OK Number 42 - Mission Control

The view from the position where Lelouch had threatened to call security on Kallen in Spain three weeks ago was not so different to the view he enjoyed now, overlooking his cars driving out of the garages in Melbourne. The number seven of Suzaku Kururugi and three of Rolo Lamperouge left in a line of stern, making their way round a sighting lap to the grid. Suzaku was understated, head down, no wheelspin, no doubt pleased to be in a position to defend his championship. Rolo, eager to impress, was a mirror of his teammate at least in the sense of being undramatic, with not a squeal nor a hint of tyre smoke to be detected.

However, Lelouch saw in the cars mannerisms and Rolo's body language while sat in the car, head up, looking about the place, not quite having being in the right headspace, likely due to nerves. Lelouch watched them drive out of the pit lane, before they turned right to begin their counterclockwise parade lap. Once they were out of view, Lelouch faced back towards the front straight parallel to the pitlane, determined to get the team off to the right start. Lelouch, of course, was wired him to the team communications and radio system, as well as being able to tune certain divisions in and out as required.

He would have the best seat in the house.

But Lelouch put this out of his mind. It was possibly one of his best traits; the ability to cloud out distractions and focus exclusively on the goals to be achieved. He had a team to manage, and he had noticed, right off the bat, that one of his drivers needed a confidence boost.

As his radar showed the two cars heading up to Whiteford, the second of four chicanes, Lelouch pressed R2 on his control panel, below the keyboard, to activate the communications with Rolo.

"Rolo, it's your first Grand Prix, so good luck. You're a damn sight more talented than I was when I first sat in an F1 car, so you shouldn't have any problems. Just keep an eye on what's going on around you. Keep your brakes and tyres in a good temperature range over this sighting lap, and don't overcook it into turn one. You're already up to pace in the car, so just do what's natural once the melee has fizzled out. Godspeed. We'll see you at the first pitstop."

Lelouch released the button, and focused back on the radar. The cars on the front row were just now rounding the Ascari corner at the beginning of the last sector, as the two Schwarzenritters moved through the fast third chicane of nine and ten. He breathed in and out, sensing the tightness in his chest as he muscled fresh oxygen into it, on the back of the force of his throat and lungs. He could hardly say that his brother was the only one with performance anxiety.

Again, however, he put it out of his mind, watching the first cars completing the parade lap and coming up to the starting grid as they came into view, fading in from the vanishing point just past the last turn.

The first to shimmer into visibility, having seized Pole position, was Li Xingke, having taken the first position in qualifying for the first time in his Formula 1 career. Next came the pink prototype of Gino Weinberg, followed by Zhou Xianglin, who lined up directly behind her teammate on the two by two grid layout. It definitely seemed that the Geelys were now at the sharp end of the grid, particularly given that testing could be deceptive in terms of indicating prospective pace, but it seemed their dominant display wasn't a play to attract sponsors; they were just that OP, split only by the Camelot.

Gino's teammate came next, occupying the back of the second row, though it was not Kallen Kozuki, who while contracted to the team, still had a ban imposed until Malaysia, which superseded any contract. It was a good thing too, as Lelouch knew from driving alongside her that she would have proven an absolute weapon.

Lelouch had never been able to pin down what exactly it was, which upon reflection was probably why he had never become a seriously competitive driver, but for whatever reason Kallen fell into a stupor when delivering one, single banging lap, and the longer she was out of the picture, for both the teams health and his health.

In her place was Anya Alstreim, who was the F2 champion and about as tall as an eleven year old, whom was just ahead of the two Rebellions, who locked out the third row of the grid to themselves, Naoto ahead of Tohdoh.

It wasn't until the eighth placed starter of Villetta Nu rounded the turn that Lelouch finally caught a view of the first of his drivers, the more experienced Suzaku Kururugi, who had made it into Q3 in the teams debut race, let the car slide up the front straight towards the fifth row. Watching the black and matte red car smoothly progress up the road, Lelouch radioed to Suzaku to note "Be sure to keep your tyres warm, good luck."

Suzaku responded with a brief "Yup.", clearly trying to focus on the task at hand, and just as he moved towards his starting position, his teammate, and Lelouch's brother, came into view, the twelfth car along having filtered back over his outlap. Lelouch was reasonably satisfied with this, particularly the short time in which the car was built compared to the competition, and even shorter time in which it was convened and designed, being penned and modelled in under two weeks, fuelled by consecutive sleepless nights and an IV drip feeding Lloyd a constant flow of coffee. The car would take a good bit of development to leap up to the sharp end, which Lelouch estimated would take until the midway point of the season to transpire, assuming the cash flow remained a constant.

