rumbling of thirty-two idling racecars. “It’s a hotter day than practice, expect grip to-.”

“Get out the way! I’m filming here!” Dick said, grabbing Rhod’s collar.

“And I’m talking to my teammate!” Rhod said, shaking free.

“There’s no point talking if we’re going to be bankrupt soon!”

Rhod ignored Dick and leaned back into the cockpit. “Sorry about that. Track surface is hotter, expect grip to be lower.” He smiled and patted Denny, slammed shut the door, and gave the Alfa a push as it set off down pit road.

Denny noddedat Rhod’s advice, like he felt a professional racecar driver should. But what difference did knowing that make?

He went out, and set a flyer. It felt good. Nothing had as much grip as this did, even on the hard tyres. If only the Celica had these kind of tyres. Then I might still be racing it-. Thank god I wrecked it.

“You’re dead last,” came on the radio as he cooled everything down. He was certain, and relieved, that it wasn’t Erika on the radio, but the quality was poor enough that he couldn’t make out the voice. “Remember all that work we did on pace?”

He sure did remember it. But knowing information was very different to being able to consciously apply it. Erika had also explained that if he turned the wheel to, “sixty-two degrees, then linearly decrease the angle to forty-four degrees to the apex of turn three,” it would keep the front tyres at peak slip angle, “providing no external side forces, yawing moment in the diff, or downforce pitch sensitivity.” He especially wasn’t sure what to do about that information.

He came in for a fresh set of tyres and a quick top up of fuel. “Burn as much off as you can heating up the tyres.”

“But I like the way the car feels with a bit of fuel in,” he replied.

And he could hear Erika, both in his ear from somewhere distant, and outside the car somewhere further away, screaming at the same pitch at Grand Prix cars from twenty-years ago. “What kinda attitude is that? He likes the car when it’s slower?” Denny could see the shockwave of her voice travelling up pit road, turning the head of every other pit member to react for just a moment, before returning to their work pinning Western Italia to the bottom of the timing board.

From on the pit wall, Dick was livid. “Quiet the fuck down!” he yelled back up. “It says…” he began, and peered at his phone closely, “that I’m nearly out of storage!” In his best act of teamwork so far, Rhod intercepted an official who was taking an interest in Dick taking video recordings on the track’s land.

Denny’s second attempt was no better. They were six tenths off pole. Four tenths accounting for the tyre difference.

Erika stared at the results, and then at her strategy spreadsheet, and shared no emotion because her entire brain was already scrambling for a solution. She was in for a long night to try and rescue this one.

The night didn’t end when the sun rose again.

---

Thirty hours later, post race.

The roar gave them a lot of misplaced confidence from a few lucky laps. Race week should’ve been called the bite, a harsh reality that they were a bunch of amateurs with a homologated piece of kit and an entry form.

The mood in the team was dire and silent, and had been since qualifying, where they were eternally stuck in last. Through practice they had emphasised pace, looking to make up time on long runs, and still ended up as the slowest car. Erika had disappeared in the early hours of the race, and their pit crew and mechanics and other hired hands largely kept to their own clique. So Dick, Rhod, and Denny kept to their lonesome on the war wagon, watching the packing up process beneath them, bleary eyed and exhausted.

“At least we didn’t butcher it with a last minute stop,” Rhod offered, weakly.

“Yeah… Not last…” Denny agreed, weakly. His eyes fluttered from fatigue. He hadn’t stayed up this late since he was a teenager.

Dick shook his head. “All that money spent… for what?”

Rhod put an arm around Dick, “Look on the bright side, we’re beating Porsche in the manufacturers.”

And in an instant, Dick perked up. “We are?”

Rhod gestured vaguely down the pit lane, towards the wrong end of the pit lane. He gave up trying to memorise pit boxes when he realised it literally didn’t matter. “ThirdEye DNF’d. Dango pit at the end. We’re beating them. We even scored points! With an s!” When he phrased it like that, it didn’t feel so bad.

Reinvigorated, Dick stood up and yelled, “Take that you Stuttgart suckers!” into the infield. Crickets and idling trucks were the only audience left, which made him feel awkward enough to take a seat again. At least he could laugh to himself, smug and gleeful.

Wendy left as quickly as she appeared. Something about a BMW 318 in Oregon. The wanderer left without any ceremony, although she did inhale sharply through her teeth as she bid them farewell. “You gotta step up your game, y’know.”

