OK6 - The Court Jester

"Welcome to what is, unquestionably, the most important grid line up of the year. My socks are two days old, and I speak no French, but I shall persevere nonetheless for the sake of all of you watching at home. This is the Monaco Grand Prix."

Diethard Reid, microphone in hand, chuckled at his own joke, poking fun of his exaggerated woes as he spoke into the camera opposite him, manned by a bulky man who followed the reporter through his various misadventures on the pre race grid, interviewing, goofing off, and generally being entertaining for the home audience who paid to watch this circus on television all across the planet.

After leaving a gap after his statement for emphasis, he qualified his bold claim, explaining "Of course, the Monaco track, for all the excitement this narrow circuit provides in terms of displaying raw skill, is such that overtaking in anger takes a whole other level of skill, meaning that track position here is more valuable than at any other circuit on the calendar. A talented driver can easily hold an opponent behind, even with a pace deficit, which means that the race on Sunday can easily be won in Saturday Qualifying. With all that in mind, let's see how the drivers line up on the grid this afternoon for what could be a cracking race."

Allowing the editor back in the commentary box to cut to an edit of the order on the television, Diethard took a moment before launching into the list, held up by an aide beside the cameraman for him to read off of.

"Lining up on pole position for the first time this season is Kyoshiro Tohdoh, who was surely delighted to finally reach the front row of the grid after three starts behind Camelots in a row. Can he hold on to take the lead of the championship after such a miserable start to the season compared to his prior pace? We'll see. He's joined at the front by Suzaku Kururugi, who dragged his Rosenberg to second, albeit with a deficit to Tohdoh of almost three tenths of a second on their respective fastest laps."

Pausing briefly, he continued "Nonetheless, it is a welcome show of pace from Kururugi, particularly after his win in his native Japan. Also outperforming his usual is the man in third place, local driver Lelouch Lamperouge, who made full use of his car's light weight and shorter wheelbase to achieve the best qualifying of his whole career at a track where his Ashford-RT's lack of engine power is not a major concern. Will he hold on for his careers first podium, less than fifty miles from his birthplace? Again, we shall see, particularly in light of this being a race that depends heavily on strategy, something he is renowned for."

Taking a moment to breathe, Diethard resumed his rundown, reading "Joining Lelouch on the second row of the grid is Kallen Kōzuki, who leapt ahead of her respectable debut performance in Japan and leapfrogged the Camelots, who line up fifth and sixth, with Gino Weinberg finding a tenth of a second in the final sector to qualify ahead of his teammate Cornelia. That fight is between the championship leaders, and so is worth keeping an eye on. However, with the tight corners not suiting their cars size and weight, they have it all to do to retain that lead in the championship. Odysseus McGlynn, the other Rosenberg driver, qualified sixth, undoubtedly disappointed in that deficit to Suzaku. The fourth row is filled by the two Lancer drivers line of stern, Bradley ahead of Nu. Ninth is Rivalz Cardemonde, in Q3 for the first time, and in tenth place is the Geely of Li Xingke."

Diethard smiled as the camera cut back to him, having prepared his look, and invitingly nodded "And that's your top ten qualifiers. Let's see if we can grab a conversation with some of them, shall we?".

He turned away from the camera with the enthusiastic glee of a child stirring trouble, poking through the crowds to spy out those people relevant to his coverage. He was a war correspondent, infiltrating enemy lines with slightly bent knees and the smell of champagne about him.

"Let's see…" he mused, wandering through the crowd of washed up celebrities who circulated the Mediterranean Principality, ducking under other news crews and equipment to reach more relevant folk. "I wonder if Clovis Reigal is lurking about here someplace, he always has some fun controversial opinions, but I can't… seem to find…"

Diethard's train of thought, vocalized through his microphone for the benefit of the ladies and gentlemen, tapered off, as he tried to peer his way through interview candidates towards the read end of the grid. He continued forward against the tide, determined to find someone, before catching wind of the unmistakable rasp of Shinichiro Tamaki.

