Anya stood at the pit wall with her back to the garage. She was facing the track. Her tablet was in her left hand and her right hand was at her ear, pressing the earpiece in against the crowd noise from the grandstands.

She had been standing in that exact position since Leo crossed the line with his P4 time. She hadn’t moved because the session clock was still running and the data was still coming in and standing still was how she processed information when too much of it arrived at once.

The session clock read: [Q1 — 14:31 remaining.]

Fourteen minutes. The field was splitting now. Drivers who had done their first push lap were returning to the pits. Drivers who had held their tyres back were beginning their first runs.

The circuit was moving from the initial traffic chaos of the opening phase into the more calculated middle section where teams made their real decisions about tyre allocation and timing.

She had two push laps worth of fresh rubber left. Enough for one more attempt in Q1 and one full attempt in Q2 if they made it through. The question was when to send Leo out for the second run.

"Rossi is staying out," Elias said over the team radio. "He’s starting another push. Prema must think the track is still improving."

Anya turned back toward the timing screen.

Rossi’s name moved.

1:28.0.

The Italian had improved by two-tenths. His new Sector 1 was 28.1 — the fastest first sector of the session by a margin that suggested he had simply been keeping something in reserve. His Sector 3 remained the best in the field.

Anya exhaled through her nose.

1:28.0 was not unreachable. The data said it wasn’t. But she needed Leo’s second run to be clean. No traffic. No lock-ups. No Enzo Leclerc wandering across the racing line with a puncture.

She turned around and walked back into the garage.

---

Leo was leaning against the back wall of the garage with his arms crossed and his helmet resting on the shelf beside him. He was watching the monitor above the engineering station. Not the leaderboard monitor — the raw telemetry feed. His data overlaid against Rossi’s from their most recent laps.

The two lines ran almost on top of each other through Sectors 1 and 2.

Almost.

In the Turn 7 sweeper — the long, sustained left-hander where Leo had run the Auditory Mapping to redistribute tyre load on the fly — Leo’s line was marginally tighter. Two centimetres at the apex. The speed trace showed it as a 1.4 kilometre-per-hour advantage at the sector exit.

In Sector 3, Rossi’s line was better. The Italian carried more speed through the chicane entry — the result of cleaner tyres and a front wing that was working harder than Leo’s current setting. Rossi’s Sector 3 was 0.3 seconds faster than Leo’s best.

That was where the gap lived.

’Three-tenths in Sector 3,’ Leo thought. ’Two of those are the tyre degradation from the flat spot. The other tenth is the wing. Two clicks of additional downforce just went on. The gap is now one-tenth.’

He looked at the telemetry for another moment.

’One-tenth in Sector 3. Rossi doesn’t know he’s one-tenth ahead of where I actually am.’

The cold amusement moved through him again. The same sensation as the pod. The specific quality of a man who had seen the solution before anyone else in the room had finished reading the problem.

He turned away from the screen.

---

Marcus Berg was at the back of the garage.

He was sitting on a low equipment case with his helmet beside him, scrolling through data on his phone with a focused, tight expression. His engineer — a quiet German named Hartmut who had been with Arcadia for three seasons — was crouched beside him talking through a brake temperature chart in a low voice.

Berg’s car had not gone back out yet. His P9 time was holding, but the field was improving around it. Two drivers had already moved above him since his first push lap. If the session continued on its current trajectory, P9 would drop to P11 before Q1 ended.

The Swede was aware. His jaw was set and his shoulders were carrying the particular tension of a veteran driver who had not delivered and knew it and was trying to decide whether the reason was the car or himself. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Leo looked at him once.

Not with satisfaction. Not with contempt. He looked because Berg’s body language was data. The way a driver carried their frustration between runs told you something about how they were going to behave when the pressure increased. Berg was internalising.

He wasn’t blaming the car yet — his engineer was still in the conversation, still being listened to. But the edge of it was coming. Leo could see it in the set of the man’s neck.

’He’ll push too hard on the second run,’ Leo thought. ’He’ll overdrive Sector 1 to make up the gap he lost in Sector 2. The rear will go light and he’ll either carry a snap oversteer into Turn 3 or back off and ruin the exit.’

He looked away.

Berg’s problem was Berg’s problem.

---

"Leo." Anya had come to stand beside him. She had the tablet in her hand but she wasn’t looking at it. She was looking at him. "Talk to me. What do you need for the second run?"

"Everything we’ve already changed," he said. "The wing and the pressure."

"And your approach?"

"Cleaner Sector 3. Same Sector 1 and 2."

"Rossi just went 1:28.0."

"I know."

"Can you match it?"

Leo looked at the timing screen. Rossi’s name sat at the top of the leaderboard in clean, unblinking white.

1. A. Rossi (Prema) — 1:28.0

2. T. Moreau (Prema) — 1:28.5

3. O. Dubois (DAMS) — 1:28.9

4. L. Kaito (Arcadia) — 1:28.4★

5. R. Vega (ART) — 1:28.7

He looked at Anya.

"I can beat it."