My Formula 1 System-Chapter 609: S3 Chinese Grand Prix. 6
In the commentary booth...
For an entire hour and counting, the heat-scorched Shanghai circuit stretched beneath it, while the voices of Callum Verge and Sam Hunter pulsed through the booth.
Both commentators had spent lap after lap, speaking their throats raw and calling battles, near-crashes, pit dramas, and everything in between. So invested, sweat clung to their foreheads and helmets, their water bottle emptying so fast with four refills so far, yet neither man had visited the bathroom.
The race unfolding below was so exciting that to miss even a heartbeat of it would be a tragedy.
Ten laps later, Luca’s impossible act in Sector 2 was still the matter of the moment. They watched the replay again: the Z24 brushing the inside kerb at Turn 8 just hard enough to appear to reset the front wing alignment.
No debris. No failure. No worsening angle. The wing simply... corrected?
Luca was very smart. The world believed they had just witnessed a display of mechanical intuition bordering on genius. A driver correcting his wounded front wing through pure mastery and timing could very well go down as the most spectacularly innovative move ever in Formula 1 history.
But the truth was nowhere near that. There had been no magical kerb tap, no miraculous self-repair from a perfectly placed graze.
What fixed the wing was <Silent Restore> because Luca had subtly employed it, so instantaneous and invisible. The rest was a facade, staged by him to fool cameras, commentators, and even the stewards.
"...He’s just green-lit himself out of a possible disqualification! Absolute insanity! To pull that off under pressure, while fighting heat, rivals, and stewards? This is a masterclass—no, this is wizardry. Luca Rennick has rewritten what’s possible in a Formula 1 race car...!"
"WOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!"
The Trampos crowd present was cheering so loudly that they could cause an earthquake reminiscent of what happened to the city of Luzhou.
Most of the Chinese population were supporters of Trampos because of the time alignment of the recovery of the Chinese Grand Prix and Trampos Racing’s rise. Specifically, Luca had the primary fandom.
The moment his "front-wing miracle" replayed on the big screens, every fan draped in red and gold lost their mind. They didn’t care how he did it—only that he did. To them, it was mastery and motorsport brilliance all at once!
Don’t forget the very important persons up in their air-conditioned rooms. Their reactions were controlled, but no less telling.
Team owners, executives, etc, watched the replays with sharpened attention. Some clapped politely, others did not. Those who didn’t either smile or speak about it, or had their arms folded, or paid no attention.
Regardless of their gestures, everyone’s mind said the same thing: Luca’s career trajectory was pointing straight toward "greatest of his era," if not ever.
For some, that truth was exhilarating, while others thought it was troubling. Dominance of this scale reshaped championships, rewrote legacies, and threatened reputations. And the paddock felt the shift.
No one in the entire paddock was as proudly impressed as Davide DiMarco. He smiled and clapped at the replays, deeply satisfied. That was the caliber of rival he wanted.
Luca had effectively evicted himself from the meatball flag’s demands once the refreshed telemetry showed his Ferrari in fully safe racing conditions. With no structural risk and no performance deficit, the baffled stewards had no choice but to withdraw the enforcement and let him run.
Marko Ignatova, who crawled out of a costly repair stop, was left staring in disbelief. How had Rennick escaped the time sink he himself was forced to endure? The injustice stung him hard, he turned bitter.
─── 🏁 RACE CONTROL DISPLAY ───
⁕ Grand Prix: Shanghai International Circuit
⁕ Weather: Sunny
⁕ Track Temp: 49°C | Air Temp: 33°C
⁕ Lap: 38 / 56
⁕ Race Time: 01:02:37
[6th Position]
**Good racing, champ. Good racing. P6 now, and the pace is great. Let’s keep it clean through Sector 3, and you’ll be perfect**
**Final stop. Two laps. We’ll tidy up any damage remnants that are needed. Nothing major, just precaution**
"Copy... understood," Luca replied.
Luca hit his marks cleanly, sliding into the pit lane and the service box as quickly as he could.
Trampos were waiting, and in less than two seconds, jacks went up and down, tires off and on. For the front wing, two crew members simultaneously reached for the nose and took swift inspections for any trace of the earlier chaos.
No wasted movements, Luca was back out into the race 16 sec later after his exit
[Pitstop Progidy +1]
[SYNC BAR: [][][][] 87.5%]
It wasn’t explicitly his fastest stop, having taken 2.11 seconds, but Luca had provoked one of his earliest skills back to life.
He used the confidence to jump back into the competition, feeling the intense heat and humidity building up again all through his car.
"Rennick is back in the game. P5 now for him on Lap 40, and suddenly the race has turned on its head for Trampos and their man..."
"Whatever doubts lingered are gone; the Mazerunner is moving with purpose like he wants more. Ahead, the leaders are no longer distant silhouettes, but reachable targets once again. Damage limitation over. Opportunity once more in Shanghai...!"
[Analyzing Ferrari (Scuderia Z24) and host’s distance from 4th Position]
[You are 4.2 seconds away, host.]
P1—Jimmy Damgaard
P2—Antonio Luigi
P3—Ailbeart Moireach
P4—Buoso Di Renzo
When Luca looked at the leaderboard, he felt the reality of a difficult finish in China settle in.
He had secured P5 from a fast stop, using it to his advantage to gain leverage over rivals like Derstappen and Dreyer. Now he had their positions without even getting to cross paths with them. This alone ought to give him sky-high confidence.
But Di Renzo in P4 sat a daunting four seconds plus up the road of curbs and turns, so distant, Luca required patience in these tense moments, rather than impulse.
The formation of the leading four was tight and layered. From Damgaard to Di Renzo, they had unintentionally secluded the rest of the pack from them after laps of consistency that the rest did not have. Which was why Luca assessed them—not as names, but as variables.
All four drivers had varying tire life, aggression thresholds, and defensive habits. Before putting himself into the bubble, Luca had already studied his chances of surviving it. And even though seasoned analysts might say otherwise, the young man was convinced he had a 50:50 fortuity.
[44th Lap]
The heat crept back gradually in subtle levels, turning insistent with time. The Shanghai air thickened more, and so did some drivers’ cockpits.
Luca felt the growing heat accumulate in his paddings, his breath shortening beyond his control. There were fewer than fifteen laps left till the end of the race, long enough to survive, but he doubted if he or even his teammate, Victor, could.
As his eyes got slightly watery from the strain, Luca glanced at his system overlay at the rising meter that caught his attention.
It was the Sync Bar. At 87.5%, three and a half bars full, it was close to completion.
The truth was unarguable that this was his ticket into the podium spots or P1 itself just from a single activation. But Luca remembered the vows he had made to himself. Now, he wondered if he should go back on it just this one time because he really wanted a three-win streak.
’If I get another skill point now, the Sync Bar will fill up and just go to waste....?’ Luca thought unhappily.
He agreed that letting the bar fill only to waste its overflow felt wrong and inefficient. Luca decided to do something about it.
But this wasn’t betrayal at all. He wasn’t breaking his promise—only bending it, precisely.
[Administrative Access Granted!]
[Welcome, host. You have entered the System’s Administrative Layer.]
