OK Number 64 - By Any Means Necessary
Kallen grabbed the second gear to quell the disobedient tyres' rebellion as they squirmed in the cold like the most ruthless of dictators. However, the rubber fell into line, and she was punched forward, her torso sustaining several body blows with the sudden forces being applied longitudinally. She felt her neck sustain a vicious kick, however she ignored the pain and just moved past it, as she launched in towards turn one, head slightly dipped as she glared at the corner.
Naoto had picked up a good start as well, in fact even better than Kallen had, and had pulled up alongside Kallen, though his momentum faded relative to Kallens and neither could pull dramatically ahead of the other as they swept into the first corner.
But as the dual racing lines converged into a single dovetailed swoosh, like the trailing edge of a wing, Kallen became acutely aware that this two wide dance was quickly becoming untenable. However, Kallen knew who had lined up beside her; it was her brother Naoto, who would not risk his race at turn one, and would concede the position without a fight if there was a risk of losing his car. Kallen exploited this by not pulling out, knowing that he would at some point let her keep first when his nerves overrode his desire to take the lead.
And, surely enough, Kallen's calculation worked, and Naoto pulled out of the throttle on approach to the apex, likely not wanting to do what Suzaku had done the previous year. However, Naoto's hesitation had sealed Kallens lead into the swooping, flowing curves of three, four, five and six up to Dunlop. They rolled gently, never sharp, never harsh like a folded crease of paper or a dagger, but more of a scimitar, a natural ribbon draped into the gap between the small mounds, like a river flowing between them. Kallen could not quite attack these corners in her usual way, with the cambered, smooth ribbon of tarmac melted into the troughs of the rolling drumlins not fitting her angular point-and-squirt style. Instead, one had to let the car flow and roll through the curves to be fast, rather than forcing and harrying the corner through the car with dramatic skating and sliding.
Smoothness was the key to speed here. No wonder Suzaku had won two years in a row. It was a good job he was so far down the grid, or Kallen would have been utterly scuppered.
However, as the car bottomed out under the vertical forces of the rising Dunlop, Kallen now approached the half of the lap Kallen made back her time on. Through the first sector of flowing esses, Kallen would lose over three tenths to the smooth operators of Gino and Suzaku and the like, and sure enough, she looked briefly in her mirror and saw Naoto, more at home in this sector, having made up the time he had lost in the first corner and was now all over her back bumper. However, overtaking in the first sector was difficult, and she made her time back over the rest of the lap, where most of the overtaking happened, particularly into the hairpin and the Casio chicane after the heavy braking zones.
She wasn't faster everywhere, but she was faster where it mattered.
Into Degner One, there was little distinction in the blended dab of the brakes into the not-quite-flat kink, however into Degner Two, Kallen's rear biased brakes were able to do most of the rotation before the apex, sliding through the short radius corner already lined up to gas it before she had even reached the exit kerb. This early throttle application covered her into the second best spot on the track to overtake, into the turn ten hairpin, as the chasing pack were too far back to make a move into the braking zone.
Kallen let out a chesty breath as she buffeted a charge through the long curve up to Spoon. The corner dipped slightly and was taken blind, requiring complete faith that the corner would be where you remembered it, required complete understanding of how much to brake, that being just a slight tappeting before turn in, and just where; too early and you would bog down, too late and you would skate over the kerb and into the gravel trap. It required no fear, no hesitation, complete trust that the car would do what you told it to.
With any animal instincts to lift off the throttle destroyed, she dipped the brake while keeping the throttle welded to the floor, slowing without dropping revs, and physically felt the car be pulled by the force of the tyres, ripping and tearing to viciously tug the front end round with the subtlety of a doorman at a pub past midnight.
The lap took a brief break in the prolonged insanity with the just-over-a-kilometer back straight, the overpass of the figure of eight, first penned as a Honda test track in 1962 by Dutchman John Hugenholtz. 130R, flat, last chicane, hurl it in without a notion of self-preservation, and away to the line. Kallen preferred the tight, finicky nature of post-2002 Fuji or Okayama, but it was by no means a bad strip of tarmac, indeed it was quite a pleasant one to drive.
But Kallen was not driving for pleasure. She was driving to win the race.
