World Grand Prix Championship 21 [RP/results]

[Recuecn]

Vincent and Valérie were having a quiet but animated discussion in the UrGa pit garage in Queensland. Qualifying had just wrapped up. Around them, UrGa engineers were already at work on Vincent’s car, stripping it down and taking it apart. It was a massive undertaking, and the garage was chock full of engineers, all hustling about.

Vincent and Valérie seemed, for the moment, oblivious to the organized chaos around them. Vincent had hatched another idea he was keen on, and Valérie was, as ever, entirely focused on helping her employer achieve anything he set his mind to.

“Something about that grin, I can’t get it out of my mind,” Vincent was saying. “I’ve got to have her.”

“What can I do for you, Monsieur?” asked Valérie. If she was surprised that Vincent was turning to her for advice on this matter, she did not show it. That said, it was unusual for Vincent to come to Valérie for help with his love life; although as his personal assistant she was intimately acquainted with all of his habits and really every aspect of his life, unlike in his business dealings, where Vincent always found plenty of work to delegate, when it came to seduction, he was typically able to handle that all on his own. After all, he was remarkably good-looking. His bright red hair and remarkable moustache attracted one’s attention, and when he put on the charm, he was quite irresistible if you didn’t know what a cad he was.

This time, however, Vincent was apparently struggling. “Every time we interact I get the sense that she’s shutting me down. I might write her a letter, a note or something, but I’d like your thoughts. You’re a good judge of character, Valérie.”

“Merci, Monsieur. Do you already have something in mind for your note?” Valérie sidestepped to let past an engineer carrying a large chunk of Vincenet’s fender.

“I do,” said Vincent, ignoring another mechanic who grunted an apology as he stepped through the middle of their conversation, carrying a brake rotor. “I was thinking that probably the only thing we have in common is racing. I could offer to tutor her, since my times have consistently been faster than hers. We could maybe go out in a two-seater together, that could be romantic.” He paused and reflected. “It worked on Tati.”

“If you want my advice, Monsieur, do it the other way around. From what I’ve seen of her, Nepö is a proud woman. I think she senses your own pride and resents it—that is the sense of rejection you are getting. But if you flip the script, you may surprise her and change her mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ask her to give you some tips instead,” said Valérie.

Vincent spluttered. “But I’m better at her. Look at the testing sessions. Look at the race. Look at the qualifying we just did!”

“She may see it as a sign of respect,” said Valérie. “Do as you see fit, but you asked for my advice.”

“You’re probably right,” said Vincent. “Can you just write the note for me?”

Valérie nodded, and jotted a reminder to herself in her notebook she always carried in the breast pocket of her pantsuit.

Vincent, as was his businessman’s nature, let the conversation end as soon as he’d determined the “actionable item”. He looked around the garage.

The parts of his car lay strewn across the floor. Mechanics were carefully inspecting every one. Where his car had been just minutes before, remained only the most barebones chasse. No wheels, no fenders or aero components—even the engine had been lifted out and was being disassembled on a bench in the back of the garage.

“What the fuck is happening!?” screamed Vincent.

A few of the UrGa engineers glanced up at him warily, but the UrGa team knew of Vincent’s temper by this point, and no one wanted to bear the brunt of his fury. They began to pick up their work again, but Vincent wasn’t having it.

“I’m serious! Someone give me an answer! Why the fuck is my car in pieces!” He gestured to Nepö’s car. “And hers you don’t touch!? Who’s in charge here?”

There was some sheepish mumbling. Vincent caught the name Illarion. He whirled around. “Where is he!?” Across the garage, he saw Illarion Osipov, his race engineer. Osipov looked almost panic-stricken, like he’d been caught red-handed at something. Vincent stormed over to him.

“Explain all of this!” Vincent fumed. “Why is my car in pieces on the floor? Fucking smithereens!”

Osipov backed away, holding up his hands, palms out, as if expecting Vincent to attack him. “It’s just a routine inspection!” he protested. “Just checking some of the parts to try to get some more data ahead of the race!”

“Routine my ass!” yelled Vincent. “Some of the parts? You took off every part! Why wasn’t I told about this before it happened!? The same thing happened in Hodori! My whole car, just pulled apart, with no warning or explanation!” He paused for breath, looked around, and then pointed at Nepö’s car on the other side of the garage. “And what about that bitch’s car!? You haven’t touched it!”

Osipov was sweating. He probably should have tried harder to hide the inspection from Vincent, but Gatutin had ordered it, first in Hodori, and now again in Doubeia after Vincent had continued to outperform Nepö Kinder. Vincent wasn’t meant to know about it, but Illarion wasn’t sure how many lies he could tell before Vincent caught on.

“Uh, that one’s next,” he stammered.

“Bullshit! I know you didn’t destroy her car in Hodori! You and Vasily are playing favorites, and I won’t have it! I don’t understand in what world you think it’s acceptable to do something like this without even bothering to communicate with your own fucking driver first. How is this team supposed to function like this!?”

Vincent looked around the room. Most of the engineers had stopped what they were doing and were watching Vincent as he threw his tantrum. One unfortunate mechanic, just a few feet from Vincent, tried to avoid eye contact and look busy. He went back to his work—examining one of the disassembled components under a magnifying glass.

Vincent turned his fury on him. “Are you fucking spying on my car? Inspector Clousseau over here, with his magnifying glass, going over the evil villain’s car for clues with a fine-tooth comb. Gimme that shit.” He grabbed the magnifying glass from the mechanic and hurled it out into the pit lane. It shattered on the tarmac, tiny pieces of glass scattering on the pavement.

Vincent jabbed a finger at Illarion. “I’m going to have you fired. I want a new race engineer. You can tell Vasily he’ll be hearing from me about this.” He stormed out of the garage.

Valérie followed him.

“Come on, Valérie,” Vincent said. “Let’s go find Yurievsky. Don’t mention the whole thing with the douanier, but I need to tell him I’m going to have to pause his payments for the time being. We’ll see how he takes it.”

[Aboveland]

Iskajärvi International Airport
Iskajärvi, Aboveland

Janne begins to doze off against the chilly airplane window, then suddenly jolts back awake as if he'd been pulled into the void from both his legs. He groans, pinches himself, and fidgets in his seat. His sweatshirt is too tight around his arms; his jeans are oppressive on his thighs; his shoes constrict the bridges of his feet; and a rush of heat and breathlessness tears at his chest. Flustered, he pulls his seatbelt buckle and slips out of his layers of winter clothes, then pulls the air con vents — all three of them in his row — straight towards his face. First, it was the de-icing that was taking so long, then it was the baggage carts struggling to drive fifty meters out onto the ice, then it was that dumbass that was "running late" and somehow convinced the airline to hold the plane at the gate, then it was the second round of de-icing, because so much time had passed since the first one, and through all that the First City-bound plane was still stuck at the motherfucking gate.

He's irritable, undoubtedly so — half from claustrophobia in the tight Nordenflyg seat at the far back of the plane, having seemingly forgotten the years of flying economy that had quenched his spirit, and half from the excruciating exhaustion that drums at his temples. He's had to turn down the Vankkavalta flight back to HQ that Nexus Racing had offered him for Monday morning, instead opting to stay the night at Ted's and spend the rest of Monday resting before catching a red-eye to the Wardship — but he realized that this would probably be his one and only wildly expensive, last-minute. economy fare three AM flight ever if he could help it. He closes his eyes again as he rests his head back on the window, and the PA crackles into unintelligible life with the peppy voice of the first officer. If he lets his mind wander, maybe he'll get lost in his monologue and fall asleep.

Reminiscing on his day, he cracks a faint, tired smile. It had always been a given to him that he'd end up at Ted's house on Sunday night — no less after sharing a 1-2 result and bathing each other in sticky, pungent champagne in front of the whole world — but the Tumbran had been so odd throughout the weekend that he had begun to think it wouldn't pan out. The lure of doubt certainly helped Ted to generate a rush of stupid juvenile joy in Janne when he finally did indirectly lay out the invitation, by the time the hospitality suites and supply containers had begun to close their doors and the fans had all spilled out of the circuit.

One private flight and a leisurely, tension-charged drive later, they wasted little time in discarding their bags and toppling all over each other in the living room, just about touring every space in the house throughout their podium celebrations, featuring multiple more bottles of prosecco, sticks of incense and palo santo, . Young, successful, rich — and very much so in Ted's case, brimming with youth and heat and busting at the seams with unattended, suppressed desire — how else was Sunday going to draw to a close?

The next morning, things felt like they'd gone back to normal, or at least, to how they'd been the week prior to the race. Tender, caring, quiet at times and raunchy at others, the two kept to themselves in Ted's humble abode. They set up the sauna together, hooked up the cold plunge and gave it a go, tried making some banana bread with the tiny, anemic bunch Ted had managed to find at the grocery store for a stupidly expensive thirty turkki, and so on. For having spent so much time apart during the off-season and even throughout WGPC20 itself, it struck Janne how naturally living together had come for them both. Certainly, they could have had more stressful and troubling daily lives to put their compatibility to the test — but the days they spent cocooned together, things seemed to click.

It's what made Ted's sudden, quiet retreat throughout the weekend all the weirder to Janne on the trip to the airport, a talkative Ted at the wheel the perfect background noise for him to ruminate on the man himself. Of course their cohabitation was harmonious — it was simply too easy for Ted. Nothing could scare him behind the safety of their front doors; no intrusive thoughts could fester if they spent every waking hour chatting and fluttering their eyes at each other; it was never hard to spark conversation or keep the mood flowing if, in the absence of words, Ted could just caress his cheek or slap his ass or feel him up under his shirt and disarm Janne unopposed — try as he might, after he'd had way more than enough for a week. There were seemingly no limits to his love — that which he so deeply struggled to admit — except for the lock that separated his entryway from the street.

When Ted hung while speaking, Janne recognized that it was his cue to react, and in those moments, he lingered on his lover's features, and how the passing orange streetlights strobed diagonally across his fair cheeks and tufty hair and beady eyes. He'd for sure miss him like hell in his week away in the Wardship, submerged deep in simulator work for Doubeia — Gertrude had been quick to separate the jubilation of the win from the tyrannical reality of having to take their eight-wheeled flying boat to a street circuit — and hopefully he'd not award himself much time to linger on his budding relationship. Hopefully, too, when they met again in Queensland, the Tumbran would bring his fiery passionate caring love in his carry-on. But he couldn't push away the thought that pecked at him that their bond was perhaps only as real as it was carnal, or that it could one day suddenly vanish without warning if the not-so-great Ted decided to kill and maim the normal Ted for good. He couldn't shake the feeling that there were two Teds that lived in that dear Tumbran noggin — and he wasn't exactly sure how much longer he would tolerate one of them.

