OK Number 44 - Blessed

She did not get Pole. But she got close, so close that her shout once she saw it on the screen back in the garage, her ear-splitting howl, heard by film crews two garages down the row, had to apply a censor over the bark.

Once she had finished the expletive, she took a breath, and screamed again.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, EIGHT HUNDRETHS OF A SECOND?"

As she lined up to the grid, she could still, almost a whole day later, barely believe it; second, less than a tenth behind the polesitter, a predictably competent Xingke taking his third Pole in a row. She shook her head, looking forward with the view of another car despite her best efforts. She had taken Pole position ten times (or eleven, if you counted Monaco 2018), and knew a good lap when she did one.

By sheer coincidence, a bad lap was quite the rarity.

However, none of this changed the fact that the Geely, driven by Li Xingke however conventionally, could not be beaten by her when it came down to it.

But points were paid out on Sunday, and as Kallen looked up to the straightaway ahead, with the red lights in her peripheral vision. She had been told by Naoto long ago that if she held it at the centre of her view, her muscle reaction would actually be slower than if she held it in her peripheral vision.

She could almost hear Diethards voice counting up, as the red blazing circles lit up, one light, two lights, three lights, four lights, five… red… lights… and…

GO!

Kallen, having revved the engine up to 13,000 rpm, dropped the clutch and let the car rocket forward. Getting an uncharacteristically good getaway, Kallen only got a slightly weaker getaway than Xingke, and was able to file in behind him early along the straight, keeping in the slipstream he punched through the air, before diving to the inside, shifting lanes just before the Chinese points leader ahead put on the anchors. Kallen was able to pull a bit further down the straight before hitting the brakes, pulling ahead before letting the rear wheels to slip out, forming a lateral moment of resistance, slowing her down just enough.

Keeping the revs high and the rear loose, she was able to turn the corner, before, like a dancer shaking their hips, slip the rears momentum into a completely different direction.

Leading after turn one. Job half done.

But of course, Xingke hadn't won two races for no reason, and proceeded to hound her through turn three, before defying the laws of fluid dynamics by holding onto her rear diffuser, no doubt a function of his sixth sense for these new tyres. Holding behind for seven and eight, he stayed in the draft until the last possible moment, getting an overshoot down the back straight and diving for the inside. It didn't matter how much later Kallen braked; Xingke placed his car between her and the apex, squaring the circle by only turning as he approached the outside kerb.

Kallen, who had hung back, by contrast turned early, taking a late apex and driving in a straight line from the entrance kerb to the apex. However, while it gave her a better run into the next short approach to turn ten, the road was falling away from her, as the track curved upwards and to the right, placing Xingke on the inside for the next corner, which aggressively sharpened as it approached the apex.

However, the ideal place to be was as far wide as possible, so that the angle of steering required would be as small as possible, sweeping through the corner as opposed to pivoting around it. While Kallen was faster, Xingke was ahead on track. Kallen held her breath as the pair drew level, waiting for Xingke to allow the graining and camber of the road to draw him out, as Kallen prayed that she could draw ahead before Xingke's path ran her off the road.

However, as the road curved away from them both, Xingke did something Kallen did not expect. He turned into the path of the road, giving her track space.

Kallen was so put off that she suddenly turned towards the now expanding gap, realising she had overdone it and tried to correct, leading to the car almost snaking and getting away from her. However, while she pulled it back under control, she killed whatever momentum advantage she had enjoyed from having the better entry to the corner.

Still unsure why Xingke had given way, she had no intention of returning the accidental favour as they moved side by side into ten. While Xingke was blocked from using the outside kerb to get the smoother run, Kallen was blocked from using the apex to get the shorter run, and had to hold it round the outside, which held only marbles and tarmac which was about as grippy as ice.

Kallen knew what was coming. She could see it just as clearly as she knew that, if the roles were reversed, she would do it too. At the apex, the driver on the inside would let the lateral momentum of the car drift it out to the outside exit kerb, forming the final 'out' of the 'out, in, out' approach to cornering. Given that he just about was in front by a hair, he would have right of way, and be well within his rights to move to the outside of the track and crowd her out, leaving her with a choice between lifting off the accelerator and being pushed into the grass.