Leaping at the opportunity, Diethard made for the hoarse voice like a mouse into a cheese trap, almost leaping over a stray tyre warmer to reach the hitherto hidden driver of the Densō-Sakura, who seemed fixated on explaining his engineers' many inadequacies and failings as a human being to whoever would listen. Fortunately, Diethard was more than willing to humour him.

"Absolutely unbelievable…" concluded the Asian, before Diethard asked "How are conditions today, are there any weather concerns?"

"Um…"

Shinichiro paused, before parsing out with great difficulty "It's erm… sunny out. It's warm, a little windy, I dunno. Little cloud, but sparse enough. Pretty decent day in all. Might have a swim after the race."

"Heh, very good, very good. Your car obviously struggled in Qualifying, with your start in 16th position. How's life down at the back of the grid?"

"You know, you never interviewed me when I was up around tenth or eleventh, it's only now that I'm at the back of the grid that you've finally noticed I'm driving. All those good drives and my first interview with you is in 16th. I'll have you know that I've been kicking-"

"Alright, so here's your chance to shine." Diethard interrupted, fearing Tamaki might say something irrecoverable, and slapped him on the back before asking "So do you think today is going to be one of those good drives? Do you think points are on the cards if you play 'em right?"

"Oh, for sure!" Shinichiro nodded, his demeanour suddenly shifting with the ease of a schizophrenic. "I'm feeling some major progress in this race, no doubt about it!"

Buoyed by both the ludicrous nature of the promise, and the confident air of the man who delivered it, Diethard could only chuckle and reply "Well, we'll be certain to give you plenty of air time if that proves to be the case. Give 'em hell!"

Tamaki nodded, providing the camera with a toothy grin before returning to admonish the engineer who had been enjoying his brief respite. Diethard hid an instinctive shaking of his head, burying his disdain for the sort of uncivilised behaviour that would never have stood in his day.

Diethard was a driver of Tohdoh's generation, if a few seasons older. He had become a commentator the year after retiring with only two wins to his name, and honestly found his new position much more enjoyable. That said, his disposition was a whole further generation removed from even Tohdoh's, or even Cornelia's, cold professionalism, and more towards the long standing view of racing as a gentlemanly sport that demanded strong accents and ridiculous moustaches.

That generation had long since departed, and Tohdoh's generation was well into the cushy numbers, with attendants beginning to stack up the empty chairs at the back of the concert hall and some of the lights now beginning to turn back on, the string nearly played out. While drivers like Kururugi gave him faith in the future, the antics of Tamaki and Lamperouge only degraded the sport, at least in Diethard's opinion.

Moving along, Diethard darted back and forth before catch a glimpse of someone else who gave an interesting interview, of for very different reasons. It was surprising he'd missed him for so long, given the man's gigantic size, tremendous beard and foreboding demeanour that trailed him like the cape of an Emperor, but it was only in that moment that the man revealed himself. The head of the FIA, Charles Zi Britannia, who was another generation removed from even Diethard, had graced the grid with his not insignificant presence, commanding vast attention.

The story of how this British royal became the sports COO required one to go back to the early 1970's, a simpler time, when the motorsports community was in a societal stupor in the wake of the wildly successful misadventures of Charles Zi Britannia's beard. Within this beard, and the British royal it possessed the body of to manifest its various evils with, lay many great technical innovations, which were uncovered after he ended up not quite making the royal line of succession and deciding to vent his lineage-based frustrations by buying a Grand Prix racing team.

He founded what was now Camelot-Yggdrasil, then Akasha Racing, and won the championship twice. However, what many missed while searching for a priest to free Charles from his governing facial hair was his increasing accumulation of power. Even more so than making cars go very quickly, he was immensely skilled at negotiating backroom deals and accruing influence. For conceding the legally contested 1980 World Championship prior to the Stewards ruling on a crash between the two title contenders, he received the votes necessary to become the head of FOCA and the Teams Committee.