---

Queensland Street Circuit
Queensland, Doubeia
Qualifying

The buzz around the circuit had died down considerably as the session clock struck minus eight minutes. Except for the sound of flapping tarps and falling tools in the HiTEN garage, and the typical bangs and whirrs that echoed across the garage, it was a strange oasis in the tail-end of the session. With the circuit having developed considerably throughout the weekend, it was time for the most ambitious teams to throw everything at the wall for their final runs. In camp Ælund, the story was no different, but it was critical.

The post-Aboveland teardown of Abs' car had, at the very least, confirmed that what had pushed him into the gravel in Fjellutfordring had not been his mistake. A wiring defect in the electric motor had held up just until the start of the race, and the extreme power draw throughout his intense first lap had eventually finished the job the electrical arcs were plotting against the copper windings. The discovery had helped to quell Abs' looming performance anxiety, even if it had thrown a whole dart set at the mechanics in Lintulahti and prompted Edvin to tighten the stringency of the quality control back at base; a returning driver after a long hiatus, and a team that was debuting their first power unit and their first new car in four seasons, were not together a failproof package.

As the qualifying session entered its final stretch, the growl of the engines of the grid spooled up oppressively in the garage. As things stood, Ted was a comfortable tenth, as he'd managed on Friday — a solid performance so far, which had started to pique Terho's interest again as his WGP2 4 season had before. For Abs, though, things were not as rosy. So far, it had been another tinker session in the Goita garage, with Terho frantically consuming the data the engineers fed to them both. His simulator work had been stellar, and in the sister car, the Tumbran was sparring with the constructors' champions, the Badai — the KISMOs —, and the home heroes, but no matter what tweaks they did to the rear toe damper or the aero, Ted was braking better, throttling faster, turning smoother, and just straight up asserting himself over the Reçueçian. So far, he was seeing himself languishing far behind the top 10.

Once the engines had fired up, though, and the dazzling black and orange car of Haukanna crossed their garage exit, both Ted and Abdoulaye lurched out onto the pitlane. The team — that is, the simulation and performance engineers back in Aboveland — had begun to realize that, for all their shared strengths, both drivers were diametrically opposed in setup preference. The two of them preferred to power out early, looked after their tyres, and wanted a car they could hammer out of corners, but where the Tumbran sought a twitchy rear and filled his entries with micro-corrections, Abdoulaye was gentle with his inputs, and his pace only really started to show on the extreme end of understeer. It was a blissful discovery for the designers: the car was working exactly as intended, but though the adaptability of the chassis was a given in theory, how to actually adapt it was both the tricky part and the magic word.

The pair's outlaps went uneventfully as they prepared to organize for their last two shots at pole, and as the splits for their first attempts started to trickle through, Terho felt the back of his neck and the undersides of his arms moisten. He resorted to biting his knuckles to evade his nail-biting habit, but it was no use for Abdoulaye's pace. Though Ted had marginally improved on his time to slot into sixth, the Reçueçian had mustered up nothing better than thirteenth.

During the cooldown lap, Terho scrambled to Abs' pitwall. The evidence was enough to draw conclusions: Abs was losing all his time on Convention, going skittish over braking and getting an awful exit towards the final stretch of the circuit. It looked like a tremendously tricky turn and the most dangerous of the braking zones on the track, and for a driver with such a knack for control — and the spinning, yawing feeling from Fjellutfordring fresh in his mind — there was bound to be little of it or confidence before the apex. With too little time left in the session to try anything new or to get the cars into formation for a tow, it would be Abs against the world on his last attempt. Feeling around him for a headset, Terho yanked an unused set from Ted's wall beside him and plugged it into the comms box, barking into the microphone before even setting it on his ears. "Abs, full attack this lap," he ordered, his tone terminal but reassuring. "Trust the car, Abs. You are in control."

He might or might not have replied to the message, but as soon as the two drivers opened their laps, the tension rose. Behind them on track, the cars of Janne Laukkanen, Haukanna, and Archer, each screaming or whistling down the massive pit straight with their distinct soundtracks. Terho, though caught up in Abs' lap, peeked over at the screens to his left. Purple sector one for PRE. He could hardly hide his grin, but it went as soon as it came when the trigram was replaced with HAU. Into sector two, Ted's name was emblazoned in purple again — and this time, it stayed purple as the Pryfors Bilar crossed the timing beam.

With Convention coming up for Ted, and the clock ticking over to zero to mark the impending end of the session, Terho bit harder into his knuckles. The Tumbran hugged the outside cleanly and lurched into the apex, barrelling out of the corner early and smoothly, the car following on his inputs to rocket down the straight. His eyes darted back towards Abdoulaye's onboard; he gave the brakes an assured slam, pointed the car towards the mid-corner, and powered out in a carbon copy of Ted's move. Terho's fists clenched with excitement, and immediately, his eyes were back on the timing screens. As Ted finished his lap, the entire standings tower fluttered into action: Pressley, P1.

The mechanics behind the pitwall gasped in unison, with the sounds of chairs and plastic end tables scraping against the floor as some jumped up and held their faces in their hands. A moment later, a driver card rocketed up the leaderboard. Ælund had qualified on pole and third, and the cheers and claps began to build — only to be replaced by a moment of moans and shrieks when Haukanna crossed the line to edge Ted by half a tenth.

The eleventh-hour pole loss was nothing to mope about for the team from Lintulahti though. It had been their best qualifying session since Tumbra the season prior, and the first in years that both drivers had cracked the top five. It seemed that maybe — just maybe — things were looking up again.

[Diarcesia]

Laura Haukanna has achieved pole position, but at what cost?

#ExperienceDoubeia

[Trans-Dniesters]

“What the fuck was that all about?” Vasily Semyonovich Gatutin asked after hearing the commotion coming from the side of the Urotovsky-Gatutin garage occupied by the team of Vincent Von Visp. He had walked over to Von Visp’s side when he heard shouting and shattered glass to try to see what the commotion was all about. What he found was a confusing mass of car parts scattered all over the garage and engineers and technicians looking around the place and at each other with looks that wondered what in the world just happened to them. Someone was also sweeping up the shattered remains of what looked to be a magnifying glass, all while race engineer Illarion Arkhipovich Osipov watched over them with a dumbfounded expression. It was only after Gatutin grabbed his shoulder that Osipov remembered where he was and what had just happened.

“What’s going on here, Illarion?” Gatutin asked. “Why are there pieces and parts of the car all over the place?”

“It’s Von Visp, sir,” Osipov replied. “He saw us dismantling his car for inspection, and he threw a fit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him mad like he was just now. I don’t think he was ever this mad while he was driving for the Oontazniks.”

“Slow down, Illarion, let yourself think,” Gatutin said. “What did he say? What did Von Visp say before he left?”

“He said he thought that we were sabotaging his car, sir,” Osipov answered. “He said we were favoring one side of the garage over the other one, and that someone might be fired for all this! I’m not getting fired for this, am I?”

“Don’t be silly, Illarion. No one’s going to get fired for this,” Gatutin shook his head. “I’m not going to fire you, if that’s what you mean. Although you could have been a bit more discreet with when you conducted your inspection of his car. You could have at least waited until the bastard was far enough away that he wouldn’t see or hear about the inspection. And it’s funny that he should mention something about favoritism because Kinder’s also been talking about one side of the garage being favored here. God, what a messed up team this has become…”

“I’m not worried about you firing me, sir. I know you wouldn’t do that,” Osipov said. “I’m worried Von Visp might say something to his friend, who might say something to his friends, who will then tell you to get rid of me. I’ve worked for you, for this team, and for this company for over twenty years, Vasily Semyonovich. I don’t want that to end just because someone got pissy.”

“No one is going to get fired, Illarion,” Gatutin said. He then raised his voice so everyone in the garage could hear him. “No one is going to get fired today! Not today, not tomorrow, not a week or two weeks from now! This is my team, I am in charge, and no one is going to be dismissed unless I say so. Now get back to your work. We still have a championship to defend.” Vasily Gatutin had been in his position long enough to know that something shouting and claiming that they were in charge was the biggest sign that they were not actually in charge, but given the circumstances, he needed the reminder just as much as everyone else in the UrGa garage.

Gatutin then turned to Osipov once again and said, “I think we might be going about this the wrong way now. I thought that someone was manipulating Von Visp’s car to make him go faster than Kinder. You and your men have turned up no evidence of any sort of tampering, da?”

“None, sir,” Osipov replied. “Either the sabotage is meticulously done or there is no sabotage at all.”

“I know,” Gatutin nodded. “And that is why we will inspect Kinder’s car after you are done with Von Visp. Like I said, we might be looking at this from the wrong angle. Von Visp’s car isn’t getting a boost, but maybe it’s Kinder’s car that’s being hindered.”

“Have you talked to Vladimir about this?” Osipov asked, referring to Vladimir Gennadyevich Kripchak, Nepö Kinder’s race engineer.

“I will, as soon as I am done here,” Gatutin nodded. “You and your men will have to talk to Vladimir and his men about how to properly tear down the car for the coming inspection. But for God’s sake, don’t do it while either one of Kinder or Von Visp are still in the garage! I don’t want a repeat of what just happened. Do you understand, Illarion?”

Osipov nodded his head. “Yes, sir,” he said. As Gatutin turned to leave though, Osipov spoke up again. “But sir,” he asked, “what happens when the board hears of this?”

“Let me deal with the board, Illarion,” Gatutin replied. “You take care of the cars and the inspections. That’s your area of expertise anyway. Oh, and one more thing. No more inspections, no more takedowns after you and Vladimir are done with Kinder’s car today. I really do not want a repeat of what just happened.”

“Yes, sir,” Osipov nodded, and he went back to his job of supervising the mechanics and technicians in rebuilding Vincent Von Visp’s car.

---

Meanwhile, in a private office on the second story of UrGa’s mobile headquarters for their WGPC team, Yakov Leonidovich Yurievsky was unaware of the drama unfolding in the garages below him. He had problems of his own to deal with, and he had little if any time to sort through the bullshit that Vincent Von Visp thought was happening to him within the team. That said, Yurievsky had a problem of his own with the mercurial Recuecian driver, although it had nothing to do at all with his personality and everything to do with his wealth. A little over a month before the start of the WGPC season, Yurievsky had been approached by Boris Borisovich Tokarev, Minister of Finance of the Pridnestrovian Republic, and told that he would need to procure more funds in order to pay for the maintenance of a disinformation campaign in both Hapilopper and TJUN-ia using bots on social media. Tokarev had suggested that Yurievsky use his relationship with Von Visp to gather those funds, and to that point Tokarev had taken the payoff that Von Visp had left behind in Myrilsk as the first down payment for the two trillion rubles needed to keep the bots (or more accurately the artificial intelligence programs operating the bots) running indefinitely. But Tokarev wanted more than just cash and guilders; he wanted some of the Von Visp family gold. And that was the reason why Yurievsky thought he had a problem with Vincent Von Visp.