However, yet again, she was surprised when it did not happen. He kept to the inside, which turned to the outside at the next long, fast left hander, before back to the inside, never leaving his lane, but still keeping alongside, before diving to the apex of the penultimate turn fourteen and taking the place.

Kallen was stunned. In part because of how much space Xingke was giving her, not forcing her off track, and taking the slower line around to avoid crowding her out, but moreso because it was working. Even on the longer, less grippy line, even when giving his opponent space to keep her nose in it, he was sticking alongside, not even struggling to find the grip. Even as Kallen's car squirmed to find traction on the grippy side, Xingke's car, which forwent the rubbered in tarmac, did not even twitch. She could only watch as, keeping to the right of the track, he got the better exit and rocketed away.

It mystified Kallen, however she didn't have time to be focused on that. For her strategy to work, she needed to stay close, and get the overcut while he was caught in traffic after his stop. This did something unexpected. Sitting behind him did not warm the tyres, with the new rubber being far less sensitive to heat than previously, which allowed her to close up dramatically without overly ill effect. Not quite overtake, but as Kallen sat in his wake, she did something she had not expected to at all.

She watched. She had the box seat to watch what had won Xingke the first two races, and the result was fascinating. Xingke was neither like Kallen nor Suzaku, who Kallen had previously thought to be at to opposing ends of a two dimensional spectrum of driving approaches. Instead, his entire style seemed to focus on where the weight was. The four tyres would each lift and fall independently, always placing the weight of the car on whichever tyre was needed, such as the front left for the final corner, or the rear left for an early acceleration out of it. It was fascinating to watch, even as he undeniably pulled away.

However, now was not the time for admiration or speculation. She had a job to do.

Lowering her gaze, she took a deep breath. She closed, then opened her eyes, and as she streaked down the straight, felt immense peace. In front of her, she watched Xingke pit for new rubber, and knew it was time. She had to give it everything.

There would be another ten laps before she needed to pit, and, almost chuckling as she chucked the car into turn one, felt plenty of leeway with which she could push. Balancing the entire car on the two front tyres, she prodded the car into swapping ends without allowing it to quite do so. She had ten laps to destroy these tyres, and she would do it come hell or high water.

Fortunately, her renewed attitude had come with more benefits than one. While her concentration was never an issue over a lap, she was never quite physically fit enough to sustain that level of intensity over a prolonged period, having to reduce the physical tempo of the frantic wheel movements and throttle oscillations.

However, Kallen had spent the winter leaving no stone unturned in her search for the pace to win a championship, which included a strict exercise regimen up and down the Brecon Beacons. She built up a wealth of stamina, and would now unleash it.

She felt her muscles ripping into the carcass of the tyres like the carcass of an animal, her chest and shoulders taking the full brunt of the force of the accelerations of the car, whether it was forward, back, or from side to side. As well as the forces being extreme in volume and acuteness, it was prolonged, it was sustained lap after lap, as if she was doing twelve rounds against a champion boxer with her hands tied behind her back. As the laps ticked by, her eyes, her neck, and her chest began to scream in pleas for relief.

But there was one thing about Kallen that hadn't changed. She was far too stubborn to stop when her body asked her to.

This sustained her to the pit stops. The tyres were screaming, the brakes were screaming, her body was screaming. But she had made it, and more- Xingke had been released from the pits between P7 and P8, and lost a lot of time in trying to overtake them. In conjunction with Kallens heroic first stint, she would come out ahead of her Chinese opponent, who had another stop, whereas Kallen would be running to the end.

Kallen was barely stopped for two seconds before she got the signal to punch it, spinning up the fresh medium tyres and vacating her box like the pit lane was going out of fashion. She trundled at the pit lane speed limit until she reached the exit, holding both the brake and accelerator in and killing her engine as she did, before dumping the brake and rocketing away, ahead of Xingke by ten seconds.

She cheered in her helmet. Lelouch appeared to have been right, however the race wasn't over yet, and Xingke would be catching, such was his ominous pace. The hunt, it seemed, was on.

That lap, the gap was ten point two seconds. The next, nine point three. The lap after that, eight point one. As the laps ticked away, Xingke loomed large, able to extract far more from his tyres. Kallen could do nothing but watch as his presence in her mirror grew larger and larger. Eight laps for him close up, two for him to size up Kallen, and then he struck.