And so, as the last few runners moved into their grid positions, Lelouch concluded that they should be pleased with them, but, as the red lights flashed up on his screen, his attention was once again diverted back to the start.

Counting up, it was one light, two lights, three lights, four lights, five red lights, holding, going, going goi- gone! The lights, not waiting a moment to fade as soon as all five were lit, put an immediate start to the race. Xingke got a worldly start, but Lelouch was laser focused on his drivers.

Suzaku got a reasonable start, tyres perhaps a bit cold but otherwise unobjectionable. Rolo, however, had his revs too high and span up the rear wheels, similarly facing cool tyres. His problems were compounded by his attempts, once the clutch was dropped, to lower the throttle input. While the tyres did grip up, the torque required to haul the car forward spiked suddenly, bogging the engine down. Eventually, the computer gave up and engaged the anti-stall, taking over the throttle for a moment until Rolo was finally brought up to speed.

Of course, he only got up to speed four or five seconds after everyone else around him, and he sank like a stone through the field, getting swallowed up by the cars around him, who were closing with rapid speed. By the first corner, he had slipped from twelfth to sixteenth.

"Ach, merde, the… the clutch, putain!"

Lelouch impassively stared into the radar, not responding, almost aloof as the sun blazed down as he tried to find a solution to this problem. It was not so dissimilar to when he was in the hot seat, only this time there were far fewer distractions, such as that of not crashing, keeping up the pace, and so on.

So, the fact scenario at hand. Suzaku, having gotten into the third qualifying session, was mandated to start on the tyres he set his fastest lap in Q2 on, however Rolo had started on the hard tyres, which could last until a good way into the race. Similarly, all the cars between Suzaku and Rolo were on softs, except Albert Darlton at the helm of his B.A.R-Yggdrasil, who was on mediums. They would all be pitting a long time before Rolo did.

Furthermore, like Monaco and like Hungary, Albert Park was quite the challenging track to overtake on, though not for the same reasons. Whereas Monaco was too slow and narrow, and Hungary featured corners of far too long a radius, neither was the case at Melbourne, with very angular corners which were taken at high speed. In fact, therein lay the central issue; it was too fast.

More specifically, there were very few hard braking events over the course of a lap where people could try to outbrake the car in front, and the corner preceding the tracks only long straight was not conducive to a chasing car attempting to close up.

In essence, if there was a car trying to hold the pack up, it would not at all have a hard time doing so.

Immediately, he began to form in his head the race strategy, though unlike previously, he would have to verbalise it to others as and when the situation changed, as opposed to simply doing it himself. First, to Rolo. His finger jammed the radio button as he spoke firmly.

"Conserve these tyres, you will be going long and blasting them towards the end of your stint, do not take life out of them now."

After Rolo confirmed he had received and understood this message, Lelouch then moved to Suzaku and confirmed the plan on his side of the garage.

"Push now Suzaku, push, you will be trying to get an undercut on the cars ahead and get off these softs early."

With the strategy locked in, Lelouch sat back, with his trademarked scowl intact. This was definitely the part of the whole team manager business that he had not envied, and indeed did not, now that he was in it, enjoy; the conduct of the race was out of his hand. He had to trust others to handle things, had to ensure that they would perform in a high risk situation. For as long as he could remember, even when he was homeless and looking after Nunnally's medical condition, he would not have dared to even contemplate delegating it until it was unfeasible, and even then it hurt him deeply to do. What if they messed it up? The only person he knew he could depend on was himself, and yet he was having to depend on the two drivers to pull it off.

God he was nervous.

However, wish as he might, there wasn't anything he could do about it but rely on others to drive the cars, which they were very much doing. Rolo appeared to be at sea, in something of a no-mans-land between the back of the midfield cars and the front of the backmarkers, however Suzaku was out proving why he had won the championship, hounding the rear of Nu like a wild dog. But, predictably, he couldn't get past.

This, however, would not be an issue.

Suzaku reported tyre wear, and in particular heavy degradation on the front right, on lap seventeen, maybe three laps before it was predicted that most people would stop. Eager to seize the undercut, lapping on a fresher tyre for several minutes before those around him and gaining time over them before they pitted as well, Lelouch called Suzaku in, and once again had to trust others to do their job. After all, it was hardly as if he was healthy enough to man a jack or a wheel gun.