If Tokarev had only asked for more guilders then Yurievsky wouldn’t have a problem getting that from the Recuecian. But the Finance Minister had insisted on actual gold, not thinking or not caring about the logistics of transferring such a large amount of bullion and precious metals across international borders. Before Yakov could even worry about any of that though, first he had to inform Vincent of this new development. And it had been over a month since Tokarev issued his demands to Yakov, and despite being in close proximity to the Recuecian in that time, Yurievsky still hadn’t said anything. He knew he would have to do something sooner or later so that all involved parties could work out a solution, but for some reason Yakov just hadn’t found a time or a reason to tell Vincent about this latest development. And it would appear that the Finance Minister was losing his patience as well because he was once again calling Yurievsky.

“Good morning, Yakov Leonidovich, or good afternoon or whatever time it is over there,” Tokarev said in greeting once Yakov could no longer afford to ignore his video call. “Have you made any progress on that matter that we talked about?”

“I’m still working on it, Comrade Minister,” Yurievsky replied. It wasn’t an outright lie; he was indeed working on the chutzpah or brazenness to ask one of Urotovsky-Gatutin’s drivers for some of his family’s gold reserves.

“Working on it?” Tokarev repeated. “You’ve been working on it for over a month now, Yakov. And a month from now, you’re probably still working on it. I’m willing to bet on it. I was informed that you were a swift worker, Yakov. What’s happened to that swiftness now?”

“This isn’t an easy directive that you’ve handed me, Comrade Minister,” Yurievsky said. “I hope you understand that I can’t just walk up to our common friend and ask him if I can borrow some of his gold.”

“Yakov, you’ve approached the government of this nation time and again to ask them if they can spread some disinformation here and create a false-flag operation there,” Tokarev said with some exasperation. “You mean to tell me that you can do all of that to your fellow countrymen, but asking for some gold from someone from a different country is a difficult task for you?”

“That is only because I am familiar with how our government operates, Comrade Minister,” Yurievsky clarified. “I’m not yet familiar with how our friend will react to the fact that I want some more of his family wealth.” Speaking of which, Von Visp had not made any payments to Yakov since the preseason tests in Myrilsk. It was almost as if the Recuecian had seen just how much attention the briefcase had gotten and decided against doing something like that again.

“I fail to see how that is supposed to be my problem,” Tokarev shrugged. “You’re the one who is in close proximity to him almost all the time. It’s up to you to figure out how you can make him part ways with his gold. I don’t even want all of it. If he’s willing to part with only a small sum of his gold then that is fine by me. All I want is some of his gold. Is that too much to understand?”

“No, Comrade Minister, of course not,” Yakov shook his head. “But I urge some patience in this matter. It could take weeks or even months for us to sort all of this out.”

“You have one week to give me an update,” Tokarev said. “And I mean an actual update, not just another empty platitude like ‘I’m working on it.’ Until then, Yakov.” Tokarev ended the call before Yakov could say anything else. Not that he would have actually been able to say anything because, by sheer coincidence, none other than Vincent Von Visp walked into Yakov’s office. He was accompanied, as he always was, by his personal assistant Valerie. Yakov had personally thought it was a little weird for a woman to have a name that, in the Slavic culture of Pridnestrovia at least, was more associated with men. In any case, it would appear that Tokarev ended his call to UrGa’s “financial advisor” just in time as it would have been awkward for Yakov to explain everything that he and the Pridnestrovian Finance Minister had just talked about regarding the man that had just entered Yurievsky’s office.

Vincent Von Visp didn’t even wait to be invited to enter or sit down before he laid his hands on Yakov’s desk and said, “Yakov, I believe we have a problem.”

“What a coincidence, Vincent,” Yakov said. “So do I.”

[Doubeia]

Nini Fever was one of the weirdest phenomena Nini had ever seen, and it so happened that she was the center of it.

It didn't occur to her that she was, in fact, quite popular amongst Doubeinese youths, so one could imagine her shock when she touched down in Queensland to a practical sea of young men and women greeting their compatriot racer back home. Well, that, or they were just there to see their favourite streamer in person. Nini didn't know what she did to be this renowned. All she did was stream, and have connections with other, way more famous streamers... Perhaps the latter might have brought her more attention, but having great connections could only take her so far.

It was a daunting experience for Nini to walk out of the airport. Everything felt way too tight and claustrophobic for her liking. She was constantly having cameras shoved into her face and people rubbing against her skin. Her bodyguards were working overtime to part the human sea, but there was only so much four buff men could do against a swarm of fanboys and fangirls.

"I LUV U NINI"

"Nini, an autograph please?"

"What's your thoughts on the Komiko situation?"

"PLS STEP ON ME MOTHER"

If there was one thing — or two — that Nini could take away from that experience, it was that Doubeinese people loved to invade others' privacy, and that she had some really weird eggs for fans. She was fine with receiving superficial compliments or even a teasing insult, but she heard so many comments that were way too much. Like, "Mother"? She was 19, for goodness' sake! It didn't help that everyone was crowding around her like moths to a light. Nini had experience her fair share of mobs as a micro-celebrity, but this was the first one that made her feel viscerally uncomfortable. Why did everyone seem like they wanted their hands on her? It felt weird, very weird. Everyone wanted to see her face, everyone wanted to hear her voice, everyone wanted a piece of her.

The next few days were hectic, tiring, and mentally draining for Nini. Whether it was sponsor photoshoots, being hounded by paparazzi, or weirdos trying to approach her, not a minute went by without someone trying to start an unwanted conversation with her. She couldn't even leave her own house in a disguise; there were spies camped around her house, and they knew what her disguises were! As the Doubeinese Grand Prix inched closer, Nini could suddenly feel all the expectations weighing her down: expectations from herself, her team, and her fans. She didn't want to disappoint anybody, and while the Abovian Grand Prix ended better than how it started, she still felt she could have been done way better.

The day before the race weekend, Nini spent the entire day conditioning her body for the treacherousness of the Queensland circuit, and also for the potential media fallout if she flopped that weekend. Nini didn't know why she was so fixated on the possibility of her doing horribly, but the fear that she would was eating at her all the time. She didn't want to start the season on a whimper, she wanted to kick it off with a bang! She knew the Pressley team was still handling her more gingerly, but she knew if she didn't deliver, things would get harder for her. She brought this mentality into the practice session, and she managed to convert her conviction into a second-place finish. The Doubeinese seemed to have a good practice session; the only car that finished ahead of her was the Doubeinese Piers Ivchenko one.

However, when qualifying came round, her doubts started coming back.

Just because you finished second in practice doesn't mean you're gonna do well here. Don't be egotistical.

Nini really didn't want to be complacent, but she didn't want to be too cautious either. She went too strict on herself in Aboveland and look at where that got her. However, as qualifying ticked closer, her worries started to grow larger. What if she couldn't emulate her practice form? What if she crashed? What if she went wide and ended up not qualifying? All these scenarios started to pop up in her mind, and she couldn't fight back against them. She could only imagine her race engineer relay to her the disappointing news after a sloppy qualifying lap.

Sorry Nini, we're not making the race tomorrow.

That quote suddenly etched onto Nini's mind, and it became some sort of mantra as Nini prepared to step into her car.

"C'mon girl, ignore the messages. you can do this," Nini quietly pepped herself up, but her tone suggested anything but confidence. Suddenly, she wasn't sure if she remembered the optimal lines for the circuit. There was only so much time to put in a lap, however, so Nini found herself on her flying lap. As she entered the second sector, she suddenly had a brainfart.

"Shoot, what's after Bullseye?"

In that exact moment, Nini completely forgot what came after the next corner. It was utterly ridiculous: she should have had muscle memory of the circuit with the number of times she's driven on it, but she just... forgot. As she entered Bullseye, she mentally braced herself for the eventual crash. She rounded the corner as carefully as possible, and was very hesitant to accellerate the car as she exit the corner. She wound up remembering the rest of the circuit, but the time she lost in Sector 2 alone cost her way too much time.

"Nini, your lap is a 49:9. 49:9." her race engineer told her.

"Crap, I was too slow."

Nini winded up back in the garage, and as her car was being changed, she took the time to... prepare her answers for the questions to be asked when she was eliminated in qualifying. What other excuse could she give? Forgetting how the circuit flowed was already outrageous enough. She didn't even dare to admit that to her team! Still, she had one more chance to redeem herself. Well, she had to: she was in the drop zone.

Nini's mind was still worried as she did her second flying lap, but at least she remembered how to drive the entire circuit. She still tried to remian cautious of the walls. After all, the walls of the street circuit were traps. One touch and her car was gone. As she rounded the final corner and crossed the finish line, she awaited the news from her engineer.

"Great job Nini, that was an improvement from your previous lap," her engineer praised, "49:002. I repeat, 49:002." Nine tenths, huh? That was quite the improvement, and at that moment Nini was starting to feel a bit more confident about herself...

...until she saw the timing sheet.

"P17? Come on man, what the hell?" she commented after qualifying had ended. She didn't want to go for a third flying lap, but maybe she should have.

It just felt oddly demoralising. She thought she did quite well with that lap, but 16 other drivers also outdid her. Was she setting her expectations too low? Was the car not suited for Queensland? Was she just that bad? Still, she took solace in the fact that Dario qualified lower than her. If Dario's probably-superior racing skills were anything to go about, it probably meant the car just didn't like this circuit. The thought of having to put in more work just to get her first points was daunting, however, and knowing how hard it was to overtake here in Queensland, Nini could only hope for a miracle.

It truly is a steep climb to WGPC glory, isn't it?

[Turori]

Cruisin Narrowly Misses out on Queensland Pole Position

Doubeinese Grand Prix, Queensland Street Circuit, Queensland, Doubeia :: Throughout their career in the World Grand Prix Championships, R.L. Cruisin has averaged roughly one victory in every other season with which they have competed. Having gone winless during WGPC Season 18, it would seem that Cruisin was perhaps due a victory in WGPC Season 21 as the veteran has never gone two-consecutive seasons without achieving a Grand Prix victory. Of course, the decision by Cruisin to move to the upstart Piers Ivchenko team after the news that Carvenlo would not be fielding a primary entry this season had many bettors taking the odds that Cruisin would finish the season without a victory once again. A little deeper dig into the data, however, may reveal some interesting statistical considerations for those looking to gamble that Cruisin will beat the odds and come through with one of the 12 Checkered Flag's on offer this campaign. Firstly, of Cruisin's six prior Grand Prix victories, every single one has been earned immediately following a change in scenery - Cruisin has never won a race in the second consecutive season with any particular team, only in the first. Additionally, of Cruisin's 6 career victories, four have come in two races that are on the WGPC Season 21 Calendar: The Grand Prix of Turori and the Grand Prix of Liventia. Cruisin has two wins each at the Eelandii Grand Prix Course and the Talbott Autodrome, putting them in rare company of driver's that have won multiple Grands Prix on the same circuit. Now, Cruisin will get two chances to put themselves in an extremely rare class - having three Grand Prix victories on the same circuit, if they can win either event once more later in the season.