He dove up her inside into turn four, however once again his approach was overly shallow, permitting Kallen to switch back, turning in early and getting the swifter exit, however this put her on the outside for the next sweeper, as they stayed side by side through the entire range of the wide, fast bend, with Kallen jerking and fluttering, but still holding on. Keeping her nose in put her on the inside for the next curve, before a blast up to turn nine.

However, being on the inside for the previous turn meant that she would be placed on the inside for the hairpin ahead, which was actually to her disadvantage, given how acute the turn was. An overly shallow angle would result in severely more steering lock being required, which put Xingke at a great advantage.

However, Xingke broke earlier than she had expected, allowing him to smooth the corner and get a great exit, while she had to take an approach that was almost perpendicular to the corner. She tried to slow beyond the apex, and block off the path with the length of her car. However, Xingke, with his car already rotated, was able to blast into the gap while Kallen tried to swing the rear end around, and she could only watch as he blasted past.

However, Kallen was not one to wave the white flag, and fought back visciously, holding through the esses of twelve and thirteen before diving into fourteen. Hugging the inside as the road curved further and further in away from her, she braked in a straight line, letting the car swash from the inside to the outside of the track. Even if Xingke was practicing Christian motoring, that hardly mandated her to follow suit, and so as Kallen let the car roll across the width of the road, she fostered Xingke's falling into a gap that was getting small by the second, which she hoped would force him to brake to avoid an accident and kill his momentum.

However, Xingke was wise to it, braking before he was boxed in, letting Kallen pass him before turning in towards the corner as she speared off and towards the exit kerb. Kallen swore, before dabbing the throttle and trying to spin the car around and face towards the straight.

However, as her rear tyres span up and lost lateral traction, encouraging the car to swap ends, Kallen felt the steering wheel jerk away from her, tugging suddenly at her arms. She could not understand, until she looked in her rear view mirror, and saw huge strips of rubber flopping up by the rear wing, being spurred into rotation by an unseen axle.

"Ah, shit, shit shit, I've got a tyre failure, box, box now!"

It was only luck that that delaminated tyre had not struck at speed, or near a wall, as that would have ended her race, and even then it nearly did; like Gilles Villeneuve at Zandvoort back in 1979, it was a struggle to wrestle the car, which required the wheel to be held perpendicularly to the road to keep in a straight line, back to the pits for new tyres, however she had done it.

Similarly, it was luck that gave her that puncture at a time when, while in second, she enjoyed a considerable advantage over her third placed teammate Gino Weinberg. While she emerged from the pit lane just behind him, she was on fresh softs, and made short work of him. It was the first double podium for any team that year, but it was in some ways a hollow victory.

Primarily, regarding the tyre failure. While it didn't lose her any positions, it had robbed her of the chance to keep fighting Xingke and perhaps get the upper hand. She would never know, and Xingke moved his tally from fifty points to seventy five. Gino only took fifteen points, bringing his total up from thirty six to fifty one. Kallen's brother Naoto, who had finished third in both of the races so far, suffered a tyre failure just like Kallen had, which dropped him from fifth to ninth, meaning he could only add two points, and boast a total of thirty two, which was still more than Tohdoh. Kallen herself meanwhile had only got her first points on the board with eighteen.

Over at the revived Schwarzenritter, Rolo was having a banner year, with a sixths and two fifths placing him atop a comfortable twenty eight points, while Suzaku, who had not finished in Bahrain and only got an eighth in Malaysia, was on ten.

So much of the standings this year was being dictated by who got punctures it seemed. The new tyres dealt with heat well, but seemed very liable to rapidly delaminate without reason, whether it was Tohdoh and Zhou in Australia, Suzaku in Bahrain, or Naoto and Kallen herself in Malaysia. However, as with many things in her life right now, she did not want to spend time on idle worrying or speculating. Worrying or speculating would not win the championship.

Instead, Kallen did something she had never done before. Not after races, not even for senior high school exams; she studied.

It was a strange new experience, however it was spurred on by the coalescence of a new attitude and a moment of inspiration. Kallen had not lied when she said she would push herself to any lengths off track to win, whether it be with exercise or careful research of where she could get an advantage. She had already committed the former, and now came her follow through on the latter as she stared at her laptop, breaking down the onboard footage of Xingke's drive frame by frame to see what he was doing.

