OK Number 45 - Ballet Down The Riviera
There was little time to worry about being blocked however, as the championship rolled on to the fourth race in Monaco. While concerns were growing over the new tyres and their safety, there was no changes between the close of business on the Sunday evening to the first Free Practise, which due to a quirk in history was held on the Thursday as opposed to the Friday.
However, Kallen didn't care if it was a Thursday or a Friday, or a Tuesday, or if it were an eighth day added to the week to avoid interfering with the intricate Monegasque street markets. Kallen loved this track, consistently being able to find a groove and a new level in the gulley and cordoned off streets, even if, due to a combination of mistakes and misfortune, she had yet to win here.
Of course, given that Xingke remained undefeated, it did appear that Kallen's drought at this track would remain intact, however Kallen, armed with the knowledge she had garnered from reviewing the tapes, intended to end both streaks over the weekend ahead. If Lelouch could find a way to win here, anything was possible.
Thursday practice was encouraging, as Kallen was quickly comfortable with the car, melding her own approach to rotating the car with Xingke's oscillations, all while making a point of making the car as inherently unstable as possible, so she could slither up the track, darting left and right at a moments notice. Particularly given how uneven the road surface was, Xingke's trick suspension which allowed the car to wallow crossways would be muted in efficacy, which, in conjunction how much she loved this track, made it her moment to strike back. This appeared to be borne out in the practice times, as for the first time this season, there was a session not topped by the Geely of Xingke, with Kallen posting the fastest time in sessions one and three, burning through 12 sets of the soft tyres to get her eye in, never budging an inch away from pushing flat out, veins and eyes bulging as she maintained pace that only just saw her pip Xingke, who almost appeared to be doing worse than her.
Kallen, aware of the toll her high energy style took on her body, had taken the winter to build up her stamina, and so was at least in a reasonable state after an intense stint, however Xingke seemed almost doubled over from the exhaustion, something she had not expected from a driver who had cut his teeth in endurance racing over six, twelve, and twenty-four hours. He did look extremely worn out after what had been just a practice session, which struck Kallen as quite interesting.
However, while Kallen's fitness spared her from tiredness, sweat was inescapable, and she was bucketing it after Saturday's third session of practice, and had to go back to her trailer to dip briefly into an ice filled bath, simply to rob her skin of surface heat, before changing back into her overalls and rushing back to the garage through the rear entrance, having seized the brief gap on the Saturday between final practice and qualifying to change out of the six hundred pound nomex gear, ninety percent of its mass consisting of absorbed liquids. Having shed at least half her body weight with a change of outfit, Kallen felt reinvigorated and punchy, light on her feet and agile in her skin as she approached the back of the garage. Even her breathing was light and delicate, with measured precision.
She sat at the narrow edge of the fabric seat, textured like a deck chair for the Mediterranean conditions, as the mechanics fettled her car before parc ferme was put into effect. Qualifying was not far away, and any last minute adjustments had to be done now.
In service of ensuring they were done, she moved over to her engineer to make sure he had taken in all her requests. In a more overarching sense, it was emblematic of her new approach of working harder than she ever had, and leaving no stone unturned. One of Suzaku's beneficial traits that she had never mastered was the intimate understanding of the car, and an attention to the minute details regarding the setup. He was not just hard working in physical exercise, but relentless in getting his car adjusted to exactly where he needed to be, knowing exactly how each component interacted and how to get his desired ends. Over the winter Kallen had studied ferociously how she could tap in to this advantage, trying to close up any edge Suzaku had relentlessly.
"Have you done the setup changes?"
"Yea. Soften the front anti-roll bars two clicks, stiffen the rears one notch. Brake bias back 3%-"
"2%, I want rotation, not to crash."
"Ah, sorry I'll put that down one then."
"Yeah." Kallen nodded, explaining as she lay her elbows on the table behind her. "The worst is the second to last corner and Loews, the front doesn't need to bite more, but the rear needs to bite less, I'm having to slow… quite a bit because I can't get over all the way to the right. The way I solve the car for Nouvelle means that I'd have the car snap on me if I were to move all the way to the wall, that's what happened on Thursday, so if we can get… a bit more of the turn in done before the apex, if we can arrive at the apex with an angle of more than 90 degrees, I'll not have to brake that much more, and can get a better exit, so if anything, we can make the steering rack more aggressive."
The engineer blinked, before asking "Are you sure? Gino's wanting to take lock out of the steering rack, not lump more on."
