OK13 - Unlucky For Some

"Woah… hold on now, problem, there's a problem. Ohh oh, oh no, smoke, smoke, a lot of smoke coming out of the rear end. I'm losing power, engine problem."

"Understood, bring it back to the pits, we'll have a look-"

"Oh, oh no. It's getting worse, there's a loud banging, and it's getting worse. Pulling over at Jungçao, I've lost drive. Smoke is pouring out everywhere."

"Okay, stop the car, stop the car and get out, get out of the car. Bring it to a regular stop at the exit of the corner, we need to save the engine."

"Ach… bugger… for pity's sake, now of all times…"

Kallen Kōzuki shook her head in frustration as she flipped the car into neutral, allowing it to roll under its remaining momentum to a stop as the cylinders breathed what could very well be their last. She couldn't believe this. At the last gasp, two corners from the end, her engine gave out, and her weekend could very well be over before it had begun.

Up until that point, she had enjoyed a successful Friday and good Saturday, feeling at one with the setup of the car and having been able to set blistering lap times through Qualifying sessions One and Two. Now it was Qualifying 3, and the last chance to to gain an edge over Tohdoh going into the race on Sunday. The lap, coming at the death of Qualifying to maximise track grip, had being going so well up to that point, having been two tenths of a second up going into the second sector and having held a fantastic line through Pinheirinho, before the engine sent a sudden chill through her spine as she placed her foot on the throttle, and only heard an irregular knocking. Her heart fell deep into her bowels as the car continued to clank and jar, the engine not turning over and beginning to cook itself in its casings as her hopes at having a paid drive next season joined the engine in the department of "Things That Are Significantly Damaged."

Stepping out on the car and hopping onto the grass, she shook her head as the car belched out an inconsistent lick of flames, slowly killing itself as Kallen looked on, standing alone in the grassy plain like a lone ranger. She couldn't bring herself to walk back to the pits for some time, instead watching as the other cars finished their laps, each putting themselves above her on the starting grid for tomorrow's race.

Assuming she made the race.

The car was eventually attended to, with the Brazilian marshalls towing the seven hundred kilograms of carbon and despair up the final stretch of Subida dos Boxes and into the pits. She was not given a similar ride, and had to walk up the steep hill up the long, high speed corner herself, hoping, as she reached the pit lane nestled into the contour of Sao Paulo's rolling hills to see what the damage was, and whether she had a hope of getting out the next day.

The news was grim. A bearing holding the second piston to the crankshaft had failed, allowing the spark plugs to ignite reserves of oil, as well as sending chunks of metal flinging through the sump, doing untold amounts of damage to the bottom end of the engine. As a result, the piston itself had fallen out, the crankcase had cracked under the pressure, and some flaw in the crankcase prevented the engine from turning over.

Rakshata Chawla concluded her post mortem with a healthy draw of her pipe, sucking in all the gases she could before explaining "We have enough spare pistons to shake a stick at, and two sets of crankshafts and bolts for each car. We can get it up on the bench, get the engine out, and replace all the rotating elements by sunrise tomorrow."

"Right." Kallen nodded, standing up a little straighter. There was now a goal to work towards, and a way to achieve it; if they all pitched in, the engine could be ready for the race at four pm tomorrow with hours to spare. Enthusiastic, she asked "So what can I do to help?"

"Get a good night's sleep."

Kallen blinked at this advice, wondering what on Earth the Indian engineer could have meant by this, before, apparently having observed Kallens confused state, explaining "There's not a great deal you can do. This is quite technical stuff. The most productive thing you can really do is relax and turn in early. We might want to do a shakedown, and besides, having you up all night fussing will have you in a right state tomorrow afternoon."

"But surely I can… I mean you're hardly going to do it on your own!"

"You can bet your ass she's not!"

Kallen turned around, seeing at least ten young engineers braced with steely determination and a wealth of caffeine, grinning eagerly at the task at hand. Each and every one seemed ready to tackle the challenge, as Rakshata smirked smugly.