Because it was not magic. Kallen knew that. Tohdoh did not win his championships with some magical cheat code inaccessible by any other driver, a fact Kallen knew perhaps more acutely than any other driver given the lengths she had gone to to beat him. There was no magic spell, this Kallen believed fundamentally in her soul. No driver did anything that was beyond the human ability, and if someone else could do it, Kallen could too.

Xingke's pace was simply a combination of inputs that resulted in a superior output to every other combination of inputs that opposed him. It was simply a matter of identifying and replicating those inputs. The inputs could well be intricate, or require precision, but it was corporeal, and replicable. It was the result of material effects. Kallen would learn what made him fast.

This was made more pressing by the calender, with the next weekend putting far more emphasis on driver skill over car performance. Originally, the next race was meant to be China, with Monaco and Canada as a double header, however a mix up with the calendar had changed the order to Monaco-China-Canada. Monte Carlo's tight streets was a notorious equaliser, which meant that whatever techniques Xingke was using to keep on top of these tyres would be made more pronounced.

There were two things she noticed immediately. His hands were hyperactive, as he barely went a moment without adjusting the brake bias, leaning front, rear, placing more emphasis on whichever brake he deemed important. This explained the pitching and the constant shifting of weight through the chassis. The second thing she noticed was how he used the throttle. Xingke had found the same problem Kallen had with engine lag, but found a different solution. Instead of holding in the brakes until he was ready to accelerate, Xingke used the throttle like a binary switch, oscillating the application from off to fully open several times per second, moderating the throttle not by holding it at half open, but simply switched rapidly between fully on and fully off, which had the effect of holding it at half without the engine falling in revs.

The habit, Kallen suspected, came from WEC where the electric element of the throttle did indeed operate in a binary fashion, and it was paying off here, as it seemed to work wonders with these cars, keeping the tyres warm, the weight in flux and the rear mobile. In conjunction with the shifting of the brake bias, Xingke's style focused on placing the weight on the inside wheels, keeping them in contact with the tarmac and giving him the supreme grip she had seen.

This was only possible with tyres which did not overheat when treated in this way, which was why Xingke was thriving. Kallen rubbed her eyes as she closed her laptop, feeling exhausted. Studying was a whole new experience.

She had, as with many things in her life, possessed a single minded determination to become a successful racing driver from an extremely young age. She would skip classes to practice at the local track, Tsukuba, to become more attuned to the car and hone her reflexes before the weekends race. Her brother, who had by this point become her legal guardian after their parents had kicked them out, copped immense flak from Kallen's teachers, however she didn't care. Studying wouldn't help her get to the top.

God, she must have been an awful sister, she thought to herself. She put no thought into what Naoto had to go through on her behalf, getting an earful from her teachers about what a truant she was with no future, about how she was a lazy troublemaker, and how he was to blame for not enforcing discipline at home. She hadn't even thought of him as she went off to Tsukuba and Fuji while Naoto tried to keep them afloat while dealing with her teachers complaining, which at the very least took valuable hours out of his day.

But perhaps the biggest surprise, upon reflection, was that he had never listened to them. He had never followed her teachers advice and clamped down on her, nor had he even mentioned how often and for how intensely they were trying to contact him until long after she had left school. He had not lost his temper over her skipping classes, or over her not studying, or failing tests. The only time he had blown his top was when she assaulted Lelouch. It was the only time he had done it.

She had been horrible. She had been so consistently selfish, only looking at what she wanted without seeing what impact it had on others, from Naoto to Lelouch.

As she slowly began to feel her throat and eyes well up, she grabbed her phone. She was not quite up to a phone call, certainly not right now, but she had to contact Naoto somehow, and text was as good as anything. Frantically, she typed and sent a simple message.

'I'm so sorry ~ Kallen'

The response was not short in coming.

'Sod off ~ Naoto'

Kōzuki Naoto has blocked you.

Drama! Naoto is clearly still cross, and it's not as if he doesn't have a point. But, now he's on track with her, he's sharing the circuit, they'll be hard pressed to avoid one another. What ought to be a heart warming thing, the two siblings finally racing together six years after Naoto debuted and three after Kallen debuted, they're only now sharing the road. What's gonna happen? Leave your thoughts, as well as any commentary, in the reviews, they're really helpful!

~G1ll3s