"He's probably worried about swimming pool, but it'll lose him time over the course of the rest of the lap, even if he's more stable. Stable means slow, particularly here."
"We'll do that then, if you're sure."
She smiled, before agreeing "Yeah. The track, it dips in towards the turn before the hairpin, at least at the ideal line. It's not on camber though, it's more that there's a hump right across Mirebeau Upper, so if you slot right into the rain gulley. The whole track is diamond ground perpendicular to the direction of travel, you can feel it in the wheel go…"
Kallen let out a small frown as she struggled to come up with the right words, before shrugging and trying to use her two hands, laid flat with palms towards the floor, raising and lowering them to indicate the lateral sloping of the track, with suitable grunts to accompany the movements to indicate the vague sensations that were being communicated to her hands and wrists.
However, the engineer nodded, accepting her handwavey explanations and setting to work, leaving Kallen with another twenty minutes to psyche herself up for the Qualifying. It was another function
However, there was not more to be done, with the last piece of her input now being applied to the car, leaving her with a half hour to psyche herself up for the qualifying.
She took a deep breath. She closed her eyes, and saw the road crawl out in front of her. The noise was ear splitting. The sensations were overwhelming, as she took in stimulation and sensation from all her receptors, the juddering shaking her hands about her wrist mountings, feeling the bumps and momentary elevations through her back and her thighs, feeling the traction, contact patch and condition of the tyres and their relationship with the suspension, latched onto the edge of the chassis, by how the throttle provided more or less force feedback, all sent to her ankle, which was doing the work of a powered hinge controlling her foot.
There were so many sensory inputs, normally overwhelming at the easiest of tracks like Monza, but here, in the narrow, tight, twisty streets of Monaco, with the short rapid chicanes towards the end of the lap, always close to the walls, always close to crashing, it was just sensory overload. The closer you were to destroying the car against the barriers, the faster you were going.
Every sense and muscle was on fire. It was pure information overload, as the minutiae of the drive would have to be adjusted on the fly, opposite lock applied in anticipation of the oncoming oversteer, one hundred and six percent focus. Kallen had to react to things that hadn't happened yet, as if she waited for them to be sensed it would be too late. Her steering wheel was never still, she would squirm and fly from lock to lock, never able to take a moment off. The narrow streets, the non-existent margin of error, the millimetric difference between Pole position and crashing. It wasn't the fastest track, but it absolutely felt the fastest.
God, Kallen would not prefer to be doing anything else.
"Thick rainclouds, sweeping over the principality. The tops of the skyscrapers, the luxury apartments and penthouses are out of sight, ascending anonymously beyond our view, the yachts are bobbing unsteadily in the harbour with the regular swells from the tumultuous Mediterranean sea, and it appears the rain, which arrived a few moments before the first session of qualifying, is here to stay. Welcome to the third and final session of qualifying, where the top ten drivers from the previous session compete for Pole, a position so far this year which has been monopolised by the man on your screen, Li Xingke, who sits, pondering the conditions. Will he do it again today, or, will the rain, said to be the great equaliser of car performance, combine with the already equalising track of Monaco to change that? All shall be revealed in the next ten minutes, as the green light flashes, and this session can get underway!"
Diethard leaned back, as the camera director switched from shots of the skyline, obscured by black clouds and the rains approaching the scale of biblical tales of Noah, to brief shots from the garages, switching between the faces of the various drivers, helmeted but with their eyes still visible, most of them downcast, thinking through how they would approach this session, with one visible exception.
"A lot of people are staying in their garages for a moment, of course, waiting for the right moment, but one woman who is not waiting is Kallen Kōzuki. She definitely has a chance for Pole here today, as she slides out on the full, blue walled wet tyre. What do you make of her so far Jeremiah? She's only had one race, but she definitely took the fight to Xingke, can she do that today?"
"Well, she has definitely committed to a setup which maximises one lap pace, which makes her a definite contender, particularly given how important Pole is here, on a track that is harder to overtake on than any other. Is it a done deal, of course not, to get good qualifying pace the car has to be extremely twitchy and unstable, and while Kallen has demonstrated incredible reactions on many occasions, the rain is going to make this all the more pressing an issue for her, but she has certainly defied the odds before."
By this point, Kallen, who had been hammering at her brakes to try and warm her tyres and brakes as much as possible, throwing the car at every square inch of tarmac and ne'er travelling in a straight line, all simply to gather up the heat, particularly given the low average speed of a tight track in the wet conditions. However, she wriggled and twisted and shook the car around the out lap, and gave the back end a kick out of Anthony Noges, running up to the start line to begin her timed lap as fast as she could.
