Italian Grand Prix 20XX
(I listened to Moon Over The Castle (GT4 Orchestral version) while I did this and you should too)
There are 4 more laps to go in the Italian Grand Prix; Lucia has built a comfortable lead over her teammate Julien, who is focused on keeping Sebastian and Mattias behind him in order to further Ferrari’s points lead in the Constructor’s championship.
If Ferrari pull off a one-two finish, they receive 43 points in the team championship; in contrast, McLaren’s third and fourth will net them 27, effectively losing much of their momentum up until this race.
“Give him hell,” Seb’s engineer tells him, “Use energy through the main straight and turn 2,” as the four cars turn from Parabolica into the straight to begin lap 49 of 53. For a majority of the race, Julien has determinedly kept Sebastian behind him, but the constant defenses against his honeybee rival had worn down his tires rapidly.
Sebastian had not been able to drive a clean lap so far; everywhere he’d go, Julien would be there to stop him. The rabbit was not a slow driver by any means; but he was purposely slowing down Seb in order to allow Lucia to gain a comfortable lead.
‘I’m suffocating,’ Seb thinks to himself. ‘I haven’t driven comfortably since the start of this race. I’ve got to pass him!’
‘For the rest of this race..’
‘I just have to pretend he’s not there..!’
Sebastian consciously made the decision to erase Julien’s car from his view; focusing solely on the corners ahead. Julien notices Seb’s erratic behavior; almost as if he is driving a qualifying lap as if there’s no one ahead of him. “What the hell are you doing?!” Julien yells, going through Curva Grande and swapping his line to avoid Seb’s front bumper. ’Do that again and I’ll run you off!!’
Sebastian’s engineer tells him cautiously, “Don’t be too hasty, Seb-” “Quiet on the radio, please!” Sebastian calls back through the radio, a note of hurried desperation in his voice. The Ferrari and McLaren’s bumpers are nearly touching as they head through the Lesmo turns. Mattias, a second or two behind watched from a distance as his bumblebee teammate nearly ran into the back of the Ferrari ahead braking for Ascari.
‘What are you thinking, Matty?’ the fox thought to himself. ‘You’re a racer! Get in on this too!’ He pushed the gas and turned on DRS through the straight towards Parabolica, closing a gap between him and Sebastian. Sebastian made a sharp turn to the inside, which Julien barely managed to block off, nearly putting Seb onto the grass. Seeing the opportunity, Seb darts back to the outside line, and through his moment of clarity past Julien, could see Lucia ahead speeding through Parabolica; they had caught up to her. Seb couldn’t pass Julien around the last turn, and remained behind him heading into the pit straight.
A sharp voice rang through Julien’s radio, “Julien, you cannot pass Lucia. You cannot pass Lucia.” Julien snapped back, “We are going to catch her! She needs to drive faster!” As they entered the penultimate lap, the announcer shouted out from the booth, ‘Julien North ha segnato il miglior tempo!!!” (Julien North has set the fastest lap!!!)
Despite this information, the engineers dared not speak it to the drivers, as there was a less than a second’s time between Lucia, Julien, Seb, and Mattias, and any distraction could send them spinning. Lucia’s eyes darted from the road ahead to her mirrors constantly. She needed to up her pace, or she risked losing her win at her home race.
Lucia’s tires were close to the end of their lifespan, but as she always did, she forced them to push just a little more. Julien and Seb’s were similarly as torn up, but Mattias, having not engaged with the two ahead had been managing his tires excellently.
The four cars had now bunched up in the field entering the final lap, and Lucia darted around the first chicane, quickly followed by Julien, Sebastian, and Mattias. Lucia knows that all three of them are within the DRS range of each other, and the only way she was going to get through this lap without losing a position was by getting away from the pack behind her.
Through the first DRS zone through the Lesmos, Lucia had only barely gotten away from the one-second time difference needed to activate DRS for Julien behind her. However, Sebastian and Mattias pressed their DRS buttons and their spoilers snapped back to give them that extra 20 km/h down into Ascari.
Julien growled. “You’re not passing me here!” Flying through Ascari, he pressed the DRS button frantically, and to his amazement, he felt his car speed forward; he had gained enough distance on Lucia to activate his spoiler.
Crucially, the wolf girl had gone too deep on the apex exiting the fast chicane; she felt her tires give way and she flew wide out into the final straightaway before Parabolica. A hurried glance in her mirror gave her a horrible shock; Julien’s Ferrari and both McLarens all present biting at the chance to pass her.
Julien knew he was catching his Ferrari teammate quickly, and not even before they were half done the straight. His monitor beeped at 316 km/h and he swerved to the left of Lucia, his hands trembling with the notion of victory in front of the Italian tifosi. Lucia could not do much but cry out in frustration, before something orange caught her eye to her right; Sebastian was beside her as well.
Seb’s eyes were completely focused on the track ahead; in his mind, and in front of him, the path was clear to take victory ahead of the Ferraris. His wheels grazed the edge of the grass on the right.
Speeding down the straightaway at more than 200 miles an hour, the three cars were all next to each other as they approached the braking point for Parabolica; Julien and Sebastian had managed to have almost a car’s length in front of Lucia, and it would be down to those two to determine the Italian Grand Prix’s winner.
However, there was another factor in the finish of this race; Mattias, who had followed Seb closely and was now beside Lucia as they reached the braking point before the final turn of the race. Two by two, the rabbit, the bee, the wolf & the fox stamped on the brakes, the rumbling of their cars drowning out the increasingly loud screams of the crowd.
The Ferrari and McLaren of Julien North and Sebastian Clarke were wheel-to-wheel entering the turn. Sebastian’s tunnel vision had not yet ended, but that was soon to change; he felt his right tires give way to the g-forces, and his left tires push against something hard.
He had made contact with Julien through Parabolica.
He and his rabbit rival lurched to the side, not having quite lost it but knowing they would both find themselves on the outside of the track. “You fucker!!” Julien thought, livid, as he wrestled to bring his car back into control before the sand-trap on the outside of Parabolica caught up to him. Sebastian gasped out, pulling his steering wheel far to the right in order to save his car.
Lucia and Mattias, meanwhile, saw their path cleared by Sebastian’s mistake, and with the most finest of throttle controls, held as much speed as they could through the winding right turn towards the finish. Mattias’ tire-saving strategies had finally paid off into the final turn; his tires gripped the inside of the asphalt, while Lucia had to make very minor corrections to stay on the track. “You damn fox…” Lucia cursed, as she watched her rival sail inches in front of her car. Mattias dared not breathe as he feathered the throttle exiting Parabolica.
Sebastian and Julien could only watch on as their wolf and fox teammates passed them, but reality snapped back to them; Sebastian felt his left rear tire grumble; his tires had punctured from their contact with the Ferrari through Parabolica. Julien stamped as hard as he could on the accelerator, shifting up quicker than Sebastian could with his failing McLaren.
The crowd roared wildly as Mattias crossed the line in front of Lucia, the waving chequered flag putting an end to the drivers’ run. Sebastian saw his podium slip away from him as Julien matched him down the final part of the turn and then more, the Ferrari rabbit’s wing and then front tires pulling out in front of the honeybee’s McLaren as they sailed across the start-finish line to put the final nail in the coffin for their race.