And despite being beaten down and gloomy about their impending season, they could at least be happy that they’d survived the race and come out with a sole point. Together they were content.

The moment was broken by a patter of feet rushed up the ladder, and Erika, defying all known understandings of forces acting offset from a centre of mass, appeared at the top of the ladder holding her laptop in front of her, hands free on the ladder. She stumbled and staggered onto their platform and slammed the computer on the worktop. The screen wasn’t cracked last time Dick, Rhod, or Denny had seen it. With bagged eyes and breath stinking of whiskey, she bellowed at the top of her lungs, “I’M NOT INSANE. THERE WAS A BUG.”

“A bug?” Dick scratched his head. He didn’t see how an insect could cause a problem in a computer.

“A bug?” she repeated faintly, struggling to process even the mildest of questions. A popup appeared in the middle of the screen. ‘Device screen active for 79 hours. Please power off device to protect screen.’ Erika slammed the return key to hide it, and pointed at the fuzzy chart.

To everyone else’s relatively well rested, sober eyes, the chart was as crisp as could be on a monitor that was gradually turning purple as it failed.

“What kinda glitch?” Denny asked, and folded his arms.

“It calculated all the pit stops as a full refuel. Didn’t capture the benefit of underfueling on the other tyres.”

The moment lasted long. Denny scratched his head and Rhod ran through the difference in his head. “Annoying,” Denny said, in an effort to cut the silence.

“And the tyre wear rates were really off.”

The one driver with an actual career frowned. “How badly off?”

Erika stared at the spreadsheet blankly as she recounted the memory. “Going from over 25% to under gained us 3 tenths.”

Denny let out a nervous laugh. “Holy shit.”

Rhod glared at Erika with the sort of intensity psychics use to make their enemy’s heads explode. “I can see why you work for free now.”

Erika slammed the laptop shut. “Oh don’t you start. With the fixed data, I reran the race simulations. Given we were…” Out of habit she reached for the laptop again, but mercifully for it, the number came to her before she opened the lid. “Six tenths off in qualifying. The mediums were like, three and a half tenths quicker.”

“Obviously.”

“We’d need to run our stints 10 laps shorter just to match pace.” She pointed at Rhod, specifically. “Drive faster. We were consistently the slowest through sector 1.”

“Give me a faster car.”

Erika looked at Dick. “Give me a faster driver.”

“Now now,” Denny said, weakly. If the two weren’t both so desperate for backup, they probably wouldn’t have heard him. But they did, and when both the angry team members turned to him, he raised his hands in an act of both surrender and self defence. “We’re all new to this.”

“You’re so green I should be calling you the Dollar,” Rhod said.

“Right.”

“And you don’t offer feedback. You just say yes,” Erika offered.

“Yeah,” Denny said, and his self-awareness caught up a moment later. He took a deep breath and regathered himself. “But I’m also paying for all the tyres. So listen. We’re going to suck. But we’ll make it. For sure.”

Dick kept his own input to himself, and made a mental note to get back on finishing that tyre partnership. “For sure,” he agreed aloud, and nodded.

“So now,” he offered, with a childlike sort of naivety, “we can set expectations. How about a top ten?”

Sighs passed around the war wagon. Dick frowned, and looked down at the little Alfa Romeo. He was too cheap to go get a Ferrari sorted, and now they were paying the price. This isn’t what Enzo would’ve wanted. He raced to win.

Rhod’s lips heaved into the tiniest upturn of a smile. “Sure. A single top ten in the next seven races.”

Denny stood up and put a hand on Rhod, “N-no. I mean full season. Tenth in the championship.”

Rhod removed his hand. “That would be a long shot.”

“Would it?”

“We finished eleventh because of pit cycles and DNFs on the longest race of the season.”

“So? We’ll do it again at Watkins. Or Sebring. But faster. We’ve got chances.”

“You’re not very bright.”

Throughout this all, Erika was drinking, reaching for the various cans she'd hidden around the war wagon over the weekend, chugging the contents, and then quietly placing the empty cans into her hoodie pockets. But eventually she was out of room, and when one clattered down, she jumped and the rest fell too, into a percussion explosion of aluminium on steel. Three pairs of eyes were on her now, so she loudly declared, “I’m here to win!”

“You really think we’re going to go from…” Rhod pondered an appropriate word, but “shit” was the only one that came to mind.

She shook her head. “I never said I thought you were going to get better. I said I’m here to win.” She picked up her laptop. “I’m going to figure out something.”