"Lads…" Kallen smiled in awe, suddenly moved by their dedication. "You'll be doing an all-nighter, and you're not even inviting me? What did I do for you?"

Chuckling, Ohgi, who was standing with a torque wrench near the front, chuckled, stepping forwards confidently.

"What've you done? Have you seen this team? Naoto gave it a shot of adrenaline, but you've given it several injections of speed and coke! Suddenly, there's an opportunity for us to toss out the bean counters, and you've been able to inspire all of us to give a run at being a sports team, and not a company! There's only one race left for us to win it, so if we need to pull an all nighter, then you better be damn sure we'll do it!"

Wonderstruck by their determination and trust in her, Kallen almost welled up, and replied "Fine, I'll rest up, but you better deliver one hell of a car tomorrow."

"Wouldn't dream of doing anything else." Rakshata laughed, as the engineers set about removing the engine from the car and Kallen returned to her trailer.

Her sleep was long in coming even after some time watching a film with Naoto, as she continuously felt anxious as to the state of the car. Resisting the urge to rush to the garage in nighties to investigate how things were going, she instead lay in a cold sweat for much of the evening, before finally dozing off some ways past midnight.

She woke up at six in the morning, the sun just peeking over the grandstand on the other end of the park. Shaking Naoto, who had fallen asleep on the couch opposite, to rouse him, she stood to quickly dress herself in the fireproof undergarments that the FIA required, ready to get up and going to give the car a morning test. Naoto, not a morning person, was hardly off the sofa as she leapt out the door and rushed up the hill towards the paddock, mounting the scarps like steps on a staircase, eager to see her Christmas morning present.

However, as she moved towards the back of the pit building, she saw Ohgi standing by the door leading into the back door with a cigarette half burnt away. Hopeful for news, she moved towards the exhausted mechanic, and asked what was going on.

The Japanese man paused, before finishing the last of his light and tucking the remaining white end away and sighing.

"Don't look at the car." he warned, confusing Kallen. He shook his head, before explaining "It's in bits all over the floor, the engine is still out of the car, and it's not looking like its going in any time soon."

Kallen paused, completely baffled, however after a moments staring at the exhausted man she chose to ignore his advice and enter the garage through the back. Ohgi was almost certainly exaggerating.

However, a quick walk through to the front showed that he was not. The rear of the car past the overhead air end intake didn't exist, only consisting of a few chassis hardpoints and mountings. The engine was in four large parts and a million smaller ones spread across the floor, in a suspiciously fitting metaphor for her hopes of taking third in the championship from Tohdoh.

As she stared at the subassemblies scattered across the concrete, Rakshata, who had been hunched over a laptop, noticed her, and sighed.

"We put the pistons in the engine and fired it up about four hours ago. There was a leak, which was eventually traced to a breach in the cylinder wall, which will need to be filled in, as we can't bring in another engine with the regulations." she explained. "The people Sakura only built enough for the year plus one, and they're fully committed to building engines for next year when the rules change to allow bigger motors. We have to fix the problem ourselves."

Kallen nodded. The upcoming rule change expanding the legal size of engine was extensively hyped, however the people supplying the engines were now fully invested in producing those future engines, and the assemblies for the old ones no longer existed. Hoping to learn when the engine would be ready, she anxiously asked "How long does it take to fix the piston walls? Presumably it's not a ten minute job."

Rakshata shifted awkwardly, and answered "With the tools we have here, it's a twelve hour job to do the material injection."

"Twelve ho… twelve hours takes us to two… that means…" Kallen paused, suddenly horrified as she did the maths in her head, her face falling in shock. "It's half eight now, that means… we miss the sta- we miss the race!"

"Aye, but we've put some heads together. We've got some guys coming from the factory with special liner to squeeze in between the cylinder wall and the piston."

Kallen blinked, catching on to what was being implied, before asking "Where are they?"

"Kyoto, the heavy duty stuff is all at the plant in Kyoto." Rakshata explained, trying to break the news gently.

"We… we need to get them from Japan? To Brazil?" Kallen replied, aghast.

"There's a man on flying in with them as we speak, he touches down in Sao Paulo four hours, then it's a three hour fix minimum."