However, Kallen could not fully immerse herself even in this, as the clouds loomed overhead. According to the forecasts, it was not a matter of if, but when. However, the question for when was still prescient, particularly given that, beyond the rolling of a dice, the only spot where one could test the grippiness of the surface and how wet it was through the first sector, with its high speed, front limited swoops, by which time they would have passed the pit entry and would have to an entire lap before the car could be hustled back to the pits in conditions the tyres could well be unsuited for.
As such, Kallen had to be attentive with the condition of the road, feeling how the resistance of the wheel would fall away as the lateral friction between the road and tyres as they slewed and strayed away, dragging the front end of the car with it, the surest sign of growing surface water, even if none could be seen. However, the feeling was ambiguous, with the clear, crystal definition of the tarmac, while less crystal in resolution, while was not quite as sharp in the feel in the wheel, was not yet unambiguously dulled.
As she approached the last chicane for the end of the next lap, she had a decision to make. If she did not pit now, she would have to wait an entire lap to get onto the intermediate tyres. The car wasn't wallowing like a boat, but if Kallen felt it wallowing into the first sector, it would be too late. How could she tell?
She briefly panicked, almost lifting out of the throttle through Casio from indecision, before she had a brainwave.
"Has Rolo pitted for wets yet?"
Kallen's logic went thusly; Lelouch had staked his claim to the Rebellion seat, secured his three career wins, and worked up to second in the championship on his strategic thinking and sixth sense for the weather. Whatever tyre he wanted to put his drivers on was the right tyre to be on.
The reason Kallen specified Rolo was, ironically, because of Suzaku. Suzaku had reported that while he was at the team, the optimum strategy would never go to him, as priority number one was helping Rolo. If Rolo was doing something, then it was in Lelouch's eyes the best thing to do.
"He's been told to pit, but it's not looking like the conditions-"
Kallen nodded along to the first part, before interrupting "Then we're coming in too."
She immediately jerked the wheel to the right, peeling off the racing line and onto the slip road. Only Schwarzenritter's pit crew were out, waiting to serve Rolo, with the Camelot team just assembling in the nick of time to swap out Kallen's tyres, only perhaps seven or eight laps young at this point in the race.
In, stop, raise jacks, whirr of drills, second whirr of drills, lower jacks, and away. Gone in one point eight seconds. It was the moment of truth; was her gamble prescient?
As she dipped her toe into the tarmac lake uncharacteristically gingerly, Kallen's conclusion as she rounded the first corner was hazy, much like the track texture itself. It was much easier to infuse the carcass of the rubber with heat, as the energy tore through the tyre, searing through them like roots. However, in spite of the readiness with which they warmed, there was still not the definition of the tyres just left, the clarity and certainty of purchase. It was the difference between watching a video in a 4k frame against a 360 pixel frame, there was not the crystal, biting edge, there was a slight vagueness, a slight uncertainty that made the correlations between her movements of the wheel and the angle of the cars turn going from correct to the micrometer to perhaps correct to the inch, or correct to the nearest couple of inches.
As the car swayed and wallowed through the first sector, Kallen sank beneath the water that wasn't there, or at last her heart did. She could not be sure, but this undercut would not gain her time on the wet track while everyone stayed on dries, it would lose her time on a dry track while she was out on wets. It wasn't as stark as going out for a run in flip flops, as the air was dense with moisture, the tarmac was cold, and indeed, there was a slight spitting, almost unfelt. These tyres were not to this track surface, on the verge of being wet as if anticipating it, what a fish might be to a jungle, but it was certainly not what it might be to the ocean. It was perhaps a shallow pond, or an ill attended tank in the dentists office; vaguely uncomfortable, precarious.
"I think-" Kallen began, before having to stop to focus her attention before regathering her composure, "I think this is the wrong tyre, we went too early."
"Do you want to come back in?" came the concerned voice from the other end of the channel.
Kallen waved her arm in front of her face. Much and all as she had heard of the sunk cost fallacy, she still bought into it. If she went back into the pits and spent twenty seconds getting onto the faster tyres, she would not only be throwing that time down the drain, but given the inevitability of rain, another twenty seconds would be spent putting the wets back on.
Besides, no amount of slow driving until the track was wet enough could cost her forty seconds, not unless it didn't rain for ten or fifteen laps.
