OK12 - The Politics Of Speed
Britain was the turning point in the 2017 season, as Kyoshiro Tohdoh seemed to realize that there was a very real possibility that he could lose to his rookie teammate after she closed the gap between them to three points, something he could not countenance. He went on a run of mesmerizing drives that, though not enough to catch the Camelots who were increasingly beginning to run away with the championship, could certainly be counted among the strongest of his career.
In Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium, Gino Weinberg finally managed to outqualify his teammate, who started fourth, sandwiching the Rebellion drivers drivers between them, Tohdoh ahead of Kōzuki. Weinberg and Kyoshiro traded the lead between them across several pitstops, until late in the race, where a long-running Lelouch Lamperouge managed to briefly seize the lead. Attempts to replicate his result from Monaco, however, were to prove unsuccessful. Tohdoh, who had jumped past Weinberg shortly beforehand, easily passed the fading Franc, with Gino following through close behind.
Cornelia, the fastest of them all on fresh tires, was hungry for a podium. However, impatience got the better of her. McGlynn and Lamperouge came together heavily under braking into the first corner of the final lap, ending both of their bids for a podium finish and bringing out a safety car. Tohdoh secured his first win of the season behind Marianne Zi Britannia, and Gino reclaimed some of the points lost to Cornelia after his two retirements in a row. Kōzuki completed the podium, though with little joy. All were much relieved to learn that both Lamperouge and McGlynn were unharmed from their accident.
Two weeks later, the two Camelots locked out the front row at Canada, with Cornelia ahead by half of a tenth of a second. Tohdoh, Kururugi, Kōzuki and Odysseus lined up behind them. Gino was quick to take the lead from his teammate, which he would hold until lap 22, when Tohdoh managed to undercut them both during the first round of pit stops. A mid-race virtual safety car handed the lead back to McGlynn, as Tohdoh pitted while the Camelots opted to drive on. Cornelia displayed all of the talent that had secured her so many championships in these races, managing to nurse a set of Prime tyres through a mammoth 34 lap stint to the finish line.
She took victory, with Weinberg and Kyoshiro Tohdoh sequentially one second behind. Kururugi, in the first Rosenberg, was half a minute behind, tailed by Rivalz Cardemonde, who had run a fantastic race to capture a career-best 5th place for Ashford. It was a strong result for Camelot, who was expected to be dominant on the engine dependant Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve. The race, however, was disastrous for Kallen. Gambling for a higher finish, she too had stayed out for an extremely long stint, but her tyres went off the cliff in the final handful of laps, throwing her all the way down to tenth place, where she captured a single, lonely point, barely fending off a charging Lelouch Lamperouge. It displayed that in spite of her pace, she had much to learn in Formula One.
By this point, Kallen was behind by twenty seven points, however the championship was not over yet. With four races left to go, Kallen was reportedly determined to defeat her teammate, spending every waking hour working on her pace to bounce back from her dismal mid season.
China was another course with long straights and few high speed turns, lending itself more to the slippery Camelots. All eyes were on Cornelia McGlynn, who calmly secured pole position ahead of Gino. Suzaku Kururugi qualified in third, beside Kyoshiro Tohdoh, with Kallen Kōzuki lined up in the third row behind them. Gino started strongly, pulled up parallel to his teammate, but then fell back, abandoning the attempt to pass her around the outside of the snail complex. This maneuver brought him across the front of a surging Suzaku Kururugi, who had nowhere to go, and they collided, with Gino being t-boned by the Rosenberg driver and spinning down towards the inside. This collision, for which Gino was later fined, immediately brought out a safety car, and slightly later brought out a large amount of heated internet discussion about his competence as a driver. Kururugi, largely an innocent bystander, was able to limp back to the pits, although this put him to the back of the grid, while Tohdoh lost ten positions by running wide to avoid the spinning Camelot.
Cornelia, freed from her nearest competitors, flew off into the distance, while Tohdoh struggled his way back up through the field. In the end, McGlynn would come home to win the race, leading Kallen Kōzuki home by thirty seconds. Luciano Bradley completed the podium, by barely managing to fend off Tohdoh, who had completed an impressive recovery drive to fourth.