"So you're saying it's impossible to have the car running until three thirty, and we need to be on the grid by four at the latest." Kallen clarified, suddenly realizing how close this was going to be.

"That's about it, yeah." Rakshata shrugged. "But we won't give in. I'd never live it down. We'll get you on the grid come hell or high water."

"Bloody hell… I don't bloody care about return discounts, just let me off this damn plane! I need to get to Interlagos within twenty minutes, or I'm a dead man!"

Almost barging past the innocent flight attendant, engine specialist and man with altogether too little sleep Saburo Okawachi leapt off the passenger liner with all the grace he could manage, clutching his cargo between two palms with the intensity that Sméagol guarded the One Ring.

The object was a cylinder about ten centimeters in diameter, extending up with a knob at the top and two gauges to measure surface pressure and liquid content, and had been thrust into his hands six hours earlier, with great panic and a scribbled memo instructing him to guard the part halfway across the world on pain of death. Perhaps the death part was overstated, but certainly he had no intention of being the one who resigned the team to another year of sacrificing all at the altar of Tohdoh, and so he sprinted through Departures at full tilt, only stopping to breathlessly purchase a rucksack to allow him to run without being at constant risk of dropping the device, which was worth more than his yearly wage.

As he rushed out of the airport, he leapt at the first taxi he saw, barging past a young couple who had chosen the wrong day to honeymoon and hopping into the back seat as he blurted out a completely logical and understandable explanation to the bemused driver.

"INEEDTOGETTOINTERLAGOSINFIFTEENMINUTESFORTHEGRANDPRIXHURRYHURRY!"

After calmly explaining the situation, the driver nodded and accelerated out of the parking lot, rapidly skating through the Brazilian suburbs as Saburo frantically checked his phones map application to see how long the route would take them, with little else to occupy his nervous mind.

He had been the man in charge of running the fuel and engine loads during Monaco, where he had seen lightning strike the team for the first time, as well as China and Singapore. He had a personal stake in seeing this attempt to unseat the established order of the team go down, as he had himself been relegated to the engine department of the factory in Japan from his position on pitwall for annoying the seniority. Like Kallen, he wanted to throw a brick through their window, and this was his best shot.

They had been making excellent time too, before the predictable Brazilian traffic made its cameo into Saburo's nightmare at the Ponte Jurubatuba, as the road seemed to just stop, three kilometers from the stadium. As the seconds without movement passed by, Saburo realised the mirroring of his situation with Kallens during a race; he had to either commit to the car, or ditch it and run. Either way, he had to choose soon.

After a moment's hesitation, he swore filthily, hurled anonymous Brazilian currency at the driver before leaping out with his backpack and legging it down the bridge as fast as his legs could carry him.

Saburo was young, having joined the team fresh off his mechanical engineering degree, but the three kilometers of all out sprinting in the hottest weather the Brazilian summer could offer zapped at his energy as the tool jumped about, weighing down his backpack. He made it to the front gates at twelve thirty sharp, which was when he was expected, however there was a significant issue; he wasn't allowed in. Without a team neck pass, the organisers stopped him and all his bluster at the gate, where he stayed for ten agonising minutes before he was finally allowed to unless his anxious, panicked energy onto the unexpecting grid.

As he burst into the garage ten minutes late and having destroyed his vocal chords, he hurled the part at Rakshata, and took account of the situation. There was three hours and ten minutes to go before the off, and every other team looked to be pretty much ready to go. Understanding the need for urgency, he moved towards the troublesome cylinder and inserted the device down into its depths, allowing it to press against the metal walls before it began to grind at it, essentially sanding away at the edges.

They couldn't actually fill in the gap; any solvent would melt under the heat of combustion. However, if they increased the width of the cylinder by a few millimeters, they could insert a metal ring in the gap to separate the broken cylinder wall from the piston and seal up the combustion chamber. The concept was simple, but operating the round grinder was a pain, as precision was key; they had to be accurate to within nanometers, or the engine would simply explode again.