Shaking her head, she shouted back into the radio "No, no. It's going to get wet, if I come back in for dries I'll just have to come in a third time to put the wets back on. Just going to have to tough it out, gah."
She shook her head. Lelouch had messed up, which certainly brought some schadenfreude, but she had been the lemming that had joined him. His gambling had bit both of them Kallen acknowledged, as she almost felt the time she was bleeding away on the wrong tyres, having to brake just that bit earlier. It would only lose perhaps a tenth on early braking and another tenth on unsteady acceleration per corner, but with eighteen corners over the course of a lap, three point two seconds were going down the drain every lap.
Rain did, mercifully, come and arrest the flow of these losses, but only after four more laps of ambiguous surface liquidity, by which time she had lost twelve seconds to what was functionally depreciation. As she came out of the final Casio chicane, she watched who was coming out of the pits and she would be racing into the first corner.
They were not the sorts of cars she had planned on racing today.
An Ashford, two Vanwalls, and a Geely. Not as bad as Softrolas or a Densō, which were firmly at the back of the grid as opposed to the upper midfield formed by the Vanwall/B.A.R/Geely bloc, though to see an Ashford this high up would to the engaged observer represent a wholesome bit of positivity, that this privateer operation was doing this well. However, Kallen was not an engaged observer. She was a scalpel, only seeing something to cut, something to chase. A target.
With the tyre difference now neutralised, with everyone now on Intermediates, Kallen's pace deficit was not longer an obstruction to pulling back the gap, clawing back what she had lost, and so she set to work.
She was helped by the fact that her tyres were already warm. The tyres would take a lap or so to get up to a pliable temperature, below which they would not flex to disperse the longitudinal inertia or provide the grip. While she had fallen a ways back, she saw her opportunity to make like a poacher in duck hunting season through this pack, particularly given how much they slowed into turn three, simply not confident in the tyres and the conditions. Kallen by contrast had spent several laps kneading the tyres and had the feel of the suspension and its response to the texture of the track over the road hooked up to her spine, and was perfectly willing to yeet the car where one would not ordinarily yeet cars.
In this case, it was the exit of turn three and into turn four, where Kallen was able to go around the outside, take the longer line and keep the pace, even in spite of needing to turn at a higher speed for the same amount of rotation as if she had been able to clip the apex. There was just that much overspeed.
She picked off the Ashford out of Dunlop, and, having learned from last year about the dangers of making moves into Degner One, decided to use a different tactic. She knew that whoever was ahead knew what happened last year. They would likely be scared out of their minds that they might end up like Xingke had, that Kallen, who was hardly unknown for her audacious attempts to pass, would make a second attempt and end both of their races in a simply hideous accident.
Kallen was going to use this fear, take advantage of it, to get ahead.
She allowed the car to drift to the right, to the outermost edge of Dunlop corner, which formed the inside to the first Degner. This put the car ahead, the Vanwall of Dorothea Ernst, in a quandry; did she avoid the crash, which to Dorothea looked to be inevitable based on what she knew about Kallen and her level of commitment, by simply lifting out and conceding the position before they reached the corner, or the more likely alternative of diving to the inside and defending it for all she was worth, as for all the supposedly 'single lane, one wide only' corners Kallen had made two wide with her bizarre approach to hustling the car up the road, Degner One was unambiguously, uncontestably one car wide, no more. If Dorothea entered at the shallowest approach she could, protecting the apex like her own child from a swooping attack, then Kallen could not pass into Degner One. And, indeed, given that this was the route she chose, sticking to the exit kerb of seven which would turn from the outside exit to the inside entry as the track just went over the crest as close as she dared, Kallen could not pass into Degner One.
But Kallen wasn't interested in passing into Degner One.
Her ploy had been to make Dorothea take this compromised line into Degner One, which ordinarily required just a little dab of the brakes if taken with the full sweep from the far kerb, to the apex, and then to the far exit kerb. To take the shallow line, trying to do the entire job of rotating the car after reaching the apex, would require quite a bit of braking, certainly far more than if Dorothea had been taking the optimal line, if she had not been defending from what she perceived was a race-ending threat.