However, despite their great success at two of this seasons circuits, they are also tracks that others on the grid will be familiar with. So it may be possible yet that there is a third track where Cruisin could be favored to pickup a victory: Right here at the Queensland Street Circuit in Doubeia. With none of the 32 drivers in the field having previously driven a Grand Prix on the Streets of Queensland as the Doubeain track makes its World Grand Prix Championship debut, Cruisin's ultra-veteran experience coupled with advanced knowledge of the course itself from back in the garage with the Doubeia-based Piers Ivchenko team, Cruisin could come out as one of the favorites on Sunday.

Things have already gotten off to an ultra fast start for Piers Ivchenko who were the talk of the paddock after the race in Aboveland when rookie Nik Hazrin Lutfi stole fastest lap late in the race. It is rumored that there were some team orders to assist Lufti, as Cruisin was mired in a pack of cars that were getting close to being overtaken by the leaders in the final laps. Cruisin reportedly backed off their pace just enough to slow the pack down ensuring that race winner Janne Laukkanen did not have enough track in front of them to make a low-fuel run at the fast lap as the race came to a close. Cruisin's teammate Lufti had clear track ahead of them and made the most out of the knowledge they had gained over the weekend to take the point.

Perhaps, however, it was now Cruisin's time to shine. The WGPC Veteran was fastest in the Friday Practice session in Queensland and may have even been able to take Pole Position if the cards had fallen just a little differently in the traditional qualifying session, with Cruisin less than a tenth of a second slower than pole winner Laura Haukanna's time. Cruisin will have to be careful on the start, as they will have a pair of Ælund Grand Prix drivers starting to their outside looking to work together to squeeze in front of the veteran through the bone-end turn that kicks things off when the lights go out. If Cruisin can stay in the slip of pole winner Haukanna, however, they should have the advantage around the long sweeping first series of turns leading to the Orgchard Street straightaway to settle in to the second position and work on a plan to get around the GPA Pryfors Bilar driver. Cruisin could have the support of the grandstands behind them flying the flag for the local team as the only Doubeinese driver in the field, former Race Eelandii VTGP prospect Nini Johnsilvaturr was fast in practice but struggled in the qualifying and will start the race from 17th on the grid. One week after making a name for themselves in Aboveland, Cruisin's teammate Nik Hazrin Lutfi will start the race in 8th place looking to score points for the second consecutive race to start their World Grand Prix Championship career.

R.L. Cruisin ✓

@Cruisin

Wow! I have to say the crowd here has been tremendous so far! The crew have given me a really fast race car and it has felt great to be able to put it near the top of the scoreboard. I feel very lucky to have a team that is so familiar with one of the two new tracks on the #WGPC schedule this season! Hope I can make you all PI fans proud this Sunday

#WGPC : #PiersIvchenko : #Queensland

---

---

Toralmintii, Race Eelandii hit the streets still eying first points of the Season

With an offseason that included retaining the services of a driver who finished 4th in the standings last season, and adding a second driver who just happens to be a former World Grand Prix Champion and one of the winningest drivers in the history of the World Grand Prix Championship, expectations were understandably high for Race Eelandii V&T Racer World Grand Prix Motorworks this season. After a mediocre start to the pre-season testing, all seemed to be right with the Race Eelandii ship when iBen Toralmintii showed up in Hodori and put the #77 Race Eelandii Dart machine into the Top 8 both sessions, and then finishing things off showing Top 10 speed in the wet in Auruna. However, when the season opened up in Aboveland, a place that Toralmintii had seen success in the past, the Turorian and their Cocoabo counterpart couldn't ever break free of the middle of the pack. Despite willing the car to a 12th place position in the Grid, Toralmintii never looked like challenging for a spot in the points like the one they had earned remarkably for Tropicorp Colourworks last season. Instead, Toralmintii crossed the line nearly side-by-side with race winner Janne Laukkanen - after the Abovian completed passes on both Toralmintii and Cocoabo #23 on the final lap to put the Race Eelandii teammates -2 and -3 laps down at the stripe. With points long out the window, Toralmintii had been following the not-so Fast Cocoabo for the last 9 laps of the race to see if there was any assessment that could be made as to whether there was a either technical or execution issue that could be blamed for the lack of pace that both cars - but particularly the #23 car had shown throughout the race. There was not. Toralmintii eventually made their way past Cocoabo #23 with two laps to go and the leader Laukkanen followed them through, setting up the chase to the finish.

While there was no need to celebrate an 18th place result, the coincidental timing of Toralmintii crossing the stripe with the checkered flag waving and the fans cheering for the local victor made for a memorable photo that was picked up by at least one local media outlet with the heading "Checkered Flag Flies on iBen's Abovian Grand Prix journey". Of course, it was just the first of numerous stops on iBen Toralmintii's Grand Prix retirement tour, with some very important ones coming up in the middle of the season. The next event, however, would be one of the least mainstream of the events. Having never previously raced in Doubeia, there would be no extra press conferences needed, no reporters asking about their favorite memory racing at the track or no long-time track workers to sign an orange cone for and snap a few photos with. At the Queensland Street Circuit, there were only two things on iBen Toralmintii's weekend calendar. 1: Prepare to Drive. 2: Drive.

It was likely to be a very welcome reprieve from the distractions that followed the Turorian from Hodori when they first announced their retirement tour season and onward through to Aboveland where so many of the friends and teammates they had worked with throughout their career resided. It would also be an opportunity for the weekend crew at Race Eelandii VTGP to get back into their own rhythm which itself was at times disrupted by the fact that one of their drivers was not available to discuss strategy or minor modifications to the car without scheduling time with them. For the first time all season Toralmintii would just be able to spend all their time in the Paddock preparing with the team for race day.

They will perhaps need that added focus to ensure that the final result in Doubeia does not turn out the same as things did at the Fjellutfordring. There was no sign of any change in the teams performance on in qualifying on Saturday with Toralmintii earning the 12th spot on the grid - identical to their starting position in Aboveland, and Cocoabo #23 taking 18th just one spot lower than they started the season opener. However, a more indicative sign of how the duo might race could possibly be taken from the Friday practice session where both drivers were much faster comparatively than they were in Aboveland. With Toralmintii showing Top 10 speed and Cocoabo #23 not far behind, the team could potentially work their way up into the points to avoid being the last to advance from a goose-egg in the points column.

---

---

@OGP of Aboveland, Fjellutfordring, Avsidesliggendevuoret, Aboveland :: 19 Drivers, 8 Primary Teams and 2 Motorworks entries made their way in time for the grid of the first support series race of the season. Running alongside the opening round of World Grand Prix Championship Season 21, it was perhaps an opportunity for those drivers who may have been passed over for selection in the fight for one of the prestigious open seats on the WGPC grid to show in front of the entire paddock that it should have been them and not "The other driver" who was chosen for said seat. In the end, however, the weekend was dominated by a driver who never filed for a World Grand Prix Championship license in the first place.

Among the 19 drivers competing in the first event were seven World Grand Prix Championship reserve drivers, four additional prospective World Grand Prix Championship drivers for this season and a remainder of the field filled out by drivers varying in experience from other series including WGP2, AOGP, the Aurun WGP3 Championship, Doubeinese Racing League and the OWARS NSGP among others. Additionally, six World Grand Prix Championship teams or affiliates including HMG, Viska, Race Eelandii, UrGa, ANMARA and Tropicorp would be represented on the grid in addition to newcomers from Krazivaran and Fiarti Racing plus the Motorworks entries.

While there were plenty of big names on the grid - former World Grand Prix Championship race winner Lane Carter, former World Grand Prix 2 and NSGP champions, it would be the relatively unfamiliar name of Ringo Kawagishi that would come out on top. Kawagishi has stunned in their progress as a late-funded add to the Support Series roster thanks to an influx of finances from the Kawagishi Steel company. Ringo would quickly prove that like Seigo Kawagishi in the NSSCRA Everlong Contenders Series, there was more than just funding to justify the drive. After collecting the first point of the season for posting the fastest lap and earning Pole Position in the twii.tur Pole Award qualifying session, Kawagishi would hit the gas when the lights went out and never look back, never conceding the top spot on the track to claim their first ever twii.tur Support Series victory.

While Kawagishi ran away with the checkered flag, there was still a fantastic battle behind them for the podium positions. Ajarai'i Okomo, the Smatani driver who failed to get so much as a trial invite after applying for the World Grand Prix Championship driver license, held on for nearly 45 laps to the runner-up position after earning the second starting spot with an outstanding qualifying lap for the newly formed Krazivaran team. The defense would finally falter when Price Igne Spupuo - the "Lizard King" - arrived on Okomo's tail and used the Royal touch to steal the 2nd spot. Once Spupuo had cleared Okomo, the podium was all but settled as the Race Eelandii drivers, returning @OGP driver Triiki Mokalrisa and the Doubeinese Racing League champion Winston Klossovsky got too busy battling each other for position to have a chance to challenge Okomo for a post on the Podium.

With 14 drivers earning points and just 19 starting the grid for the race, it was a wonder that any team could exit Aboveland without earning points. However, incredibly two teams managed to fill up four of the bottom five positions in the final results, with an unimpressive VilBev Motorsports seeing both their drivers finish on track outside the points while one of the World Grand Prix Championship feeder teams with high expectations coming into the season, HMG Grand Prix, would exit with a catastrophic whimper - the highly touted duo of Axel Mausefalle and Bryce Yannec were unable to even make it to double digit laps before dropping out of the race and leaving virtually no evidence HMG even competed in the race to begin with. Now, as the series moves on to Doubeia it is expected that even more drivers will find their way to the grid putting team HMG on notice as they look to finally get one of their cars to finish the race.


twii.tur Support Series ✓

@OGP

A thrilling start to the Support Series season sees #ANMARA take the victory with newcomer Ringo Kawagishi! ( Rd. 1 Results ) Don't look now, but the #LizardKing is back! A podium finish in Aboveland could make Igne Spupuo an early season favorite for the championship. Still a long way to go. We'll be following the #WGPC to Doubeia this weekend but there isn't enough room for us in the paddock on the streets of Queensland so we'll be taking the Support Series to the Demetris Dome instead!