Watching, Diethard knew the braking points. He watched Kallen fly past it, not braking until she was almost at the apex. He was convinced she had missed the corner and would spear out, however she somehow made it, flying up Beau Rivage without slowly considerably. Reid watch as she ran it up the outside of the uphill section, before turning into the braking zone. He knew how cars would react to this, and knew that it would only take the slightest twitch to spin into the outside wall, and yet it held. Silently cheering, the first split came up after Casino Square. It was fast, though given that no one else had put in a time yet there was no context for how competitive it would be, particularly compared to Xingke.
However, the lap appeared to become undone as she launched into Mirebeau Upper. She turned too early, and just tagged the rear inside wheel on the tecpro barrier just at the edge of the rain gulley. This dramatically kicked the rear end out, and beyond Kallen's control it bumped the whole car sideways and into the wall on the far side, where the rear tyre on the other side took the brunt of the impact. However, beyond the sidewalls getting scuffed, there was no damage to the car, and she could finish the lap, even if she had lost a lot of time, as Jeremiah went on to explain.
"She pulls it back, she's continuing at speed, but that was a bad moment for her, she'll have lost- yes, we can see on the delta, she lost over half a second on that bump, goodness, she's going to have it all to do on her second lap. Now, let's see, Xingke is coming up to the first sector split, and- he's half a tenth up, and with the mistake Kallen had in the second sector, he's going to take provisional Pole for sure. And look there, Kallen is coming through the last sector, up to Rascasse, and yes, there she goes back into the pits, she'll get one more lap in, as opposed to everyone else who will have to do an in lap after this one. So that's one positive, as we switch back to the Geely."
There was then once again a silence, as Xingke moved through the lap. Particularly as he moved through Mirebeau Lower and Portier, the noise of the cars engine spiking in revs multiple times through the corner, allowing him to get a great launch down to the Nouvelle chicane. As he shot into the tunnel, Diethard picked up where his co-commentator had left off.
"Three minutes to go then, in this session as we ride onboard with Xingke. Look, his wheel is far less busy, there's far less going on in that cockpit, which traditionally means it'll be a good bit faster, but tradition has never really applied to Kallen Kozuki, so, what does this mean for Li Xingke, as he springboards out of Anthony Noges, no drama, no fuss, just a straight shot to the line, as close to the wall as he dares to get to get the shortest run up to the line, and sets provisional Pole! What's Kallen gonna say about that?"
There was another pause as the camera switched from Xingke to Kallen, who was waving her arms frantically as the crew finished strapping on a new set of wet tyres. Jeremiah laughed, before giving his comment.
"Well, she's saying 'Let's have another go at it then!', she's going out again, and I think she's going to be able to improve on her first time, but Xingke was so much further ahead, I'm not sure if she's got it in the car, particularly with that finicky setup. It has a really high ceiling, but can she unlock a high enough percentage of that potential? She made a mistake on the last lap, so we'll have to see."
With a camera mounted at the pit lane exit looking back up the lane, the viewer had the perfect view of Kallen poking the angry, six cylinder, one point six litre bear between her and the rear axle, and, steering with her rear tyres, drift out of her garage from a standstill, pummelling the throttle, with the pitlane speed limit button restraining the howling beast to 49 miles per hour, like a rottweiler ripping at the bars of a pound cage.
Once she got to the pit exit though, he turned off the restraining bolt and let the hound loose. With a minute and a half before the chequered flag was shown on the session, she rushed through the lap to make sure she could get around before the flag dropped and stopped her from setting a time at the death. Viciously punching the throttle like it were someone's throat, she ran up to the line as the seconds counted down, four, three, two, and the lap began.
Inches, millimetres, micrometers away from the wall. On the absolute limit of the track, brushing the tecpro before launching the car in, with more faith put in her car than the Pope put in the Lord, trusting her car to just hang on, her lap and her qualifying position entirely in the hands of her tyres and suspension.
But they hung on, and as the car began the first phase of pivot, she slammed on the anchors, with the rear brakes doing the bulk of the work, and Diethard providing a play by play explanation.
"Look at how violently Kallen is turning the wheel, two or three times on approach to the apex, spending kinetic energy trying to get the car pointed in the right direction. It's a sharper pivot, but you lose more momentum, as you saw there up at Sainte Devote, she did her first turn early, then spent the rest of the corner trying to hustle the car into shape."