Kallen meanwhile had suddenly moved wide, placing her car on the outside kerb in a quick twitch which gave her a much faster line through the corner, or rather she was able to get back onto the power much earlier. This early acceleration allowed Kallen to draw level with Dorothea after the exit of the corner and make a diving move into the second, tighter Degner, which left more room for two wide moves such as this one, with the only reason it was not usually the site of many overtakes being the one line corner preceding it funnelling cars into a single file order with the single line, and single apex speed. By forcing Dorothea into compromising her own exit, Kallen had manipulated the situation into one where even with the short straight between the two kinks, the speed difference between the two women was enough to dive to the inside, and out of Degner Two, Kallen had seized the position, which proved to be fifth.
With the crowd who had just left the pit lane dealt with, she could now give chase to folks such as Naoto who had not been hoodwinked into the earlier stop, as she charged deeper into a heart of immeasurable darkness in pursuit of her first win at her home event, plunged into the deep clouds, the deep rain, the deep fog.
The rest of these positions came more slowly as the lap counter ticked over to eleven. Gino in fourth gave up the position without fuss on lap twelve, and Xingke, who had demonstrated his keen understandings of weather patterns to vault himself up the field by pitting at exactly the right time, was next, though the Geely had never been the same since the tyres changed their construction before Britain, and made for easy pickings as Xingke had no answer to the speed Kallen could carry through corners, particularly over the second half of the lap.
Next along was Rolo, who was driving a fully tricked out Schwarzenritter, with Lloyd's vision finally realised with a raft of new upgrades and updates. Lelouch had likely been a bit uncertain about whether he could keep Suzaku on side, and so planned to update both of the cars at Suzaku's home race. Suzaku had run out of patience before he could enjoy them, but Rolo was enjoying Asplunds handiwork, with a new barge board and suspension layout more intricate and complex than the International Space Station.
This made him a beast through Spoon, with his planted rear end allowing him to just throw the car into the corner with no fear, even as the car straddled the sausage kerbing on the outside. Suzaku's influence had made the car very user friendly and drivable, even for Rolo, a rookie, which meant even Rolo was able to wheel the car around by the scruff of its neck, though perhaps lacking the deft touch his erstwhile teammate.
This manifested in a slight squirm, a mild squirrelling as he applied the throttle. It was moderated by the beastly suspension and differential, which just ate the wheelspin in one gulp, but it was enough.
Kallen smelt blood.
She springboarded off of Spoon as if she had a Saturn V rocket strapped to her diffuser, physically feeling the longitudinal acceleration. As Rolo had bogged down, getting third was all wrapped up before 130R.
The next car along, Albert Darlton in the B.A.R, was dispatched with soon after, though his presence this high up would, if Kallen was presently inclined in any such direction, have elicited questions such as 'What on Earth's he doing up here?' However, even if Kallen were inclined in such a direction, the question would not have lasted for very long, as he was dealt with on the exit of the chicane.
Now it was Kōzuki against Kōzuki, in a head to head fight in relatively even cars, as back in Britain there were mitigating issues and Canada had been inconclusive, with neither driver at the peaks of their form back at Montreal. However, now they were both at their respective apices, in front running cars, and it would be a no holds barred race.
And it was not one Kallen intended on losing, especially at their home race. But she knew Naoto, knew what good a light under him could do, and she knew she would have to get inventive in how she could get ahead, and make the move stick.
It took her a few laps to catch up to Naoto and work out where her move would be, over which time she grew to appreciate one aspect of the improved car, at least post-Italy; the tyre wear.
Kallen had grown bored and irritated by the cries to conserve tyres, to the point that with an unupgraded 2019 chassis she had tried the four stop in Britain out of sheer annoyance. Kallen was irrepressible, and did it anyway, though she needed to pit very often due to the lack of temperature controls on the wings and aerofoils. While she had dealt with it then, she had had to lose a lot of time in the pits. However, the new upgrades had greatly improved the cooling of the rubber and hence the wear rates. Only now, as she was catching up to her brother and realised that once upon a time her surge back to second would have been all that her tyres were good for, and she'd have to pit frustratingly early, before she'd caught the last fish.
However, Camelot had given her the tyre life to match how hard she was pushing, and she was pushing, pushing, pushing, playing with the throttle up to the limit of rear grip out of almost every throttle. Beyond simply balancing on a tightrope, Kallen was actively leaping up and down off the end of the tightrope, relying on her skill and response time to land back on the narrow thread every time. It was fast, but if Kallen took her attention away for even a moment it would be deadly, hence the necessity of falling into this hyperconcentrated stupor.
