Extremely short chapter, but hey, I haven't completely forgotten about this story. Just have been putting all of my focus on a different story.


Cruz had to admit, she hadn't really been paying any attention to the crew chief Sterling had given her.

She had kind of just stuck close to Mr. McQueen who had gotten used to giving her tips about what to do different. Even with him being in the fray of racers with her, she found him giving her better advice than the gentlemen who was raising his voice over her radio.

She ended up yelling at him to shut up, he wasn't helping anything. She had tried to listen to him at the start of the race, but half the stuff he was telling her didn't make sense and she couldn't figure out what he was trying to tell her.

What did make sense, was what Mr. McQueen was telling her.

Mind you, a good portion of that was inside jokes from training the past week, but it was actually helping, not distracting her.

She and Mr. McQueen were kind of working as a team and it lead to them catching up to the leaders and passing them except for Storm. And he obviously found her more of a threat than Mr. McQueen, because he was pushing her against the wall, while the now Hudson Hornet Blue Lightning McQueen was ahead of them.

Storm seemed to be too focused on her to notice though; which was fine by her, she wanted Mr. McQueen to win today, to prove to Mr. Sterling he was wrong to let Mr. McQueen go like that.

He wanted her to get out of where she was though grinding against the wall. There wasn't much race left and Mr. McQueen was right she needed to get out of there, but how.

The idea came swiftly as she remembered the one story Smokey told them, she copied what Doc did and it landed her second place after Mr. McQueen.

It may not have been an out right win, but did it feel good to race in her first Piston Cup race, Mr. McQueen was right, she was a racer.