However, he had at least trusted pit crew before while he was a driver, so at least his nerves were kept to a manageable level as Suzaku trundled in towards the pit box, which given that this was the first year of the teams existence and participation in F1 was the last one in the line of constructors.

Thankfully, the pitstop was performed beautifully, the crew almost forming a single fluid organ, expanding and contracting around the car like a muscle. While the car was only finished with a few weeks to go, the pit crew did not have to wait for the car to be finished to start practicing, and indeed it could have well been because of these delays that they had emerged as one of the fastest crews on the grid, having been training for months.

It was only as it had finally stopped that the crew were finished and ready to send the car off again. It was just over two seconds in the box, and it finally put the trace of a smile within a few postcodes of Lelouch's face. Now on hards, Suzaku made his way out, reaching the end of the pitlane within a few meters and putting the foot to the floor. Briefly discouraged, Lelouch radioed across to Suzaku "You're taking these tyres to the end. Push for the next two or three laps to get the undercut, but once the pitstops have shaken out go to conserve. Go to full battery deployment and mode eleven on fuel flow, lets get it."

With the commands delivered, Lelouch looked back at the radar. Suzaku had fallen back, though it should shuffle out that he was about where he had been, but, most importantly, Rolo had not been an entire pitstop behind, and now was a good ways ahead of Suzaku, far enough ahead that he wouldn't compromise his undercut.

Immediately, Suzaku began putting in purple sectors, gaining relative time on the people he had been chasing, having two laps of clean air before the pit lane busied. Nu and Bradley, who had been ahead of Suzaku, and almost everyone who was behind him bar Albert Darlton.

Lelouch leaned out of and over the desk, careful to prop his good arm against the catch fence before he stuck his head out to watch Suzaku pass. He caught Suzaku just rounding the last corner as cars were leaving their boxes, tyres changed. They were still ahead, but Suzaku would be much faster on the run into the first corner.

Sure enough, Suzaku blasted past the cars leaving the pits, who had a standing start as opposed to Suzaku who had had a massive build up- and he was ahead! The undercut had worked, and Suzaku had jumped Nu and Bradley, with the others behind him as well.

Satisfied, Lelouch repeated his instruction to Suzaku, with some elaboration.

"Suzaku, it's Lelouch. You've done a great job, now conserve these tyres and don't let anyone behind you through unless they're lapping you. The cars ahead of you on track are too fast to chase down, just focus on keeping this position."

Suzaku seemed miffed by this, but was at least obedient, clearly wanting to take on the frontrunners, but too strait-laced and professional to vocalise his frustration. Pleased that his driver was observing his instructions, Lelouch watched the comparative times like a hawk.

Xingke was just checking out up front, having an entire pitstops advantage over Gino in second. Naoto was in mans land as well, trailed five whole seconds after by Tohdoh and Xianglin, who seemed to be having a fairly tight battle, with Alstreim just two seconds behind them.

Then there was a brief gap to Rolo, who was the highest driver yet to stop, then a short gap to Suzaku, who was acting as a dam to what was now four cars snapping at his heels. If Rolo pitted now, he would come out where he had been before the pit stop, far behind this gaggle of five to six cars and then some.

However, Rolo would not be pitting now. He would not be pitting for quite some time.

As Lelouch looked back from the track to the LCD screen showing the timings, Lelouch was pleased to see that, with Suzaku holding back to save his tyres, Rolo was now pulling a gap to the cars behind, building it up from a second, to two seconds, to more as the race progressed. If it built up to twenty seconds, Rolo would effectively leap from sixteenth to eighth, ahead of Suzaku in ninth. A double points finish, in their first race, one in which one of their drivers had an apocalyptically bad start?

He'd take it. He would eat his vegetables and smile while doing it.

However, Rolo was not pulling away at quite the rate Lelouch would have liked. It was only something like a few tenths per lap, and now, on the radio, Suzaku was beginning to ask questions.

"When can I stretch my legs? The tyres are cold a ice and they're getting closer to making a move. If I don't pick it up we'll lose a place."

Lelouch was now faced with a decision. Rolo was not far enough ahead to pit and come out ahead of this group, so did he preserve Suzaku's high position by allowing him to push, or did he risk Suzaku being swallowed up to try and bite off the most amount of points theoretically on the table?

And get his brother up as high as possible, this was unavoidably a factor.

He came to a decision quite quickly in the end, coming back onto the radio within moments.

"Negative, keep conserving tyres. It's difficult to overtake on this track, so do not lose any positions. Keep going."

Suzaku affirmed, though not without a certain gruffness to his voice. Lelouch glanced at the timings to see what the gap was; twelve seconds, and Rolo's tyres were reaching the end of their life, having been on the Frenchmans car for over forty five laps.