#WGPC21 :: #SupportSeries :: #Fjellutfordring

CoCoCo Logistics ✓

@CoCoCo

It's been a while since we were involved in Open Wheel Racing, but we are thrilled to add Renn Trigen and Gajek Mäsïlïčuk to the CoCoCo Family! We've put up the funding for one of the @OGP Motorworks teams this season and this duo have already paid us back putting us in the points and even posting the Fastest Lap of the race! Great Job! Take a look at the car they are driving for us this season:



#Motoworks :: #SupportSeries :: #Fjellutfordring

[Tumbra]

Doubeia

"P2, P2, Ted, P2." Almost immediately after hearing that, Ted Pressley exhaled; he'd been holding on to a breath he didn't know he'd been holding onto. As he dialed every setting on the car back to minimum, letting the beast purr its way back to the pits, he took a sip from his drink packet. The hot globules of liquid rolled over and mildly scalded his tongue, and he could barely taste the artificial sweetener that was shoved into the liquid that was fill of Electrolytes! Vitamins! Sugar! More Sugar! And Definitely Sugar!

Ted swallowed the liquid, regretting taking the sip in the first place — or even the liquid in general — before he responded.

"Oh, man. Oh, man. That was one hell of lap," he murmured, tiredly. "Anything else I need to turn down?"

"Sure was, Teddy boy. I think you've got everything," the response came from the radio a short while after. Ted strolled through Junction — the little kink that had given him so much trouble this weekend, although not enough to keep him off the front row — as he took in yet another 90 degree turn. Queensland was a great city, if a little grey; the Esportivan portion of the calendar sure was bringing him to places he wouldn't necessarily go to.

"Who got pole?"

"Haukanna, five hundredths. You were evenly matched in Sectors 1 and 2, she just pulled ahead in Sector 3." The relevation cut into Ted's happiness at securing a first-row start a little; he'd been yearning for something, anything, to disprove the (largely imaginary, but still) critics who'd pointed at him as someone who'd spent 2 years with a middling team with but two podiums to show for it. Here it was, the chance for him to end up on pole for the first time ever, and it had been cruelly taken away from him by half of a tenth of a second.

"Where did Goita end up?" He asked, voice a bit raspier. Ted had wanted to offer advice to his team-mate, who'd ended up on the unfortunate end of an electrical fault in the first race, but he didn't know if it was appropriate, and their driving styles probably differed by too much for the advice to be of much use anyway. Goita did seem a bit nervy on the weekend; perhaps he was eager not to repeat the disappointment of last week, even if it wasn't his fault.

"P4."

"Good man," Ted exclaimed. "God, that's good. Are we back or what, huh?"

"Haha. Still got the race tomorrow, T. Still got the race tomorrow."

[Auruna]

Queensland Street Circuit
Doubeinese Grand Prix
Qualifying

Laura viewed her recent WGPC performance as "underwhelming"; it wasn't bad by all means, it was just unremarkable as evidenced by her struggle during the latter half of the previous season although there were a lot of factors at play during that time. Still, she was left feeling discouraged by the results and started to question her skills.

In the first race of WGPC21 at Fjellutfordring, she surprised herself. Her expectations were low for the race after qualifying in P18 but with decent strategy calls and good timing of pit stops, the results went against all her expectations as she finished in P8, gaining ten places in the process. This renewed her confidence at the moment. While she still have doubts about her current performance, she still recognises her skill whether it may be somewhat inconsistent. Although she couldn't celebrate for too long as the cold wasn't too kind to her even as an Aurun from Karalinne, she felt unwell and spent most of the week afterwards at home.

Feeling a bit better albeit not completely cured, Laura was actually looking forward to the following race weekend. It was her chance to continue her momentum, hopeful to show what she can do. Practice didn't show much as she was trying out new setups to help her with the PF-3's driving characteristics and the engine's low-end shortcomings. Meanwhile, about her teammate Sam, Laura was just minding her own business for the session so she had no idea what Sam was doing at first. At the garage, while Laura was with Erik and the mechanics during a thorough change to her car's setup, she felt her teammate's competitive gaze towards her. She does her best to ignore it for now and focus on her car but she couldn't shake off the feeling that something might happen.

Then came qualifying and thankfully for Laura, it was a traditional qualifying format. She didn't have to worry about doing a single "perfect" run like before but it also wasn't an excuse to slack off. She had her goal set: to qualify 10th or above. Just as she was about to climb into her car, she takes a quick look at the other side of the garage to see Sam itching to go first. While Laura admired Sam's competitive spirit, she first had to worry about her own qualifying.

Settling inside her PF-3, Erik's voice buzzed into the radio. "Radio check Laura."

"I hear you loud and clear."

"Great. We're expecting good weather throughout the session, clear skies and dry conditions. Are you sure you're confident it your setup right now since you specifically asked for it to be fine tuned for the race."

"I can work with it."

"Copy that. How about the tyres? You only did your practice laps on Base and Rels."

"I want to do a few laps with the Tracs (softs), just to test the waters. Then we'll go with the Hi-Tracs (super softs) later on."

"Anything else?"

"Send me out after Sam."

"Copy that."

Alright Aina, be with me and we can do this. Let's get to at least 10th.

Qualifying then started shortly after. Laura waited for nearly a minute before driving out to do her relatively quick warm up laps. As she went around the track, she started to make mental notes on what settings to use, what to do, and where to do it. Of course, this wasn't her usual approach as it nearly overwhelmed her brain once which nearly caused a crash but to continue her momentum from the previous weekend, she had to do something different. After a few laps, she returned to the pits for a change of tyres. At the garage, she was seen getting out of the car, using the chance to cool off and stretch as she waited for the right time to head out.

Returning to her car, Laura felt nervous but she perfectly hid it behind a calm and focused look as she drove out to take on the street circuit again. During her laps, she showed surprising pace which caught her off-guard as Erik updated her with her times. A few seconds were shaved off lap after lap. Erik then encouraged her to go all out, noticing that she has a chance to take pole. After receiving confirmation, Erik went silent to let Laura focus as he closely monitored her lap from the pit wall.

Not long after, she crosses the line to clock in her time. It felt quick but Laura was unsure if it was enough for pole. She breathed heavily as her illness caught up to her while she waited for Erik to notify her. She anticipated that she missed out but as the radio buzzed to life, she was greeted by cheers from the pit wall.

"Your time was 1:48.388! That's pole, Laura!" Erik excitedly told her through the radio. "You did it! Good work out there!"

Laura was speechless, not only because she still felt sick but also she anticipated that she would miss out on pole by a few seconds as she knew that she wasn't known for her qualifying performance. Still, she gratefully accepted it as she returned to the PB garage. After getting through the cheers from her team, she decided to rush off to the motorhome to rest up as she felt nauseous. Minutes pass and she went back to the garage after having some trouble at the toilet. She walked over to Erik who was on a laptop at the back, viewing some data.

"Hey." Laura called out to Erik.

"Ah, welcome back. You feeling alright?" Erik said, taking his eyes off the laptop to face Laura. "You took a while back there. Quali just finished."

"I'm good, just had bad timing." Laura said as she sat down near Erik. "Anyway, how are the results?"

"A few other drivers are close to challenging your pole time but they fell short so you maintain pole." Erik then patted Laura's shoulder. "Good job out there. Make sure to turn it into a win tomorrow."

"I can try." Laura then looked over to Sam's side of the garage which felt gloomy. "How was Sam? How did she do?"

"Well..." Erik sighed. "She didn't qualify. She's out and will not be allowed to race tomorrow."

"What?! How?" Laura exclaimed in shock.

"Only her earlier 'warm up' times were counted because of a flat during her pole attempt." Erik then explained what happened. "She was actually doing great after being notified about your pole lap as I was told. It was until the third sector where she had a flat tyre because of a puncture."

Erik then showed her Sam's on-board footage of the incident which showed Sam spinning out after a puncture and after the car settled, Sam sounded exasperated on the radio. "I am stupid." She said before getting out of her crippled PF-3. The rear-view on-board barely showed her kicking the left-rear wheel.

Noticing that Laura had difficulty to say something about what she saw, Erik added. "I don't know where she is now but earlier, while you were at the motorhome, she approached me only to ask: 'How does Laura do it?' I could tell that she wanted to learn more from you."

"What's there to learn from me?" Laura then briefly thought about it and sighed deeply. "I kinda understand where she's coming from. Out there, she sees me as her closest rival ever since we became teammates. I could easily tell that she wanted to prove that she is the better driver among us two."

"Worry about that after the race." Erik said. "You need to focus on what's more important for now. Don't let that distract you."

"Alright..."

After a few seconds, Laura decided to stand up to grab a bottle of water, still feeling weak. "Tell Aldauren that I might not make it for debriefing." She said, to which Erik replied with a "sure" in Aurun. But as she walked back to her seat, Sam suddenly entered the garage and then their eyes meet. Laura froze in place for a bit and the situation made her feel worse. Nauseous once more, she rushed off to a nearby toilet, letting her avoid confronting Sam for now.

Erik shook his head then he looked at Sam. "Give her some time." He said before leaving the garage.

[Zalivinia]

Doubeinese Grand Prix
Qualifying

Hanna was focused. She felt like she had gotten a good handle on the track during practice. She was ready to put in a strong qualifying lap and prove herself. But lingering in the back of her mind was the memory of the last race, when Ankei had thrown what could only be described as a tantrum.
She hadn’t seen it herself, but she’d heard the commotion and all the shouting. It was messy, and it left a bad taste in her mouth.
Now, during qualifying, she pushed those thoughts aside and concentrated on the task at hand.
The car felt good, and she was building up speed, confident she could set a competitive time. But as she approached the fourteenth corner, she thought that she saw a bird or something, fluttering right into her path. Her heart jumped, and she hit the brakes instinctively early and too hard. The wheels locked up, and the car skidded slightly and grazed the barrier destroying her right front wing.

“Hanna what happened?”

“I hit something, I think.”

“We didn’t see anything, pull into the pits.”