This was before all the attention left him to a collection of young engineers in various states of inebriation who burst onto the scene in a wild display of drunken mania in early 1990, who, having decided that ruining a young managers search for a third world championship was not good enough for them, went on to revolutionise motor racing forever. This list included Reuben Ashford, in the twenty minutes where he had a good engine to strap to his increasingly zany concepts, and later Lloyd Ashford and Rakshata Chawla.

They won 23 World Championships between them after 1990, and Charles did not win a single one. By 2004, he gave up, and stepped down to become head of the sport and proceeded to busy himself with dragging the sport kicking and screaming into someplace that vaguely resembled the twenty first century, with rules requiring hybrids and electronics that, ironically, primarily hurt the teams that had forced him out of the sport who, for all their accolades, had been running their teams on two pence and a shoestring.

Eager to steal a question from the magnate, Diethard boldly approached the imposing man, like Ahab might have approached his charge, and swept in at a moment of opportunity, breaking the ice with the man with "Lovely afternoon for a race, isn't it?"

Charles pivoted his head towards Diethard, standing at least four inches above the reporter, before responding "Diethard, that is not a question worth my time. Ask more interesting questions with the one chance I am giving you."

Undeterred by the man's typical brusqueness, Diethard persevered, moving on to his more serious question, beginning with "The figures for last years British Grand Prix are just coming out, and the venue is continuing to lose money for the sport. The license to race there for the sport is to be renewed in a few months. There's still a lot of love for the track among the fanbase, but is that enough? Are we heading towards our last British Grand Prix?"

Charles' view softened, his demeanour became somewhat more palatable, as he leaned in towards the camera and chuckled "Don't be naughty, asking silly questions like that. It'll all be sorted out in due time."

"And Monte Carlo? It has the opposite problem, with plenty of funds but little love beyond its history. Is there any there there, or?"

Charles only chuckled and said "You didn't have any trouble back in nineteen ninety one, back when you were driving my car to a win. Monte Carlo has had a place on the cake set since the fifties, and I don't see why we should change that."

Such was the paternalistic autocrat, and Charles, evidently satisfied with that answer, moved on, turning his significant mass away and leaving Diethard feeling very small, and very awkward. It took him a moment, as it did with most everyone, to shake off the sense of imminent danger that Charles carried around him, before going to find someone less intimidating to talk to.

This individual presented himself promptly in the form of an unmistakeable lavender haired Briton sprinting up the paddock in a sweater and a panic, clutching a metal apparatus as if his life depended on it. Amused, Diethard gave lighthearted chase as the social recluse handed the item over to a mechanic, who then buried it deep within the bowels of Odyessus's Rosenberg. After the incident cleared up, Diethard pulled Lloyd aside to have a chat, with the engineer not protesting beyond a surprised "Hullo!"

Eager to find an explanation to what had transpired "That was an interesting display, running about the place with such vigor, what was happening? Was there a problem with the car, or anything serious? I assume you fixed it..."

"Oh, just a bothersome spark plug." Lloyd shrugged, as if his display was anything other than the spitting image of a headless chicken let loose on the most expensive car park on Earth. "Sorted it out in a jiffy, and we're all back on track. Happens from time to time when people get clumsy."

Diethard nodded, before asking "Why is your car so fast Lloyd?"

Before Lloyd could answer however, he was interrupted by the car starting up behind them both, initially screeching as the cylinders tried to find some momentum within their atomically tight casings, before the high pitched noise gave way to one much deeper, a low growl that was still loud enough to prevent Lloyd from replying. By the time the engine returned to idle, Diethard could only ask "Why is it so noisy actually? Sounds like something the Victorians would build trying to get to the bloody moon!"

Lloyd laughed, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly before replying gingerly "Well that's an engine for you, pretty loud, but I'll have to keep our pace a trade secret if it's all the same to you."

"Heh, very good, very good." Diethard chuckled , before asking "And how're your drivers? Are they feeling confident?"

