OK Number 19 - Under Pressure
The view out of the cockpit of a Formula One car, Kallen had long decided, was really a bit rubbish. Even as she sat at her grid slot in her second consecutive Pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix, she noted that she could only just about see the top edge of her tyres, and nothing at all of the nose of the car. This design was dictated by the need for aerodynamic efficiency, but it didn't do her spatial awareness much good. Of course, it wasn't as if she didn't have a sixth sense for placing the car in a tricky situation, but it was certainly disquieting.
However, in light of her Qualifying, placed at the front of the grid with Suzaku in second and Marrybel in third, she felt that that really wasn't the end of the world as she watched the set of lights above her tick up to four, to five red lights, which held in their illumination, until, after an age, they blinked, and Kallen dropped the clutch into oblivion and let the engine thrust her into another dimension. Punched in the gut by the force of acceleration, she let the engine pull like a train up into second, into third, and then up to the limiter. The torque the turbocharger delivered was physically devastating, driving her into her seat on the run down to the first corner. Even at the top end, the torque curve ran up into the horizon, the engine never running out of puff even as Kallen saw the first corner fly into view. Taking care to watch her mirrors for an ambitious challenge up the inside, she leaned into the front tyres, slowing the car smoothly while managing the shifting weight of the car into the first corner, the rear tyres gradually losing grip as weight came off them and Kallen turned in, leaving the car susceptible to spinning.
However, she kept the rear in line, holding position into the first corner, with Suzaku taking a conservative tack, happy to fall in line behind Kallen as the grid moved into the meat of the first sector, spearing into the inky blackness of the Sakhir night. Turn four was another harsh braking zone, with Kallen again loading the full weight of the car onto its tiptoes under braking, chucking the car towards the apex with as much speed as she could get away with, with the car slewing out towards the outside kerb before Kallen shot it into the horizon. Once again examining her mirrors, she watched Suzaku get out of the braking early, freewheeling the car on entry to the corner and saving his energy while keeping Kallen in touching distance.
Gritting her teeth as she stormed into the high downforce five-six-seven complex, she determined that she would build a gap to the threat behind her, and so chucked the car at the limits of the track with all the bravery she could muster. Apex, edge, apex, edge, just miss the apex, and then take care to not lock up into ten, hopping about the circuit to explore the texture of the tarmac and find that patch that her tyres could rebound off like a cruelly vicious kickstart.
Each corner involved great deals of energy conversion, rapidly transferring momentum into heat energy through the tyres and brakes, conducting all available power through her left foot to halt her runaway train so that she could only just about make the next corner, where the front tyres would haul the car towards a new bearing, holding the force of the cars movement in the depths of their rubber and leaning it into the bows and swoops of the Sakhir circuits third sector. The front end was grip loaded, the rear end was grip loaded, and Kallen had found another gear, pushing the car to the technical limits of what was possible to escape the clutches of Suzaku Kururugi.
Naturally, with this came rapid lap times, as she set the fastest lap of the race several times over the course of the first phase of the race. Kallen beamed with pride from behind her helmet as she looked at the blinking information displayed on her steering wheel indicating that by lap seven of this mentally demanding surge, requiring total focus, that she had built a three second gap to Suzaku, who had performed consistently slower, though was reportedly at far greater ease in his drive.
This was not of great surprise to Kallen, recalling Australia, but what did surprise her was a heavy lock up of her tyres under braking into the first corner. The wheel stuck, rotating less than the distance travelled and dragging against the tarmac. Kallen, sensing the underrotation, hurried with a feathering movement, feeling out the resolution with the tips of her toes, finally recovering the pull and making the corner with no room to spare.
However, Kallen's extremeties were now communicating several other issues, as Kallen accelerated out of the sharp bend and felt the tyres sudden reluctance to soak up the energy transmitted through the drivetrain and sink it into the grey road. As she explored the state of the first sector, scanning with the rubber, she consistently found degrading grip, no bite, and an increasingly large Rosenberg in her rear view. Frustrated, Kallen chucked the car into the hairpin before the back straight, only to be rewarded with a four wheel drift that pitched the cars suspension onto the two outside wheels, which offered no lateral resistance as the car slid out, almost completely skipping over the outside kerb. Now seriously worried, Kallen called out over the radio "What's going on? I've lost grip!"
Ohgi was not long in replying, exasperatedly "Tyre temperatures are through the roof, your tyres have overheated, thy can't take in any more energy. Take it way easier and let them cool."
