Chapter 1 – Caught in the Act
Bristol Motor Speedway, Tennessee - 16 April 2018
It was a beautiful, warm spring evening. A full moon lit up the Bristol Motor Speedway, despite the floodlights being turned off for the night. It was hard to believe that just over an hour earlier, the last spectators had left the stadium after watching the Bristol City 500. The racetrack was quiet now. Nearly everyone had turned in for the night. Only a few officials and cleaners were still hanging around behind the scenes. Up in the top of the main grandstand, a light was on in one of the function rooms. That was due to an emergency meeting between the Piston Cup CEO and numerous officials. Normally, meetings wouldn't occur after a full day of racing, but those in attendance all shared the same concern. Ever since the Next-Generation racers had taken over the Piston Cup series, the number of fans had dropped off dramatically. While the numbers were yet to be confirmed, most of the stadiums in the past couple of months had only been about two-thirds full. The meeting had been called to discuss the reasons why, and what they could do about it.
Down on the racetrack, a lone car drove down one of the two deserted pit rows. The Bristol Motor Speedway was just over half a mile long, so the pit row was split into two down the long sides. The lone car was painted in metallic navy-blue paint, but the writing along his sides made him stand out from all angles – Fabulous Lightning McQueen.
It had been two months since Lightning had sacrificed his own racing career to be the crew chief and mentor to his young protégé, Cruz Ramirez. Cruz had won the Bristol City 500 earlier that evening, putting her just ahead of Jackson Storm in the overall points. While Lightning had been thrilled with Cruz's win, deep down, he couldn't help but envy her. He didn't want to be selfish, but he wished with all his heart that it had been him on the winner's podium instead of her. However, he knew that it was physically impossible for him to compete against the Next-Gen racers. Years of having his engine restrained by speed limiters meant that he could no longer reach the same top speeds that he used to be able to reach. Thanks to his childhood condition called Jaguar Syndrome, he used to have a maximum top speed of two-hundred and twenty miles per hour, but now, try as he might, his engine refused to go faster than a hundred and ninety-eight miles per hour. Lightning knew what would happen to him if he tried to push it past that; he'd crash, which was exactly how his season had ended the year before. He was lucky that his crash had looked a lot worse that it had actually been. By a miracle, he'd managed to avoid suffering from any permanent injuries, but psychologically, the crash had left him badly shaken and lacking in self-confidence. His heart was telling him to race, but his mind was telling him not to. If he was truly honest with himself, he knew that his internal confliction was the real reason why he was holding back.
Lightning sighed despondently. He knew that he was putting on an act. His friends and family all thought that he was happy being Cruz's crew chief, but he wasn't. Much as he liked Cruz, he just wished that things could go back to how they were; not just before the Next-Gen racers arrived, but before Doc had died. That was when he'd been truly at his happiest.
Lightning was so caught up in his own thoughts that he didn't hear another car coming up behind him. Dale Earnhardt Junior, better known as Junior, parked quietly beside Lightning. For a moment, they stared in silence at the banked track beyond pit row. Finally, Junior spoke.
"You miss it, don't you?"
"Yeah," Lightning replied, his voice barely above a whisper. He glanced over at his friend. "I know you miss it too."
Junior nodded. "We'd still be racing if it wasn't for all those new kids."
"I know. I knew we'd be overtaken by rookies one day, but I wasn't expecting it to happen so soon."
"Me either." Now it was Junior's turn to sigh. "I see that Cal's with your team this weekend."
"Yeah. Strip's trying to encourage him to learn how to be a crew chief, but he doesn't seem to be interested. He's been shadowing me all weekend."
"You really seem to enjoy mentoring Cruz," Junior pointed out.
"I'm only doing it for Cruz's sake. She trusts me."
"That's obvious to everyone. You're great with her."
"She's a great student. At least I can give Storm a kick up the bumper through her. I'd love to do it myself though."
"You're not the only one who feels like that." Junior looked back at the track. "Why are we standing here moaning about what we can't do, when we have the whole racetrack to ourselves? I can call Cal and see if he wants to join us."
Lightning stared at his friend in astonishment. "Junior, we can't!" he whispered. "The officials would be onto us in a flash!"
Junior scoffed. "Everyone's asleep. Come on! I know you're itching to spin a few laps."
Lightning smiled slightly. "Well… Okay. But we'll need racing tyres put on." He started to drive away.
"Where are you going?" Junior asked.
"To wake up a pitty."