With an hour and a half to go, the cylinder wall was finally widened, and the seal was applied into this newly created gap in the ultimate expression of a MacGyver patch job, with consistent pressure all around the circumference, but now the engine had to be assembled and put into the car like the world's most tragic Lego set.

Everyone knew how the parts came together, however this didn't prevent the crew, who had now been awake for over twenty four hours, and the assembly went with moderate issues, such as confusion and a lost spark plug which sent the whole garage into Defcon One

However, as Saburo wrestled the gearboxes rear end into position to allow it to be bolted in, he heard the noise of engines firing up in the next garage along, before it was joined by several others, who within moments were driving out of pit lane and onto the grid. The young engineers at Rebellion had done the fastest build of an engine in racing history, but they had nonetheless missed their time to go. They had missed the call to head onto the tarmac start line, and would have to start from the pits when the race began in fifteen minutes, assuming they were able to start at all.

Not wanting to even contemplate that possibility, Saburo gave the gearbox an almighty shove, finally aligning it before bolting it into place, throwing both caution and washers to the wind in an attempt to at least make the start.

With the drivetrain in place, pieces flew onto the fiendishly complex car, with subassemblies being hurled onto the pivots and mountings with reckless abandon. Meanwhile, Kallen, who had been incredibly anxious, was now rushing on her overalls and HANS as the team lifted the engine cover onto the car, laying the carbon dress on top of the delicate machinery to shield it. The race was on to fuel the car and mount the tyres, before they could finally rotate the cylinders. There was no second chances; if there was one problem, they couldn't fix it. If it didn't start, if Saburo had messed up, if it choked, then there was no redo- if there was even a hesitation, it was all over.

"Please just let this wooooork!" Saburo cried, as he pulled at the cog of the mechanical starter motor, physically heaving the crankshaft into life. There was a pause, a resistance, before the spark finally caught, and the wheel pulled away from him and the engine roared victoriously into life in all its glory, triumphantly singing a baritone note as if to declare its return to all who would question its supremacy, and sending the whole pit crew cheering in celebration as like a phoenix, it returned in their hour of need. It was a glorious anthem that would sing them home to the finish, a marching song that hummed of victory, champagne, and hope.

Hope, now restored.

As the engine settled, having released its temperamental roar to spur on the mechanics fettling it, they set to work making the final adjustments, when they were reminded of their time constraints; the parade lap began on the track.

When they finished their sighting lap around the circuit to troubleshoot the start procedures, they would stop in their grid positions, and the five red lights would begin the race. At the reduced pace of this parade lap, they had a little over a minute and a half before their championship was over.

They removed the straps and leads, umbilical cords for the newborn racer, from the rear of the car as Kallen literally jumped into the seat, with the head surround falling into place moments later. As Ohgi moved to strap Kallen in, Saburo ran across to the pit wall and breathlessly called across to the race marshall "How long?"

"Thirty seconds." she replied, briefly peeking at her watch. Saburo, heart sinking, saw the first cars beginning to crest over the Casio Triangle, and turned back to roar "WE NEED TO GO, NOW!"

As if on cue, the car was dropped off the jacks, and Kallen floored the throttle, pulling a full on drift out of the garage with how much she lit the cold tyres up with her acceleration out into pit lane. She rocketed towards the white line as Saburo watched the red lights blaze on, with one on, two on, three-

"She's made it! She's past the line!"

As the red lights were mercifully still lit, they were through.

Saburo pumped his fist, roaring triumphantly as the lights blinked away, beginning the race. They had made it by three seconds. The margin was as narrow as could be, and they'd just about made it. This was a true triumph, but the battle lay ahead. Even so, it filled them with the confidence needed to topple giants.

A little cameo from my other fic did give me cause to chuckle as I wrote what was a very charged chapter emotionally. That engine is a character unto itself, and we haven't seen the last of it, as next week is the Brazilian Grand Prix itself! Stick around for that, and please rate and review in the meantime, as that really keeps me going, especially as I try to bulk up on future chapters ahead of my exams so that ye won't have a tangible drop in uploads. Thank you, and stay safe.

~Eth0