Frustration and anger surged through her anger at the situation, then at herself, as she heard from her pit crew that she didn’t hit anything. It was just her imagination, a split second mistake that cost her dearly.
She pulled into the pits, her hands gripping the wheel tightly, her jaw clenched. Her window to set a good lap time was running out and her car needed repairs, she waited anxiously as the staff replaced the wing in a hurry.
When everything was finally ready, she shot out of the pits with a squeal of tires, pushing as hard as she could.
But it wasn’t enough. She didn’t improve her time. She didn’t qualify.
When she finally climbed out of the car, she walked to the back of the garage, leaning against the wall. She crossed her arms, staring at the ground, trying to push the frustration aside.
If not for Souzare's pathetic time she would have finished dead last.
She had never had such a problem before that something had brought her down, that she had stressed so much, and now?
Now she'll be watching the race from the sidelines alongside Souzare who sees everyone for his enemy and senses conspiracies everywhere.
Although he probably won't even be interested in it. Maybe any of the other unqualified drivers would be willing to spend some time with her.

[Esmerel]

Chapter 1
Renewal, Of A Sort

Fjellutfordring, Avsidesliggendevouret, Aboveland
Sunday, 23 February 2025
Lap 67

Out of the corner of Brendan Faloe’s vision, he noticed a blinking yellow border surrounding his multifunction display.

Seconds later, Cole spoke over the radio, business as usual. “Luminna’s stopped at turn 9, we’ve got a VSC. Tone it down and save, watching the delta as you can. Recommend set 2, set 1 might work but be careful not to stall,” he instructed.

Like clockwork, Brendan did just that. He wasn’t particularly trying to save anything; tires were fine, fuel was fine, performance was stellar- he’d somehow managed to climb from 14th up to 3rd over the course of the race, after all. Still, no need to use anything extra at low speed.

“Pace over that stint was on target, Brendan,” Cole continued. “Tires are down a few tenths, but they won’t drop before the flag. Should be restarting with two to go, maybe a bit more if they clear it fast enough. Pressley’s right there. You’ve been on his tail long enough. You can get him.”

A few seconds passed. Nothing but silence came from Brendan’s cockpit- well, from Brendan himself; the cockpit could be rather loud- as he weaved back and forth to clear a few marbles and hold in some heat.

“Brendan, please confirm,” Cole snipped. “I see you’re on the right engine set, but pass me a sitrep. You okay?”

“...Fine, Cole,” Brendan finally replied. “I’ll bring it home.”

“No pressure here, not more than you need, anyway,” Cole said. “But don’t get complacent. We’ve gone over this. At least give it a go.”

Mentally, Brendan let Cole’s messages pass through one ear and… well, not entirely, but at least partly out the other. It was never his intent, but after how the season had started, and the high-speed action for the past 67 laps in such cold weather, he wasn’t really at his best. Or so things seemed, anyway. If he really had managed to get up to the podium again, maybe there was still something there for him.

One right in front of me. Leader’s completely gone. A few behind, but not too close… Brendan gave it a thought or two for the first time in the race. It seemed… different. He couldn’t explain it in the moment, it just did. Four points to pick up, or a lot more to lose…

“Pressley’s going to push. He wants his position,” Cole said. “AGP’s not looking nearly as bad this time around. We have our own reserves. Be ready to turn it up.”

The field worked their way around to begin lap 69 as the blue and orange Preston of Kinu Luminna was cleared from the track behind them. Brendan kept straight as an arrow down the frontstretch, passing by the cheering crowds. It started to occur that the chance was high some of those crowds were cheering for Brendan. Naturally, given the nature of the Verse, most of the crowd was probably local, who would likely be cheering on their home drivers and teams- the former of which was well and truly ages up the road and the latter of which was also ahead of the defending champion. Still, that didn’t stop other fans from across the worlds from attending, or from watching on television, or even locals from cheering on other drivers like him.

Yet another thing about it all that seemed strangely different. What was it that Brendan was noticing now that he wasn’t before?

“VSC’s about to end. Set 4 or set 5 if you think it’ll last,” Cole radioed in, mildly interrupting Brendan’s train of thought. “Going green out of the kink. Two and a half laps. Make use of it.”

“Will do.”

Brendan held his delta as close as he could to even, waiting for the moment to strike. Though only by a moment, Pressley struck first, roaring away from turn 7 with an energy that wasn’t exactly surprising yet still was unlike anything Brendan had seen of him all race.

Brendan responded in kind, even if in the moment he was unaware. His PD02/25 engine- which the team had in the meantime nicknamed the “Trumpeter”- came to life, as did the supercapacitors that enabled a strong getaway out of the turn. Gear by gear Brendan increased in speed, trying to match the pace of the flashy car right ahead of him- no gearbox issues would haunt him this time.

What probably would haunt him was a difference in design. Much as the Fjellutfordring favored aggression (one of few tracks even offered this season that did), and the C102 was built for that aggression, there was only so much that could be done when the track wasn’t wide open and clear of any other cars. Not to mention the physical design differences between his and Pressley’s cars- Brendan’s was designed with fairness in mind; simple aerodynamics to minimize dirty air and the like. Whatever Ælund had specifically done with their car, it likely wasn’t designed with that same fair philosophy. That was part of why Brendan had been stuck behind Pressley for so long- well, that and something else he couldn’t yet pinpoint.

So when the two cars came to the high-speed right at turn 9, nothing really changed. Brendan backed off slightly to avoid anything getting worse, then tried to resume the attack for the next turn. By that time, though, Pressley and his engine were still out of reach, so nothing could be done there, either.

Brendan tried a few more times over the last two laps to get by- engines roaring through every corner, tires and brakes at the limit, hitting every apex to within a few millimeters- and still no dice. There was a spot of hope that still remained- Pressley, while having built a small gap, seemed to fall back into Brendan’s clutches by the time the both of them made it to the last sector of the last lap- perhaps his engine wasn’t ready for more than a brief burst of such power.

But that was all that hope gave Brendan today. Time had run out. Pressley merely parked the bus in turn 11, and rather than risk taking both of them out of the race or worse, Brendan held in line. The two cars crossed the line to take the checkered flag in the same order they had held for lap after lap.

“That’s it, Brendan, this one’s over,” Cole radioed in. “You probably would have had him if there was just one more lap. Nice job trying. You did good today; we can still be proud of another podium.”

“He… he had more than I did,” Brendan replied. “Cole…”

“Don’t need to say anything now,” Cole asserted. “Set 0 and pick up some rubber. You’ve earned what you’re about to get.”

-

Wordlessly, Brendan drove the C102 to his third-place board alongside the other podium finishers, shut off the car, and slowly opened his canopy to climb out. Janne Laukkanen and Ted Pressley both received warm welcomes from their team for their stoic driving performances, and jubilation ran rampant over by their side of the metal fencing.

Brendan’s driving had been somewhat stoic in a different fashion. He’d gotten the job done. Fourteen points for the team; a much better start to the season than the last one. Still, he’d been fairly radio silent aside from when he needed to speak all race, something he hadn’t always been- he’d been hired for his skills in technical communication, after all, not just letting be what his team decided. He walked over to his own team to… well, celebrate, he supposed. High-fives circled all around between Brendan and his crew, and between the crew and each other. It wasn’t anything much new- only in the euphoria of winning his first race or the championship had he ever leapt into his team. Still, the subdued sense gave insight to what Brendan was feeling and doing.

Which was to say, not much.

Brendan started taking stock in his surroundings as he sat down in the cooldown room. Which, ironically, was likely warmer than the weather outside. Still, a cold drink of water, extensive air conditioning, and the like served their purpose to soothe Brendan after an hour and a half of burning, exhausting passion.

He thought to briefly try being diplomatic to the drivers that joined him in the room; though they seemed consumed in talking to each other more than him (for a number of reasons), he found a moment to interject without being too rude. “Janne, nice driving out there,” Brendan mentioned. “You too, Ted. Swear I almost had you, but you earned that finish.”

A few minutes later, Brendan emerged onto the podium first to take his lowest step, followed by the two drivers that had finished before him. He rose a few centimeters above the base of the podium, his back to the wall and his eyes towards the thousands of people in the vicinity. It all felt different. It wasn’t just something that was happening. It was happening for him, because of what he had managed; because of his skill, even without all his… well, without everything he usually seemed to have.

So did that mean he was missing something?

Everything suddenly seemed to stop for Brendan, and he closed his eyes as a reflex before slowly opening them again. Color. Not that it was lacking in color before, but it all seemed so much more vibrant now. The noise, too. All Brendan’s senses, really, as well as his control over them. What was just “there” before suddenly felt THERE.

It hit him hard. This was what felt different that he couldn’t explain. For gods knew how long he’d just been going about his business with Cygnus, and with the WGPC, et cetera. Not that it was bad; he’d managed this pretty much on autopilot. But he’d’ve hated to do the entire season- his championship defense- that way. Having mere islands of clarity amidst a sea of nebulous moments, a fate that many before him had suffered and many after him might still suffer.

Nothing had really been “lost” of the last month or so; not in the same fashion that perhaps the Nimbans had experienced a few years back (just one particularly bad example). Though it was certainly true that some moments were clearer in Brendan’s mind than others. Now? Everything felt clear at once, and Brendan realized what that really meant. Not only had he climbed eleven positions to reach the podium, but it was his fourth finish in a row where he had reached one of its steps. A start by any standard (aside from perhaps one or two steps higher) as Brendan and Cygnus meant to go on.

The roar of the crowd- the fans, the teams, and even the thought of the television watchers- became more and more obvious. Just in time for the podium officials to offer Brendan his third-place trophy.

And so he took it, springing to life and raising it in pride for the crowd, which did manage to get a bit louder in excitement as he did so. They got much louder still when celebrating the other two drivers on the podium, but that was to be expected. And so the trophies had been presented, the points awarded, the anthems played- it was time for the drivers to have their moment as they took to the time-honored tradition of spraying champagne.

Caught up in such a moment, Brendan began to cackle as he confusingly (but seamlessly) remembered how to get started, before excitedly raining such an exquisite beverage over the cheering teams below. As the pressure gently faded, he thought he’d try a sip of the champagne himself (something he hadn’t actually done before, despite three podium finishes last season)- just a bit, to gauge if it was any good. He’d earned it, as Cole had told him.

He couldn’t speak to the taste. Perhaps it was just a facet of life he had yet to explore. But one sip had to be enough for now.

Across to the other side of the podium, Brendan spotted Laukkanen completely drenching Pressley with what remained in his bottle; the Tumbran did not respond in kind, though likely out of joyous satisfaction than any other reason, given the bond that had formed between the two (how appropriate it was that they were immediately on the podium together!). Thus, Brendan felt it entirely appropriate to even out the situation, and so he made sure none of the three podium finishers would leave unscathed, laughing all the way.

Such energy, such… living large, hadn’t really come to Brendan before, not even in the course of winning a World Championship. At the very least, Brendan’s “diplomacy” was welcomed, if perhaps with bewilderment. The three drivers stood together for the crowd and for the photo opportunity- Laukkanen and Pressley with each other, and Brendan with himself- something that, in the moment, meant just as much to him.