Junior chuckled before he dialled Cal's number.
A few minutes later, Lightning snuck into the Dinoco tent, where Cruz's pit crew were sleeping. He gently tapped the closest pitty with his tyre.
"Hey! Psst!" Lightning whispered. The pitty sleepily opened his eyes. Lightning gestured for him to be quiet and to follow him. Begrudgingly, the pitty followed Lightning out of the tent.
"What do you need, Mr McQueen?" the pitty asked.
"Three sets of racing tyres," Lightning whispered.
The pitty hesitated for a moment, but then he went to fetch them.
Meanwhile, up in the grandstand, the meeting had started. The Piston Cup CEO, Justin Swerve, was presiding. Since Strip Weathers was now an official, he we also part of the meeting. There were about twenty cars in the room. Some of them were sipping on cups of coffee to help keep them awake.
"So, what do you think the Next-Gen racers are lacking?" Justin asked the group.
His question was met with silence.
"Come on, guys," Justin pressed.
"I think what's missing is big crashes," an official named Mark Roads answered. "These young kids are terrified of even getting their paint scratched, so they avoid touching each other. The fans are used to seeing rough racing with contact, as long as nobody gets seriously hurt."
"That's a valid point," Justin mused.
"They're dull," a female official named Jennifer Holder said from the far end of the table. "They don't get up to mischief or muck around playing pranks on each other. The fans love that."
"So do the racers," Strip added. "Did, I mean. The previous generation of racers…"
"You mean the rookies that came in after you?" Mark asked.
"Yeah," Strip agreed. "Racers like my nephew, Cal, and Lightning McQueen. Even Chick Hicks made racing exciting, despite his dirty tactics. Personally, I feel that they've been pushed out of the Piston Cup way too soon. Some of the racers that were sacked by their teams weren't even thirty years old. I was well into my forties when I retired."
The officials all nodded in agreement. Even Justin nodded.
"I must admit that the introduction of the Next-Gen racers has been badly handled," he said. "The Piston Cup has suddenly become too regulated, like Formula One. It makes it hard for fans to connect on a personal level with the racers, because they're no longer former stock-standard road cars like them."
"Well, what can we do about it?" Strip asked. "Legally, we can't stop the Next-Gen racers from racing. They comply with all of the rules. I've checked."
Once again, the room fell silent while the officials pondered the problem.
Back down on the track, Lightning and the pitty returned to pit row, to find Cal waiting with Junior. The pitty frowned when he saw them all.
"I really shouldn't be doing this," he muttered as he started to change their tyres. Lightning was worried that the noise of the rattle gun would alert someone, but luckily the pitty worked quickly.
"I'll take all the blame," Lightning reassured him.
"No, I will," Junior insisted. "It was my idea."
"We'll all take the blame," Cal whispered.
The pitty finished changing their tyres. "There! Now, I'm going back to bed."
"Thanks for your help," Lightning said as the pitty drove away.
Junior breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Okay, are you ready?"
"Yeah!" Cal replied enthusiastically.
"We'll do five laps," Junior decided. "Two warm-up laps, and then we'll race for three. Loser buys a round of drinks!"
"Oh, you're on!" Lightning grinned. He promptly floored it as he drove out onto the track. Junior and Cal followed him in hot pursuit.
Although the floodlights were turned off, there was plenty of moonlight for them to see by. Lightning considered turning on his headlights, but remembering his moonshine race with the Legends, he left them off. Thanks to them, he now knew the importance of racing on pure instinct, even if he hadn't had a chance to use that training yet.
Lightning, Junior and Cal tried to be quiet as they drove around on the track, but their engines were still very powerful and noisy. They hadn't yet bothered to have themselves modified back into roadworthy legal cars; they even had their racing computers and black boxes still installed in their engine bays. Before they'd finished their first warm-up lap, they'd attracted the attention of those attending the meeting up in the grandstand. Strip drove over to the window to see who was out on the track. Several other officials joined him.
"Who's breaching curfew?" Justin demanded to know as he also drove over to the window.
"It's too dark to see," Mark replied.
Justin grabbed a pair of binoculars off the table, and he put them on. He zoomed in on the three cars who were racing around on the track. "I think I can make out one of them… Dinoco livery…"
"It can't be Cruz," Strip said. "She was exhausted after today's race."
"The car's too small to be Cruz," Justin pointed out. "I think it's your nephew."
"Cal?" Strip exclaimed with surprise.