There was a brief pauses as Kallen jackhammered at the throttle, with repeated jabs and stabs to keep the revs high and the brake temperature low, a trick picked up from Xingke, before slamming it and slithering up the narrowly kinked section, with ne'er a hint of grip or traction in sight at the speeds she was travelling.
"Yeah, again, she's sliding it through Casino Square, she's having to do so much work, but this sort of setup that requires this level of micromanagement will make her faster, but also, if she lets up for a moment or loses focus, the car isn't going to save you, like it might for some other drivers and some other setups. Here, now she's approaching the first split, lets see how she's gotten on."
As she launched out of Casino Square, she rocketed down to the first split, while the commentators awaited news of her progress, which appeared on the screen as she broke into Mirebeau Upper, and Diethard and Jeremiah gasped, with Diethard recovering first.
"Ah- what, two tenths up on Xingke? Holy smokes, she nailed that first sector, on the absolute edge and still inch perfect, because I didn't think you could improve on Xingke's time, but-"
"Well, it's like Brazil ain't it?" Jeremiah interrupted. "While folks say that my bank account can't be overdrawn, I still have cheques left, Kallen has a slightly different version; I haven't gone as fast as possible, I still have another quali lap. She pulled out a banger at Brazil and she's doing it again. Let's go onboard."
The framing then switched from the spectator view just off the track, watching the car streak by the still view to a camera placed just above the central intake, above the drivers head, giving the viewers a look at how the car was being driven, and in this instance, there was only one word that could be said about how it was being driven; aggressively.
Diethard, watching as she rounded portier at a speed other drivers wouldn't even approach, commented "Well, even if it doesn't ever seem to be going in a straight line, whatever she's doing seems to be fast. It's visibly more dynamic, visibly more active. She's spending far less time in the corners off the throttle, even if she's never still on the track, shifting left and right all the way through the tunnel, moving from inches from the left hand wall to inches from the right at the blink of an eye. It must be so stressful to be racing something that can snap on you in a second like that, but she seems confident, she's certainly not backing off…"
"Yeah, it's not as if she's hacksawing at the wheel for fun, if she didn't, with the way this car is set up, she would be in a wall, it's just horrific to watch, I'm getting anxiety just watching it. But as you say, it's fast, and I think we'll agree this is Kallen on maximum attack, as she's riding the kerb like a skateboard in a bathtub."
The kerb he was referring to was the second of the four kerbs within the complex following the tunnel, rotating with the brakes into the first apex, leaving her with barely enough deceleration to miss the wall that was the fourth apex on the exit, with the wheels on the cars port side both barely missing the jutting corrugated edge, with the car on full lock, the tyres at their theoretical maximum lateral load, before shooting down the swamped straight before Tabac.
Fighting the car tooth and nail through the waterlogged surface, she gathered the car with opposite lock, compensation, opposite lock, and then back, before she surely must have screamed 'Go, go, go go go go go!', threading the needle in the first half of the swimming pool chicane, losing the rear after the second apex, which helped to point the car more towards the second chicane, with the engine already spooled up with her throttle-brake combination as she slid up to the chicane within millimetres of the barrier. She thusly unleashed the barely restrained fury in towards the final complex.
Diethard had continued to narrate the busy lap, getting built up as she gathered steam through the last sector, excplaiming "Kallen Kozuki now, we can barely see on this onboard camera with the rain, as she barely slows the car down into the double apex last set of corners, squirming under braking, that's the rear biased setup you mentioned, it makes her nimble, but it makes her vulnerable to the car suddenly coming away from her. But, she's used all her skills to collect it, and haul the car up and around to the last corner. Kick of oversteer on the exit…"
He held his breath as she rose up the outside kerb, brushing the wall, however there was grip enough to slam the throttle and for the tyres to put down the power.
"She had one get away last year, can this ugly style put her on Pole? The one that got away…"
Up against the inside wall, putting it as close as she could to the shortest possible line, she could reach out and touch the pit wall. Diethard sat and waited for the time, exclaiming ferociously once it appeared.
"…comes right back! Kallen Kōzuki gets the Pole, and this year she gets to keep it!"
It was taken off her last year, but this time she has an indisputable Pole Position at Monaco! Kallen put on a show on Saturday, but that's what she has always been good at; short, quick flashes of aggression, but can she sustain it? She has several more Poles than wins, but can she keep P1 around the track that was described by Nelson Piquet Senior as being like "riding a bike around your sitting room at a hundred miles per hour"?
Let's find out. Be sure to leave a review! Concrit appreciated.
~G1ll3s