Going into the Singapore Grand Prix in the heart of Southeast Asia, Cornelia led the championship with one hundred and sixty six points, followed by Tohdoh with one hundred and forty points. Kallen was a further twenty one points behind her teammate, but was ahead of Suzaku by eleven points. Gino's DNF's had had a massive toll on his championship hopes, as he languished in fifth with ninety nine points.
However, the tight, twisty circuit at Marina Bay was one of the two street circuits that played into the hands of the smaller, nimbler cars. Kallen turned in a superhuman qualifying lap, making up for a three tenths deficit in the first two sectors with a do-or-die final sector where she nearly sent the car into flight hopping off the exit kerb in a banzai move at the final turn allowed her to sneak past Tohdoh's time and steal Pole Position from her senior, the first of her career.
With Suzaku and Odysseus in third and fourth ahead of the two Camelots, the race got started under heavy rain, which compounded the challenges faced by Gino and Cornelia, however it was Odysseus who choked, getting an abysmal start off the line before tagging his front right tyre off the left rear of Tohdoh, who was cutting across him, and sending the British Rosenberg driver into a half spin at the apex of turn one, blocking the path of his sister Cornelia, who had held the inside line to hold off Gino but was ultimately slowed herself by her brothers mistake, allowing Weinberg to take the outside line and overtake them both. Cornelia eventually rejoined in tenth, however Odysseus's race was over.
The big benefactor was Kallen, who managed to escape from Tohdoh's clutches until the rain dissipated a third of the way through the race and the drivers switched to dry tyres, with Kallen opting to use two sets of Options and Tohdoh hoping to save time in the pits by using one set of slower Primes. While the softer, grippier compound gave Kallen a lot of pace, she did not quite make up the twenty seconds a second pit stop would cost in the second stint, which meant she rejoined in second on lap forty of sixty one, needing to pursue and overtake Tohdoh on track from six seconds behind. While the latter was a simple task, overtaking on the narrow track was not a feat to be overlooked, particularly against a World Champion. Tohdoh defended valiantly on his failing tyres as he tried to run out the laps and avoid making a mistake in what was one of the most tense finishes of the season, Kallen just able to sneak past at turn fourteen on the final lap to take the second win of her career.
Critically, it was an on track overtake in dry conditions, where Kallen had gone toe to toe with her teammate and come out victorious, which did wonders for the morale on her side of the garage as the circus moved to Texas, at the Circuit of the Americas, where the status quo was restored, with Gino and Cornelia qualifying first and second. Kallen put in another great lap of the death of Q3 to jump from fifth to third, ahead of Kururugi and Tohdoh respectively. In the race, Gino was able to hold off a surging Kallen, who had had an inhuman getaway, into the first corner, before she eventually fell back behind Cornelia on the braking zone into Turn Eleven, and secured it was better acceleration onto the back straight. However, Kallen was able to build a gap to Tohdoh during the first stint, after the latter had overtaken Kururugi in a blistering show of pace through the Esses of turns three and four. The order remained like this for some time, however as the pit stop bonanza began around lap twelve, Tohdoh put on Prime tyres to run to the end of the race, a strategy which proved too slow to work around COTA, with both he and Lelouch Lamperouge losing out, and the Japanese Champion would ultimately finish in sixth.
With this result, Suzaku Kururugi, the fourth placed finisher, was now mathematically eliminated from championship contention with two races to go, and only fifty points available at maximum. Going to Abu Dhabi, the lead was Cornelia's to lose, with a dominant thirty point gap to Tohdoh, himself only seven points ahead of his team mate Kallen, whose pace had seriously cranked up the pressure on him going into the night time event. However he struggled past this, and put the car on Pole Position, three positions ahead of Kallen as the Camelots, with Cornelia ahead of Gino, split the Rebellion cars. As the sun went down, the five red lights went dark, and the pack was away. A good start from Tohdoh allowed him to retain his lead through the first sector, however the long straight forced him to drive defensively, forming a train behind him as he aggressively weaved to avoid being overtaken, slowing himself and those behind him down.