This was awful news. Not only was she unable to keep pushing, not only did she have to wait for the tyres to cool, but they would also wear much faster while overheated, and Suzaku, who drove with the grace of a saint and the consistency of a production line, was now in a prime position to pounce. Kallen was vulnerable, which was not a position she was at all comfortable with. It was not a countenancable situation, and she would not remain in it if she had anything to say about it.
"I'm coming in, boxing for Hard tyres, be ready on this lap!"
Better to be off these tyres and able to push on new ones than limping about waiting for them to cool. She would lose time in the pits, but Bahrain was an easy one-stop, and so everyone else would also have to pit. They would be able to go longer and strap on Medium tyres to be faster towards the end, but that was unavoidable at this point. Kallen had to act now and with decisiveness, and, taking the initiative, got off these boiling tyres within the lap, with the crew surgically replacing them like a well oiled machine even in spite of the short notice, but she imagined they were used to her spontaneous way of doing things. No point fretting; Kallen was a woman of action, and couldn't waste time on such matters. There was a value in swift decision making.
The one upside was that harder tyres conducted less heat and were less unstable in its heat characteristics, which meant that while they took a while to get up to a working temperature, they would take far longer to go above and beyond that. As she finally left the pit after an agonising wait at the pit lane speed limit, she flicked off the switch, and rejoined the race in fourteenth, being the first to pit and so out of place on track. Once all the drivers took a pit stop, she would be leapfrogged back up to Suzaku. However, there was a problem that was not immediately obvious until she caught up to the back of Claudio Darlton, driving the family owned B.A.R, and came up to overtake the slower car. She came within reach of the Sheffield native into the high speed five-six-seven series of corners, where the cars aerodynamics were required to press the car into the road and allow them to sling through at speeds exceeding a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Such was the grip and downforce required to navigate this section at speed that there was only one line through this section, otherwise one would spear off the track and into a barrier.
However, what this meant for Kallen was that as she followed Claudio, whose car lacked the aerodynamic efficiency of the Rebellion, she was forced to sit behind him at a significantly slowed pace, with an overtake being a physical impossibility, until they moved past the section and entered a region of straight track and slower corners, where Kallen's fresh tyres and stiff chassis allowed her to stick her nose up the inside and take the position. She had lost almost two seconds stuck behind Claudio, time that Suzaku, without traffic ahead for being in the lead of the race, was emphatically not losing relative to her.
And Kallen was not the least bit pleased about this fact.
Determined to make up for this lost time and give her a shot of keeping Suzaku in her sights once he pitted later in the race, she put the hammer down, amping up the fuel flow and mixture to burn as much as possible in pursuit of this goal. Taking a satisfying blitz through the apexes that flew by over the next few laps, she cut her teeth on the apexes and began to catch up to a pair of cars, the other BAR driven by Claudio's brother Alfred Darlton, and the Ashford of Rivalz Cardemonde, in the heat of battle as Kallen came up behind them like a rising storm. As she came up towards their diffusers, she watched Rivalz, likely buoyed from his personal renaissance since Daytona, take to the outside of Alfred into turn nine, and cutting in on the braking zone in turn ten, sweeping around him and pulling level on the exit, allowing him to try and out-drag Alfred on the back straight.
And while the battle was great to watch unfold, battling and compromising your lines to overtake slow you dramatically, as Kallen knew from being caught by Lelouch in Monaco while fighting Tohdoh. If Kallen didn't get past soon, this roadblock would slow her pace to theirs, which was some ways behind Suzaku's.
As Alfred and Rivalz scuttled down the straight, Kallen sat in their slipstream and attempted to move to the inside with the slingshot of momentum, however Alfred, who was on the inside of Rivalz, cut across her nose and seized the apex, forcing Kallen to brake to avoid running into his side, locking up and only just missing him. Pulling around, she could only grimace as the two drivers pulled away with much better exit drive due to her own compromised entry. There was another second and a half lost for nothing, and as she caught up in the second phase of the exit into twelve and thirteen, with their new, powerful engine Yggdrasil brought in from Britain hauling her forward but again, with twelve being a high speed sweeper, and so she was once again caught behind Alfred, who was trailing Rivalz, and was once again the cork in the bottle as the dirty air caused her car to squirm, with the wings of the cars ahead sending the air flowing up and away from Kallen's and robbing her of valuable grip.
However, Kallen was not to be deterred, and was not one to lack ambition, and so chucked the car up the inside into the braking zone at thirteen, placing her car between Alfred and the apex. She risked a crash if he turned across her, as there was no way for her to back out of the move if things went badly, but she knew that Alfred knew not to fight it, and he blinked, giving her the position after having lost her a boatload of time.