But beyond inducing more than a little solipsism, a sense that the entire world consisted of only Kallen and that all context, all other thoughts beyond how to get around the track a bit faster had already fallen out of relevance. The only other beings inhabiting Kallen's own little world were the car ahead and the car behind, and much to Kallen's joy, the car behind was getting smaller, and the car behind was getting bigger. That the car was Naoto was incidental, beyond the context provided by what Kallen knew to be Naoto's weakness.
Because he was, all around, a very good driver; very good head on his shoulders, a measured driver somewhere between Xingke's rapidly oscillating application and Suzaku's smooth, progressive application in how he approached the controls. Very well rounded and very adaptable, not excelling anywhere, but with no obvious weaknesses.
However, Kallen had found one.
She caught up with him after three laps of chasing, just out of Spoon again. He had been very good defensively, always knowing exactly where to position his car and having an excellent proprioception with regards to where he was in relation to Kallen. However, as they both flew up to 130R, something happened that Kallen hadn't expected, although if she had any capacity for hindsight should have been obvious; Naoto lifted out of the throttle into 130R, rather dramatically; Kallen had to swerve a bit out of the way, for fear she would run into the back of him.
Naoto was scared of 130R.
Kallen could hardly blame him. Through no fault of his own his career had nearly been ended there two years earlier, which doubtless hardly encouraged one to tackle the corner aggressively. Besides, he made up for the lost time through the rest of the lap, especially in the first sector. However, while Kallen knew of it, she could exploit where he was scared, prey on his weakness.
She followed him closely through to the end of the lap, and most of the next one. She just sat behind him, through Dunlop, Degner One, Degner Two, the hairpin, before taking a wide arc through Spoon to set up her overtake, getting a much better run onto the back straight.
Naoto had a weakness, and Kallen would take advantage of it.
She had bluffed an overtake through Degner One with Dorothea. As she pulled alongside Naoto, the pair hurtling towards the fearsome 130R, she was not bluffing.
She placed her car on the outside, in the wet conditions, as the corner approached. Naoto now had the inside line as they moved two wide down to the just-barely flat out corner at two hundred miles per hour. Naoto knew that any contact between the two cars would have resulted in an accident that at least one of them may well not have escaped unhurt, and this was underlined by Naoto's gripping fears, which Kallen would exploit for the second time in this race, after already having bullied him out of an overtake attempt into turn one by not giving room.
Naoto had a choice; lift out of the corner, or crash at the corner that had almost cost him his legs.
Kallen did not lift.
Naoto did.
He had waited so long to get back in the car, he did not want to throw it away again. He had something to fear, something to protect, extenuating emotional influences that compromised his willingness to carry speed, to take risks, to keep his nose in the gap paying no attention to the possibilities of what could go wrong.
And worrying about what could go wrong had not ever won anyone a race, or the championship. Naoto, in lifting off, gave his sister a monopoly on the dominant line through the corner, and she was past.
While getting ahead of her brother would not win her the championship, it had put Kallen into the lead of the Grand Prix, however it was only just over halfway to the end. As the race went along, the rain picked up gradually, and by lap twenty-eight of fifty-two, it was time for the full wet tyres to deal with what had become a monsoon.
In, twenty seconds, and now with wet tyres, she could attack the track, and given they were fresh wets, she would be fine to the end with the brand-new rubber so long as the rain didn't lighten off again.
However, with the new tyres which could disperse far more water, Kallen became very comfortable very quickly and fell into a groove, silently and uncharacteristically wishing for a smooth and easy run to the finish. Just an easy ride to the end, just once. Kallen enjoyed the fight, but the win at the Japanese Grand Prix had been so elusive, had slipped through her grasp twice, and would be such an incredible sensation, she didn't care. The universe, just this once, could give Kallen a break.
But that wouldn't be what happened, no chance in hell. It would not be that easy, no way.
A lot going on. Naoto's anxiety surrounding The Corner, Kallen driving an absolute storm of a race, and then, on top of that, a foreboding end. Something is about to go wrong, and Kallen is going to have to dig deep into her soul to fight the hardest battle of her life so far. Look forward to that, and in the meantime please do leave a review if you'd be so kind.
Also, I GOT THE E
~G1ll3s