After three laps, DRS ended this stalemate, with Cornelia pulling past the beleaguered Tohdoh under braking into the chicane, as his tyres began to overheat. He went to pit to switch to a two stop strategy, before disaster struck; his right rear tyre failed at lock, forcing him to wait thirty seconds for the mechanics to safely secure the wheel to the car before sending him on his way. Only a dramatic crash on the part of Shinichiro Tamaki which brought out a Safety Car could propel him back into the points, the race ending as a Camelot one-two, with Gino claiming his second win in a row after overtaking Cornelia towards the end of the race. It was not enough, however, from avoiding the mathematical crowning Cornelia McGlynn the 2017 World Drivers Champion, as it was now impossible to catch her on points in Brazil, her lead being over twenty five points. It was the third title of her career, and be all accounts widely celebrated.
However, going into Brazil, there was one competition whose fate was very much up in the air; the battle between Kallen and Tohdoh for supremacy at Rebellion-Sakura, and indeed for the soul and direction of the team. Kallen was seven points behind Tohdoh, and there were all manner of permutations that would swing their fight one way or another. Even if Tohdoh scored no points or didn't finish the race, sixth would be the minimum Kallen could afford. A fifth from Tohdoh would require a second from Kallen. If Kallen won the race, they would tie at the very least, and Kallen would be placed ahead for winning more races at three to one. No matter what happened, Kallen had to finish ahead of Tohdoh.
This was the tense atmosphere the team carried to Interlagos, in São Paulo Brazil, with a divide having formed even within the garage, with the younger mechanics who were only recently out of technology institutes rocking heavy tattoos and and a non nonsense attitude rallying behind Kallen and Naoto's quest to uproot the establishment and the old order, and while there were more young engineers than old, more of the design and strategy team were legacy holdovers from the teams glory days.
The divisions had been faint as the season kicked up, with pit crew only occasionally mentioning to Naoto that Kallen had received the freshly designed front wing due to the crew on the ground deciding to give her the newer part, which was in limited supply through the season. In return, the strategists would often send Kallen out on earlier Qualifying runs, allowing Tohdoh to run on marginally grippier track. Paranoia had begun to creep into the pit environment, as cliques began to divide the team. By China, it was decided that Kallen and Tohdoh would have pit crews that worked independently to prevent sabotage. Engineers stopped sharing data, forcing the Kōzuki faction to do its own analysis, however leaving Tohdoh with less access to raw data. The fate of the team, whether to pursue youth or seniority, would be decided within the next forty eight hours.
The one truly neutral party was Rakshata Chawla, whose only major interest was designing a fast car, and found the internal politics of her team to be a major source of irritation. What happened to her designs downstream was of no concern to her.
All this led into their arrival in Brazil, and the great hyping of this showdown in the media. While the extent of the division within the culture of the team was unknown, there was plenty of material out in the public record to detail the deterioration of their relationship, which was certainly a source of intrigue as the weekend rolled on.
"So what happens now, between you two?"
The question came from the back, from a Chinese Sports outlet, and forced Kallen to pause. It was Thursday afternoon, the day before first Practice, and the regular Press Conference was underway, with Tohdoh, Gino, and herself sitting in front of the media corps answering questions going into the weekend.
This particular question was nothing if not fiddly. Kallen and Tohdoh has had a frosty relationship almost since Japan, and whatever tension existed would surely be resolved on Sunday, whether healthily or otherwise.
"Eghhh…" Kallen sighed, fiddling with her microphone as she tried to think her way around the question. "I guess we'll have to see what happens. We obviously are competing for third in the championship, and that obviously leads to some tension in the garage.. but I think... we'll go out and enjoy ourselves, and see what happens afterwards. I think it'll be a fun weekend."
It was a nondescript answer that avoided the whole question, and therefore the correct answer. Furthermore, even in spite of their opposition to one another, Kallen didn't have strong emotions towards Tohdoh. Certainly, tempers flared, and they didn't speak, but Kallen's fight was with Taizo and his doctrine. Tohdoh was just another driver to beat, and she intended to keep it that way.
"So you're not thinking about the points?"
"Meh…" she shrugged, at least pleased to be getting a question she could answer more openly. "It probably distracts you more than anything. I drive as fast as possible, and results come out of that. What are you going to do, thinking about the championship? Slow down? You need to be going for as good a position as you can get, no matter what the championship throws at you."
It was simple, as far as she was concerned; no one ought to stop and be satisfied with less than they could get, simply because of a Championship. Finishing higher was always the goal, which upon reflection made the journalists question seem rather stupid.