"I would certainly hope so." Lloyd joked, before replying "I've certainly given them the tools, and they're paid handsomely enough, so we'll see. We've put a lot of work into the car, and so we'll be expecting some results with our best qualifying performance."

"I suppose we'll have to ask them." Diethard replied, before continuing "Back to you, do you think that you can hold the position, or perhaps even challenge Tohdoh from the position you're in, or is that a bridge too far?"

Lloyd looked as if he was about to respond, before a brown blur popped up from behind his shoulder and gripped on, shocking him. It took a moment for the figure to come into focus, with Diethards vision eventually forming the slender figure of Rakshata Chawla, pipe in mouth and grin on face. After settling on a disturbed Lloyd Asplund's shoulder, she laughed and answered Diethards question.

"No chance this pathetic reprobate can challenge in the race!"

The Chief Engineer of the Rebellion-Sakura team laughed maniacally as Lloyd shook her off her shoulder, before she continued, in between fits of chuckles at Lloyd swiping himself as if trying to remove some manner of stain from his overalls, with "His lucky driver might be on a winning streak, but if you want to win, you gotta build a car that can finish. You looked pretty panicked there over that spark plug!"

"Error on the part of the mechanics, nothing more!" Lloyd humphed indignantly, clearly upset, before continuing "At least my car is winning races, yours are so uncontrollable both of your drivers crashed in Japan!"

Diethard was enjoying himself thoroughly, watching the pair bicker continuously, however he felt obliged to intervene before the Monte Carlo police had a murder on their hands and so spoke up, saying "Please! Have your drivers settle your differences on track! The race hasn't started yet!"

Both engineers stopped, before settling to simply glare at one another like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. After solving Anglo-Indian relations, Diethard, ever ambitious, moved on to ask "Well, clearly you can't agree on one another, but can you at least agree on the competition out there today? The Camelots and so on, how do you reckon they will fare?", hoping to find some bipartisanship between the longtime rivals when it came to their competitors.

Lloyd shrugged, before commenting "They picked a hell of a track to be down the order in. It's not like before, when you could perhaps try an overtake into the Loews Hairpin or the Swimming Pool Chicane."

"It'll have to be in the pit stop phases." Rakshata agreed. "Pitting off of strong in laps are pretty much the only way to overtake without risking damaging car. Of course, a safety car could change up the whole race."

"Not much of a risk, hardly as if crashing that heap of rubbish would be a loss to the world." Lloyd teased, causing Diethard to preemptively intervene and say "Alright, alright, very good.", before they sparked a second Anglo-Satsuma War. The pair calmed with significant grievance, again reminding him of spoiled children.

The point about a safety car, though lost to history due to Lloyds snark, was not invalid. Monaco had seen a safety car in every single race run for over two decades, and these moments of reduced pace could save one time in the pits relative to the rest of the field, as the pit lane speed was the same as during green flag racing. Instead of losing twenty seconds, one only lost around twelve if they pit at the right moment. That could make or break a race.

He was now however stuck for some manner of distraction for the two, before a very loud one saved him; the national anthem, inordinately prideful for such a small nation however nonetheless welcome, as it required all the drivers to congregate and acknowledge it near the start line. With such a loud reminder that the race was but moments away, the pair both jumped on the spot and fled to fettle their precious creations.

Diethard, amused, simply shook his head as if noting a pair of toddlers behaving childishly, before turning back to the camera and saying "Well, that was a thing. Anyway, that's your word on the grid; intense competition from the top two, not much room to improve from the Camelots, an angry Charles, and an ambitious Tamaki. I for one am looking forward to what is to follow, but for now, I'm returning to the commentary box to join the Great Gottwald, and get ready for the green light across the way."

Utterly disgusted with himself for that pun, Diethard signalled to the camera to cut the feed, before running up to his station above turn one.

Framing device? What name so? In any case, I was hoping to expand on the world a bit in light of an apparent lack of direction, though, as ever, if there's someone you'd like to see more of, be sure to ask, and review in general! Keeps the show on the road as it were. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week!

~Eth0