However, there was a loud bang at the start of the straight, which caught Lelouch's attention. It was less of an firey explosion and more of a pneumatic pop, though its source was not known to Lelouch until it rolled out from behind the pitlane around the last corner, without a wheel and steering, instead slowly slowing in a straight line towards the wall. Looking at his mirror of the broadcast, it seemed as if the tyre of the wounded car, who proved to be Zhou Xianglin, had experienced sudden delamination while trying to navigate the last corner. Lelouch watched further to see how it happened as yellow flags were waved. The driver just behind Zhou, Tohdoh, made his way round the last corner a bit more successfully, and Lelouch watched as he streaked past.

Tohdoh hammered the brakes, which was his mistake; as soon as load was placed on the front tyres, they blew, and Lelouch could only watch as the Japanese champion speared off left and into the wall. Lelouch was amazed, both at the dramatic accident and the coincidence of two tyre failures in twenty seconds. However, before Lelouch could digest this, the yellow LED indicator above his screen flashed.

It said 'SC'.

"Safety car, Rolo box now, box this lap. Kyoshiro Tohdoh has just saved your bacon."

The last part of that sentence was not transmitted, Lelouch having released his thumb from the radio button before he said it. This solved the issue of Rolo not having built enough of a gap, as the pit delta relative to the normal circulation dropped from twenty seconds to around ten, which gave Rolo a window of two seconds.

And so, as he trundled into the pit lane, the rest of the track was limited to the safety car speed, which while faster than the pit lane speed limit, the difference was not nearly as significant. Lelouch turned to watch Rolo discard his worn hard tyres and strap on a new set of mediums to take to the end. Lelouch finally cracked and let out a smile, curling up the edge of his lips as the pit process went over, as smooth as butter. Rolo rushed out as soon as the light flashed, and moved towards the pit exit.

Lelouch turned towards the track, and looked down the straight down from the last corner. Sure enough, Suzaku was sat on the limiter, leading a train of six or seven cars. They were close, but not close enough, as Rolo just about pulled out ahead of this group. Of course, the train was much faster and would normally have overtaken him, however, while the safety car was out, cars could not overtake one another on track. Rolo made a point to sway to the left, emphasising that he had left the pit lane, was firmly on track, and could not be overtaken. Lelouch took a breath of relief, as they cadre caught up to the leading group gathered behind the safety car itself.

Lelouch took several deep breaths, before looking back to the screen, and was initially confused.

Rolo in sixth, Suzaku in seventh.

Blinking, it took him a while to realise how they had jumped to sixth from ninth. Suzaku had leapt two spots in the undercut, jumped two due to the retirement of Tohdoh and Zhou, and then lost one to his teammate Rolo. It was Xingke, Gino, Naoto, Alstreim, Darlton, then Rolo and Suzaku.

Ecstatic, Lelouch pumped his fist, before solidifying the position, radioing the both of them at the same time with the two buttons pressed.

"Okay, we're in a great position. This is amazing. No racing your teammate, you both cannot afford to race your teammate, the cars behind you will eat you up if you start losing time. No racing, no overtaking, once the safety car comes in let's just pull away together. Let's just pick up some good points, we aren't as fast as anyone ahead, or a good few cars behind us. If we finish here, I'll let ye shave my head, just safeguard this position."

Lelouch leaned back and hoped they would listen, but he needn't have feared. Suzaku was obedient as ever, and Rolo was knee deep in hero-worship for Lelouch, so they just lapped in tandem once the green flag flew. Fantastically, brilliantly, beyond any and all possible dreams he could have had, Lelouch looked at the last corner, with the sixth car around being Rolo, and seventh being Suzaku. He let out a victorious roar, cheering them across and shaking the guard rail, grinning like an idiot.

As he cheered, Lelouch was experiencing a great, confused, conflicting mix of emotions. Some were joyous, some felt the weight and fear of setting overly high expectations, but the most significant of them simply feared for what would become of his beloved hair, after he had made what was now an ill advised bet if they scored points on their debut race.

It does warm the heart to see a new team do well, but then you remember that it's run by Lelouch. This might make you feel happier, it might frustrate you. However, this aside, something else happened this race, something that will have championship-altering ramifications. What was it? Do let me know in any review you might give, it brightens my day so much and gives me the motivation to keep at it. If you're in the /r/CG discord, you can let me know there too. I'm nearly there, so hopefully it should be a smooth run to the finish!

~G1ll3s