Not seeming to notice, or care, the journalist turned to Tohdoh and asked "I see. What say you, Tohdoh? Fun weekend?"
Tohdoh, an introvert at heart, scratched at his cheek slightly before gently leaning into the question, a few mumbled words at a time. "I suppose so. The Drivers Championship is decided, and the Constructors Championship is almost certainly going to the Camelots, so I suppose there is less pressure, but you always have to perform, you can't ever let yourself get dull, or you'll be replaced. It's quite simple really."
Tohdoh was not a man of the media like Gino, who never seemed to go a moment without a massive grin on his face like a teenager, and far preferred a quiet night in the garage to this, and it showed in his answer, which was indecisive and noncommittal. Of course, Tohdoh, Kallen knew from both her own experiences and Naoto's, was fiercely single minded about things he cared about, however these were few and far between. Even when Taizo was ripping into Kallen, he had clearly found the whole situation awkward and not something he would have liked to involve himself in.
This silence didn't pardon him, but he wasn't ever the driving force behind the human element of the team. Whatever the case may be, the Chinese reporter seemed satisfied with the answers he received, and sat to allow another one, either German or Austrian by the accent, ask a question of Tohdoh.
"You've won two world championships, clearly you know a thing or two about rivalries going down to the wire, and what to make of them. Is this any different, because you're getting challenged by a teammate for the first time, or is this like any other head to head showdown you've experienced?"
Tohdoh shifted slightly, seeming uncomfortable in his chair, before piecing together a response with what appeared to be some difficulty.
"I er… I suppose. Certainly, comparisons are easier, but I don't really do much different. I've won from this circumstance before, so I just plan to learn from that and win out. I guess I've had to drive fast, but I've always had to."
"Is there any new aspects to this fight compared to your previous ones, because of that equal machinery? What have you learned over this year because of this new challenge?"
"Of course, our pace is more equalised, allowing for more direct comparison, but it's not erm… perfect. Kallen has bad luck at Canada, with the… strategy, I have bad luck with my wheelnuts in the last race, so… it always has an element of luck." he sighed, clearly trying to stretch out his answer without simply saying he didn't particularly care. "I hope we can have a fair fight but… I mean, I don't control that, so why waste time wondering? It's all abstract."
"Fair enough. Speaking of machinery, can you explain what happened in Abu Dhabi with your wheel jack?"
Getting clearly irritated by the questions, Tohdoh, with some hand waving, explained "An engineer pressed the wrong button and screwed my race. Such is life, and now we're here. I can only do as well as I can with the tools I'm given."
He shook his shoulders slightly, as a Briton asked Gino questions about Cornelia, who was rumoured to be retiring after Brazil, and where that left the team. A brick wall, would be Kallens guess; she had been a stellar driver for Camelot-Yggdrasil, and her loss would significantly hurt the British outfit.
After Gino replied, another British reporter returned to Tohdoh.
"How important would this be to you, to win against Kallen?"
"Obviously, it would be quite mm… interesting to be beaten by a rookie, and obviously it is important to beat your team mate, but there's little nobility or prestige to gain in beating someone in their first year, and a lot to lose if you don't."
"Understandable." the man replied, before continuing "And for you Kallen? Obviously you're being compared to your brother, who we're delighted to hear is recovering well, and matching up well. What has been the key to that pace this year, particularly given you only entered it a ways into the season?"
"I suppose being able to adapt to the car quickly, and dial into its characteristics has helped a lot." Kallen explained. "Being able to understand and push the car to its limits with all the mechanical feedback is very helpful. I don't know how much I can say about my brother. He was a fantastic, exciting driver, and I've no doubt there were other factors at play with his record."
Nodding, the man continued "There's bound a lot of eyes on you tomorrow. It's a classic underdog story. Does that add any pressure?"
"I try not to consider that." Kallen replied. "I'll go out and be as fast as I can be, and results will hopefully follow."
"Do you think you can succeed on Sunday?" he asked, to wrap up his period of questions.
She smirked, and replied "If I didn't, I'd be in a different line of work."
The man smiled, and nodded "Heh, very good, best of luck to the both of you. Have a good race."
I relate on a deep level to Tohdoh. Humans are just... urgh, do I have to deal with this? Anyway, please rate and review!
~Eth0