He didn’t know how long this would last. But if it was here, he was going to make the most of it.

[Former Citizens of the Nimbus System]

(OOC: Just for clarity - this is the full version of the post that was formerly made in partial form here!)

Fjellutfordring, Avsidesliggendevuoret, Iisti-maakunta, Aboveland
Abovian Grand Prix; Race Start

“Alright,” Olivia Stone murmurs to herself, watching the fourth light, the fifth light of five blink on and the glow of Laukkanen’s Chase Cutter in her peripheral vision, feeling and hearing and knowing the barely contained scream of the car beneath her, letting that oh-so-familiar sense of joyful purpose, that feeling that had been lost to her for so long now, rise again within her…

“Let’s go.”

And the lights shut off.

Clutch biting; accelerator depressed; mind focused; and the tempest that is woman and machine as one rages into life. Her reaction is lightning and with it the engine crackles and surges behind her, rubber lashing at the track in response and driving her forward, all of it bent to the purpose of beating Laukkanen. She holds it in her mind’s eye: diving into the sharp right-hander, the tyres biting as she forces her opponent to the outside, letting the Nexus Racing car’s well-publicised grip issues work against it even as she leans on her own Brimstones, then soaring away through the high-speed sequence to follow…

But the shining cerulean never slips back; instead, light floods Olivia’s vision as Laukkanen pulls away, car twitching just a touch towards the middle of the track to make any attempt harder.

Nexus Racing’s auto-starts, swear to the Mythran… A thin smile crosses her lips as her Cygnus falls into line through Turn 1. Then it’s a fight.

Olivia grins. Fine by me.

Lap 3

“Stone isn’t letting up, Gertrude,” Max notes from his position on the Nexus Racing garage’s internal pit wall. “Janne’s soaking it up for now but he doesn’t know how long he can maintain it on this race strategy.”

“I see it.” Gertrude takes a breath, tapping at the touchscreen surface ahead of her. “Lucia, sensors from Janne? Tiffany, how are the cars’ convertors doing?”

“Tyres are expending imbued Imagination faster than planned,” comes the sure voice from beside her. “Otherwise nominal.”

From in her ear comes another, lighter and cheerier: “Array diagnostics say all clear on our end!”

Gertrude nods, trying to banish the feeling of guilt curdling in her gut even as she turns away to confirm her decision. “Thanks, you two… Martin, ask Ryker how much power he can spare.”

Because, though it ultimately never produced any vehicle that served on any front, Nexus Racing had its origins in war and Gertrude with it. And the reality, in competition as in war, is that sometimes cruel, calculated sacrifice must be made to benefit the whole.

The wait after Martin Veri’s calm speech to his charge is not tense, because Gertrude already knows how Ryker will respond – and so it instead multiplies further that sinking, shameful weight. “3%. Berezowska’s proving a tricky combatant; lower than that and he thinks she’ll certainly slip past somewhere but at 3% he thinks he can hold on.”

Thank you, Ryker. “Okay, RE, confirm?”

“Confirm.”

“Confirmed.”

“Setting ICAST to 3%,” she intones, tapping to lock the change. “Max, let Janne know it’s his to use. Tiffany, need you to monitor Ryker’s array – let me know if there are any developments.”

Please, both of you, hold on.

And, as the Imagination convertor array in Ryker Lane’s car begins rapidly switching its target to impart a fraction of its force to the car of Janne Laukkanen, they do.

For now.

Lap 14

Spending two years outside single-seater racing, Olivia is learning, means that habits become entrenched.

At least, apparently, in her case.

“Baxen, these tyres are… No!” A sharp yank of the steering wheel to arrest the slide before it develops through 8. Olivia curses herself as she sees the bright blue edging even further up the road as they accelerate away, barely even in touch now with the Nexus Racing machine…

And with Ælund’s increasingly dominating her mirrors.

“Stay calm.” From anyone else, that would likely infuriate her, but Baxen Aurora’s voice on the other side of the radio cuts through cleanly. “We’re re-evaluating your pit strategy to account for the increased wear so that you can catch Laukkanen later in the race; in the meantime, focus on holding off Pressley.”

In truth, the momentary confusion at the fact that that distinctly isn’t a Pressley Racing car behind her helps. Olivia recentres herself, clarifying the ecstasy within, then pushes on under its power – rocketing through 9, viscerally aware of the car behind as it gains and gains and gains…

No. I’m fine.

…and doesn’t make a lunge as she brakes for 10, slowly, slowly feeds the car into the corner, deftly balancing on the edge of grip, then driving away – as best she can. Because the other thing she’s learning is that these Brimstones suit her down to the ground at the start of a stint but can’t take nearly as much punishment later on than the Sifakas from last season, or even Viska’s old In Motion tyres when combined with their cars’ mechanical grip. At a track like Fjellutfordring, demanding a low downforce setup despite its fair complement of mid-speed corners…

“Olivia, you will be facing traffic if we box you now.” The query is implicit.

Relief floods her. “I can handle it – just get me out of this!”

“Understood. Box next lap, then; in-lap is critical.”

“Confirm!” She hurtles in and through 11 then, straining the tyres all she can – she won’t need them any longer – then forging forward towards 12, onto the start-finish straight, throwing herself into the flow and channelling everything – the new, unfamiliar power in this car, the energy inherent to the motion that courses through it and her, the sheer determination that she feels competing again at this level – into purest power.

She’s pulled one and a half seconds to Ted by the time she rounds Turn 12 again and dives for the pits.

Lap 21

“Alright, Ryker – Stone behind, with tyres sixteen laps younger than yours. Hold her off as long as you can; she’ll be looking to challenge Janne up ahead.”

Ryker Lane flexes his fingers on his steering wheel, letting the car flow – and it is a flow now, he has managed that much – through the long bend of 9, seeing Berezowska’s HiTEN tantalisingly close as it emerged in his vision, hearing the throaty screech, ever louder, of a turbocharged V8 behind… “I hear you, Martin. Will I have ICAST support?”

“Negative, I’m afraid – Janne’s still fending off Ted at the front. Just do what you can.”

“Will do.”

Lap 22

It comes quickly, at least. Ryker resettles himself, following Olivia’s slipstream as best as he can away from Turn 8. Memory of Lintulahti flashes through his mind; he shakes it from his head for now, placing himself deliberately for the long entry to 9.

Lap 26

Blue-green carbon screams across the start-finish line, latched to the slipstream of the parti-coloured machine ahead of it like a dog with a rag. Olivia takes a short, sharp breath, eyes furiously scanning the track ahead, seeking, seeking – not finding a gap. It has taken this long to catch back up; she will not be stopped here.

Come on. Come on, Ted Pressley, I will have you.

Lap 27

For the barest of moments, she sees it – a twitch just after the apex of 5. Arrogance and hope and drive rush through her veins in an instant, given voice in her machine’s petrochemical and electric lifeblood; she kicks on, takes a wide line into 6 feigning to the inside for 7, voids, switches, darts to the outside, comes alongside, tiniest of lock-ups as she kills the speed, around, around…

Too far back; Ted holds her to the marbles and speeds away.

Not yet.

Lap 28

Onto the start-finish straight this time, fuelled by denial and adrenaline and actualised by her Cygnus, her Cygnus’ pace, her tyres on the road (even as she feels them begin to wear)…

There!

A dive to the inside – and ahead!

For half a second. Ted lets her steam out wide; cuts back in; drives away.

The adrenaline surges.

Lap 30

She learns again.

This time her dive is to the outside of the start-finish straight, where overtaking has swept up most of the marbles. This time, she forces her line to match her pace through Turn 1. And this time, when she surges forward, she remains firmly alongside Ted Pressley’s Ælund.

And so he is stuck to the tightest of lines through 2, and cannot carry speed into 3.

She can. And, as she flicks the car through to emerge back in her second place, she exults in it.

“Finally, thank the Mythran!” She gazes ahead to see what she thinks, she dares to hope, is the barest of blue light glancing off the tarmac at Turn 5. And speaking of them… “Baxen, what do I need?”

“Low 1:13s for now, ‘Liv, as you were before. I’ll tell you when to push at the end of your stint.”

A thrill runs down her spine. “Copy that!”

Lap 37

“Update on the tyres, ‘Liv?”

“Not great!” Olivia practically growls, as she wrenches the car through 3 and 4, sights set on the cerulean ahead of her – closer, ever closer. She sucks a breath in through her teeth, letting her determination pulse, affirming, enduring, wilful, within her. “But I can keep going. I can keep going. How many more laps do we need?”

“Target minus two will be good enough to give you a fighting chance; longer if you can manage. Maintain this pace as long as you can.”

Seven more. I will, I must. “Got it, Baxen.” Brake for Turn 5, feel the back sliding out, away but not too far – a little too far but not enough to be problematic, she can make it up, she will make it up punching through Turn 6 just a little faster than before but she can manage –

The car loosens beneath her through the off-camber. And though she corrects, 7 comes up so quickly and is so tight; she’s out of position.

Olivia makes one last attempt to correct, hitting the brakes hard, accepting the loss just so long as she can keep herself on the road…

She can’t. A plume of smoke spirals up behind her; a plume of gravel swiftly follows.

No. No, no, no, NO!

Olivia says nothing. Instead, eyes narrowed and pupils blown wide, she feathers the throttle with the care afforded by utter, utter focus. The car beneath her obeys her command; friction slows it but never enough to fall into stagnancy; the wheels thunder at the gravel but never enough to burrow themselves into ineffectuality. Painfully, painfully, she reorients herself towards the track – watching Ted go past, then Berezowska, then Nülkeschlager, then Lane – and claws herself back to it.

Thirty seconds have gone by before the tyres, blessedly, meet tarmac again.

And spin up again.

And…

“Baxen,” Olivia says quietly, “I’ve flatspotted my left front and rear. It’s… It’s too bad to carry on.”

A moment passes.

“I hear you, ‘Liv. Box this lap.”

Lap 68

The deployment of the Virtual Safety Car heralds relief for Olivia. Lufti, whom she’d been chasing down, pits for a glory run on the final lap; she can be content with that place, at least. She might have reached Sommer, now ahead of her, but as is there won’t be enough time. The energy fades.

A shame that it is swallowed so immediately and completely by bitterness.

So close. Maelstrom. Maelstrom! Faloe’s late charge tells the story. The pace she was wringing from the car was more than there – it could have carried her to a fight for the podium’s top step. Instead… Tyres a stage harder than they were planning for, leaving her without the pace to clear the one-stoppers and the late two-stoppers with anything like the efficiency she needed, even as the field spread and spread…

Leaving her here. P10.

She could have won.

She threw it away.