"Hold on… I think I can just make out one of the others in the moonlight. Red car… I think it's Earnhardt Junior."
"And the other one?" another official asked.
"His paintwork is too dark. I can just see some white writing on his side…"
"Lightning McQueen!" the officials exclaimed in one voice.
"We'd better go and break them up," Jennifer decided. "They could hurt themselves driving in the dark."
"No, hold on," Justin said. "It looks like they're about to race. I'd like to see it. I think I've got an idea…"
The officials glanced at each other in surprise at Justin's decision, and they also settled down to watch.
Back down on the track, Lightning, Junior and Cal had finished their warm-up laps and they started to line up three abreast as they approached the start/finish line.
"Ready?" Junior asked.
"Set?" Cal added.
"Go!" Lightning shouted as they crossed over the start/finish line in unison. Caught up in the excitement of racing, they immediately forgot all about being quiet. The three of them floored their engines as they accelerated around the first corner. Naturally, Junior took the lead, while Lightning took his favourite racing line at the top of the track. Cal fell into Junior's slipstream. He was good at drafting, so he was happy to sit behind everyone for the duration of a race.
Lightning came down off the bank and he accelerated onto the back-straight bumper-to-bumper with Junior. Their racing styles were so different, but even though they hadn't raced together for almost a year, they naturally found their old rhythms.
For the next lap and a half, the three former racers stayed comfortably in their racing formation, waiting for one of them to pounce. Cal was the first to jump. He dropped down below Junior, using a slingshot movement to move up alongside him. Junior, realising that he was too late to block Cal, accelerated. While the two of them battled it out in a speed-dual, Lightning used the gravity coming down off the corners to give him some extra speed. As they came out of the final turn of the three-lap race, Lightning managed to come down from the final corner at a blistering pace, easily overtaking Junior and Cal, who were now rubbing paint and arguing loudly. Lightning shot across the finish line two lengths ahead of them.
"Yeah!" he cheered enthusiastically.
"That was your fault, Cal!" Junior shouted as he and Cal crossed the finish line, still bumping into each other. "If you hadn't tangled with me, I could've beaten Lightning."
"You didn't have to try and block me!" Cal retorted.
At that moment, the floodlights came on. Lightning was decelerating when they came on, and he squinted, momentarily blinded by the bright LED lights.
"Uh oh!" Junior exclaimed.
"We've been caught!" Cal added. "What do we do?"
"Hide!" Lightning yelped.
In a flash, all three cars made a dive for the infield. Lightning and Cal bolted for the Dinoco camp, while Junior parked in the shadows behind the pit row wall. Within seconds, the entire infield was completely silent. After a few minutes, the floodlights were turned off, leaving the racetrack lit only by moonlight once again.
Down in the Dinoco camp, Lightning and Cal waited silently for a few more minutes before they peeked out from behind Cruz's trailer. Lightning breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
"Bloody hell! That was close!" he whispered.
"Too close!" Cal agreed. "I guess we'd better turn in for the night. Where'd Junior go?"
A shadow moved towards them between two trailers.
"Junior?" Lightning whispered hopefully. He turned on his headlights. The car approaching them wasn't Junior. It was Strip!
"Argh!" Lightning and Cal screamed in unison. Strip drove over to them and he slammed his front tyres over their mouths.
"Keep it down, will you?" Strip hissed. "Are you trying to wake everyone up? It's after midnight!"
"Sorry, Strip!" Lightning gasped when Strip removed his tyres. "You scared us!"
"We thought you were Junior," Cal added.
"Do I look like Junior?" Strip asked rhetorically. "At least I know for sure that it was definitely you three out on the track just now."
Lightning and Cal cringed sheepishly.
"We can explain that…" Lightning began.
Strip held up a tyre. "Go to bed. Both of you. We'll deal with this in the morning."
Lightning and Cal exchanged confused glances.
"Okay," Lightning replied with a shrug. "Goodnight, Strip. Cal."
"Goodnight, Lightning," Strip and Cal replied in unison.
Lightning drove over to his trailer and he reversed inside it. Although the outside of the trailer was now painted in a blend of Dinoco and Rust-Eze sponsors' art, the interior was still much the same as it had been in Lightning's racing days. He hadn't had the heart to change anything. After he'd closed the ramp, Lightning turned on the overhead disco lights. They changed colour every few seconds, filling the trailer in a soft, colourful glow. With a heavy sigh, Lightning fluffed up his favourite pillow before he settled down on it to sleep.