"Thanks for nothing." she muttered to nobody as the engine growled filthily down the straight as if to punctuate her frustration. However, she could see the horizon, and it was named Ashford-RT, as the team hadn't changed engine suppliers like Rebellion had and so should be a sitting duck for Kallen on the straight.
However, winning the Daytona 500 had given Rivalz a surprising dose of chutzpah, as he cut across her nose before the braking zone to cover the inside, however the rapid closing distance as he placed his car in the path of Kallens' forced her to jam on the brakes in the middle of the straight, which displeased the Shinjuku woman.
"The fuck did he- he just weaved in the straight, is dangerous! Fuck me, losing time…"
Kallen nonetheless pursued him out of the braking zone and onto the start/finish straight, where she pulled to the outside and marched ahead with DRS, opening a flap in her wing to reduce drag and allow her to slink past. As they sprang into the braking zone, Kallen got her nose ahead and was about to swing across his before he moved out and across to squeeze her to the outside, swooping across and reserving the outside line for himself, leaving Kallen between a kerb and a hard place. Slipping onto the outside grass, Kallen pulled the car around and recovered it, but it was a close call, and she was now losing her temper.
"He's such an idiot…" Kallen grumbled into her radio, now getting desperate. "He can't fight me forever, he can't keep me behind for the entire rest of the bloody race, he's just slowing himself down by fighting so hard. Alfred is hot on our heels because he's fighting every goddamn corner. Unbelievable-"
She could have gone on until long after Rivalz had run out of fuel, and quite possibly would have, until Ohgi came onto the radio and cautioned "Okay, calm down Kallen calm down, stay focused. Pass him on this-"
"I am calm!" she interrupted as she strung the car through the eye of the needle to pull up behind Rivalz again, pulling to the inside determinatively and marking her territory. Rivalz had had his fun, but he was small fry, and so Kallen bullishly pulled up in the braking zone to show she had had enough of these games and had a race victory to contest. Come hell or high water, the position would be hers.
It was initially promising, as she lunged at the apex under turn in, scrubbing a bit at the tyres but successfully contesting the inside of the corner, however she had made the move too late, as Rivalz, who had already began his braking, clipped into her side and rocked the rear of the car. She rotated the wheel away from the corner to correct the nudge, and kept the car moving forward, but the undesirability of having other drivers hit into you was tautological, something Kallen was swift to note.
"Unbelievable. What a joke, that defence was ridiculous."
Kaname Ohgi was almost certainly placed in an unenviable position in light of Kallen's anger, and simply said "We saw, we have seen, keep your head down, the stewards are examining the incident. Suzaku hasn't pitted yet, you can still catch him. We just need some fast lap times from here on out."
Kallen grumbled, but was nonetheless returned to the task of lighting up the track. With a significant gap from twelfth to eleventh on track, Kallen had the open ground to go on the hunt. With Suzaku's soft tyres beginning to degrade, Kallen's hards were still on song, and their respective lap times began to equalise, and Kallen had even set a time quicker than Suzaku's as his softs fell off the cliff and he moved to pit for new tyres.
Having been able to take his softs far longer into the race, Suzaku would now be able to switch onto mediums to complete the race, while Kallen had had to switch onto hards in order to get them to the end, due to her stop being so early. This was not to mention that his softer tyres would also be much younger. Suzaku would have wicked grip, and she had to get track position ahead of him after he pitted to have any chance in the final phase of the race.
She moved to her steering wheel, switching up the electric deployment and fuel flow once again, opening the differential, adjusting the brake bias, and steeling herself, taking a silent moment on the long straight to dig up whatever she could. She had one lap to make up for her losses, and it would be the perfect lap. All she had to do was drive it.
Braking as late as she dared into turn one, swinging around under braking to swoop the car up into the kink of turn two, clipping the apex and shooting off of it. Hurling the car into the esses, she held the car in check with as much force as her arms could muster, only just keeping the car within the limits of the circuit as she brushed against the outer edges of what the car could do. Consciously reminding herself to breath only briefly, she sucked in air to brace her gut as she slammed on the brakes into the off camber turn ten, skating down the track before launching the car to escape velocity on the exit. Kallen had injected every fibre of her being into the lap, but it would be absurdly close if she was to keep ahead of Suzaku as he left the pits. She saw the white blur striking out of the pit lane as she pulled up, dragging to turn one with huge speed.
Suzaku had a shorter run, but Kallen had a must faster approach, and as he moved to cover the inside Kallen simply flew the car into the wide part of the corner, increasing the radius of the turn to overtake on the outside, which turned to the inside at the kink. Holding the line as she felt the car tug at her, pulling the mass of the car out as she felt the wash of understeer, however she struck the rubber sides against the tarmac and shot out ahead. She had just held on.
However, she would have a task holding Suzaku back. She had made up the time lost for her costly battling enough to be ahead on track, she had taken even more life out of her tyres to do it. Her pace was going to cost her, however Kallen herself was still up to a fight.
She took stock on the run down to turn three. Kallen and Suzaku had fought once before. Kallen had gained much more skill in the year since they came to blows at Japan, but Suzaku's car was now far closer to hers in performance. Once again, she would need everything she had to win.
The race was long, with over twenty laps to contest. Kallen was vulnerable into every braking zone and guarded every apex with defensive maneuvers of increasing aggression, however she was blessed with her cars new engine, which gave her a last line of defence on the straights, and compensated for her lowered grip by giving her a natural gap on entry to corners, giving her invaluable track position. She would tack to the inside and blocked the apx, a horribly slow way to navigate a corner but it prevented Suzaku from popping it down her inside under braking and dive bomb her.
And so they continued at an impasse; both travelling relatively slowly, but with Suzaku unable to pass, she could regulate the pace, and, as it proved, she was doing almost too good a job, as she realised that she was not only being chased by one car, as she saw a purple blur sat behind Suzaku's white Rosenberg in her rear view mirrors.
Lelouch Lamperouge, with the freshest tyres of the bunch for having pitted long after Suzaku, had joined the party, invited by the slow pace of the leaders, and, as in Monaco, stood to profit from a pitched battle between two Japanese drivers. His talent for driving may have been questionable, but it seemed his talent for opportunism knew no bounds. Unable to attack and defend at the same time, Suzaku was briefly shaken from his flow, as Kallen saw his rear end shimmy on exit of the last corner, which was all the invitation Lelouch needed.
With Suzaku getting a bad exit, in conjunction with his power deficit, Lelouch was quickly able to pull to his outside and pull ahead quite early on the long straight. However, he wasn't content to leave it at that, as Kallen saw him steam up the outside in her mirror, rapidly increasing in size. While he was her teammate, and she probably ought to afford him more consideration, she had no intention of surrendering the position, and so moved towards the outside to crowd the line and squeeze him out. A defending car was only allowed to drift to the sides of the track in one direction on a straight, however she was confident in moving out from the inside to the outside that she would squeeze off his attack and force him to lift out of the throttle to avoid hitting her.
However, Lelouch was smart, and more than a little devious. Likely predicting Kallen attempting to crowd out his line, he switched lines, violently shooting his car to the inside at the last minute. Kallen gasped as she saw him pull up down her inside. He had caught her in a dummy! He had indicated his intent to go to the outside, waited for her to waste her one defensive move, and then switched to an undefended inside. She could only watch as he braked with far more grip, protected the apex, and continued away with the lead of the race.
It was so typically Lelouch. It was by no means illegal, however it was at best deceptive, and relied on a healthy dose of cunning and was a little looked down on as a cheap trick that required little skill. Suzaku would never have been caught dead trying a dummy, which had led Kallen, who had grown used to defending against Suzaku's pattern of behaviour, to not expect the trick. However, he was irrefutably past her, and she had no hope of overtaking him back. All she could hope to do was to continue to defend against Suzaku.
However, the initial phase of extreme grip had been lost, and the time spent driving behind Kallen had heated them up immensely. His window of difference had been narrowed, and so all Kallen had to do was nurse the car home. Even as the hards fell off in the dying laps, Suzaku was contained, and she would finish second. However, as she entered the second to last corner, her peripheral vision caught a glimpse of fireworks lighting up the main straight, and she knew it was not for her. Taking his maiden victory would be Lelouch Lamperouge, some fifteen seconds ahead of the other two podium finishers, bottlenecked by Kallen. She was happy that it was at least Lelouch, who was not a long term threat, than Suzaku, who would almost certainly prove to be a far closer competitor for the championship. As she slid the car into the last corner, tyres long past their expiration date, she shot the car out towards the chequered flag, holding onto second as she saw Lelouch ahead, slowed down with his fist extended out of the cockpit.
Finding it hard to begrudge Lelouch in his public show of celebration, Kallen cooled down the pace, knocking down the gears before pulling up alongside the exuberant Lelouch, arm shaking out the cockpit ferociously. She chuckled as they drove in parralel.
She'd let him have this. He wouldn't be trouble.
~Eth0