“It’s only the first race,” she intones to herself, chant-like, warding off the gathering emotion. “It’s only the first race.”

And the determination flickers again.

---

Previous Chapter
4. Unveiling
3. Flare

Next Chapter
6. Distance
5. Twilight

Back to Hub

[Nico Hulkenberg]

HMG

Practice had been and gone at the Queensland Street Circuit in Doubeia, and things were not looking rosy for HMG Grand Prix, with neither car showing much in the way of pace. The atmosphere on Skiia's side of the garage was particularly tense, with fingernails being chewed violently as the pit crew were glued to the timing screens. Having failed to qualify the week before, a twenty-sixth place in practice left her engineers fearing the worst once more - but seemingly, both car and driver had decided to work together on this occasion, and car 14's final lap was good enough for P14 (which became P13 following the deletion of Kinder's final flying lap). Skiia's engineer, Ralf, immediately came over the radio to relay the good news:

"P13 and safe by 6.5 tenths, brilliant job. Adonis is through as well, so that's both cars in the race. Points on the table for tomorrow."

Evidently the results were not yet matching the lofty ambitions of their lineup, but there were signs that - with any luck - things were going to trend upwards. Things had already gone horribly wrong with their @OGP campaign, with youngster Axel Mausefalle causing a safety car on lap 3, only for former WGPC driver Bryce Yannec to also crash a mere three laps after the safety car re-entered the pits. Things were vastly different on the WGPC side, as the car clearly had pace when it wanted to and there hadn't been any silly crashes, yet there was very little satisfaction when it came to Jöhan Turbringer and Adrian Kinder, the two men at the head of the team. Once more, their differing approaches would lead to a clash of heads, and some fiery words:

"Nice to see both cars in the race this time, eh? Told you that things were looking up, Adrian. I can taste the champagne from here."

"Yeah, me too. It tastes like piss and disappointment."

"Are you ever happy?"

"Not with mediocrity, I'm not. We need to set standards, you and I. High standards, for the rest of the team to follow. If we settle for say, a P9 here, a P8 there, we risk letting our ambitions slip. "

"We will get there, I promise. We're working on it."

"I don't think you're being proactive enough, Jöhan. Hence, I've ordered the engineers to make some changes to the cars prior to the race."

"Oh, no, no. You are not getting ANYBODY to touch those cars, so help me god."

"But Jö-"

"But what? Your masterful strategy worked so well last time, didn't it? The cars have qualified, the cars are set up as well as they can be, and we will just have to see how Skiia and Donny get on in the race. No need to fiddle - if it ain't broke, don't fucking fix it."

"So what, we settle for fourteenth and nineteenth? Come on, man! Show some ambition for your team!"

"They will make up positions in the race. We have strategists for such eventualities. Shit, we even have engineers back at the Entwicklungszentrum running millions of bits and bytes of data for hours on end, just so we can measure the ideal length of a stint to the exact picosecond."

"If our data is so advanced, and we collect so much of it, then why are we so far down, huh?"

"It's just teething problems, no need to worry. Everything will be rosy in the race."

"Piers Ivchenko are third and eighth. We cannot afford to be losing out so harshly to another upstart team. If we don't do something radical, we will only continue to slip behind."

"And if we DO do something radical, we could end up with cars stricken in the pits, or slipping down the order because their new setup is absolutely crap. We stick with what we've got, we stick together, and we keep the faith in our drivers and our car to get a good result, okay? No more funny business."

Adrian grimaced, but chose to relent rather than straining his relationship with Jöhan - and potentially jeopardising his position within the team - any further.

"No more funny business."

---

Nepö

From afar, Nepö had watched her teammate, Vincent Von Visp, throw the fit of a lifetime when he spotted his engineers making routine checks to his Urutovsky-Gatutin machine. She had just started to mellow towards the mysterious Reçueçian lately - despite her disgust, it wasn't as if he had done anything stupid when she was there (perhaps deliberately) - which made his outburst towards the team's hard-working engineers that bit more disappointing. "Pathetic manchild." she thought. Of course, after he had accused the team of favouring her, he went a second quicker in practice. Whether these two occurrences were linked is entirely unknown to those outwith UrGa's inner circle, but Nepö continued to narrow her eyes whenever she spotted Vincent, continuing to maintain her lack of eye contact with the upperclassman. A strong qualifying performance lifted the young Hülkenberger's spirits, even if she was still behind her teammate, but her now-good mood shifted to that of confusion when she got out of her car only to be met with the stony gaze of Vincent's personal assistant, Valérie.

"What do you want?" asked Nepö, suspicious of her intentions.

"*Monsieur* requested that I give you this note. I strongly suggest you read it." replied Valérie, placing the note in Nepö's hand.

"Couldn't this wait until I'd left the garage? What does he want with me, anyway?"

"Consider it a proposal."

Nepö had to clutch her sides as she laughed at the absurdity of what she had just heard. "What, he wants to marry me already?" Before Valérie had a chance to respond, she spoke again. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'll read the damn thing later, okay? Let me just go through the debrief with my team and I'll get back to you with what I think." She placed the note on a table and changed out of her race suit before pocketing the note, and as she sat down with her engineers to scrutinise the data from qualifying, she couldn't help but think to herself: "What kind of wimp sends his assistant to talk to his own teammate?"

Nepö pictured looking at the timesheet - and not exactly pleased with it

---

Dario

In stark contrast with last weekend, things were going very wrong for the duo of Dario Nülkeschläger and Pressley-Kim Racing, and the almost-a-podium fourth place finish seemed a far cry away from the situation at hand. Nini - perhaps emboldened by being in front of a massive cohort of home fans - was flying high, having finished P2 in the first practice whilst he languished over five tenths off. Even in qualifying, where neither car seemed to perform, Nini was far closer to the points than he was - if anything, he was closer to not qualifying at all than he was to Nini. He wasn't sure what the source of the problem was, but as far as he was concerned his weekend was mostly done, as being thirteen places from the points in a street race is essentially game over. All he could hope for was a miracle.

"Surely one of these days you have to take me up on softs and inshallah. We are so low down that conventional strategy is totally out of the window." suggested Dario, giddy at the prospect of doing what he thought of as 'the funny strategy'.

"No." responded his engineer, evidently taking it far more seriously than he was.

[Tropicorp]

---

. Drivers Standings:  0 pts (N/A)
     Average Finish:  22.0   (22nd)
Positions Over Grid:  -5.0   (18th)

When the checkered flag flew at the Forest Cross International Raceway in Esmerel to conclude the 20th World Grand Prix Championship season, Cocoabo #23 and Race Eelandii VTGP saw their championship aspirations extinguished with a 10th place run. With eventual champion Brendan Faloe taking home a runner-up finish it meant that the Fast Cocoabo who had been within an arm... or wings length of the Top Spot in the standings all season long would finish the season 23 points behind the Champion. 23 points. Perhaps a fitting deficit for Cocoabo #23 in a season where they transformed their image of being "just a diversity hire" and a "marketing tool" to being a legitimate championship contender. Then, just like that. 23 points away. Thats one DNF in Aboveland away from an unlikely title.

Fast forward to World Grand Prix Championship season 21, and the field was right back in Aboveland. Perhaps an opportunity for Cocaobo #23 to redeem themselves and get the season off to a strong start? Think again. It was a struggle from the outset with the Cocoabo qualifying 17th and finishing 22nd 3 laps down. Incredibly, the Cocoabo was not the final driver in the finishing order with race long struggles for Preston Autos as their drivers would finish 23rd and 25th while the debutant Pierre-Louis Archer from Patriotlandia finished well behind in 24th.

There was no time to re-factor things back in Cocoabo Park. There was not going to be a de-brief back in Eelandii. The World Grand Prix Championship season was now in full swing. Race Eelandii was in a "You brought what you brought" scenario - at least for the first three races of the season, and if anything needed to be fixed it would have to be fixed on the road and on the fly.

Unfortunately for Cocoabo #23, the next event on the World Grand Prix Championship calendar was a Street Course. Cocoabo #23 was certainly one of the best Road Racers in the multiverse and certainly the best Road Racing Cocoabo. But they were trained at a track cut out of the middle of a lush Forest. They won their first career Grand Prix at another purpose build Road Course - the Hwoarang Racing Circuit in Togonistan and had limited experience on flat, narrow and imposing street courses. The Queensland Street Circuit in Doubeia was absolutely a wildcard variable for Fast Cocoabo this season.

So when the #23 posted the 12th fastest time in practice, there was genuine surprise and excitement within the Race Eelandii paddock. Perhaps the weekend would not be a loss after all. Was there a chance they could earn points from this race? Those hopes seemed to be mitigated after qualifying when Cocoabo #23 would get mired back in 18th position, a long way away from the points - though it would be a long day at the track as well. Cocoabo #23 would take the green in Doubeia already at a deficit of 25 points to the Championship leader. A deficit after just one single race that was greater than any points deficit the Fast Cocoabo had experienced throughout the duration of WGPC Season 20. Driver and team could little afford another week without any points to show for it, but it was looking more and more like that could be the situation they face in Queensland.

---

. Drivers Standings:  0 pts (N/A)
     Average Finish:  DNQ   (N/A)
Positions Over Grid:  DNQ   (N/A)

HMG Motorsports and Skiia Vialiv pulled out of their qualifying lap at the Fjellutfordring and did not qualify for the Abovian Grand Prix. It is the first time in Vialiv's career as a World Grand Prix licensed driver that she has failed to qualify for a race. At first it looked like the team would spend Sunday working to make Vialiv's car better for the next round. Tables were put across the car in an appearance that it would be worked on. Then the tablecloths came out. And then the tea. The #14 garage was turned into a tea room to serve the other half of the garage rooting on Adonis Fitzpatrick as HMG's only car competing in the Abovian Grand Prix.

Tea-fueled shenanigans aside, it was the team's hope that by saving her from the mid-pack mess in Aboveland, the team would come out better prepared to score points at the Queensland Street Circuit. The team focused entirely on their race setup throughout the practice session without being concerned with a flying lap. Yet when it mattered, Vialiv made the lap she needed to not only put the #14 HMG Grand Prix machine in the race, but to do so in position to possibly race her way up into the Top 10 to score points. It was a very competitive qualifying session that would see Hanna Berezowska, fifth place in the current World Grand Prix driver's standings, fail to qualify. Former World Grand Prix Champion Ryker Lane was also one of the 6 slowest drivers in qualifying but was granted a life line due to the fact that only two of the four WGPC motorworks drivers are eligible to compete on race day.

The real question for Vialiv and team HMG is who are they going to be able to pass in front of them in order to get the spots they need to get into the points. Even getting a single position of improvement from the start will be no easy task. In the row directly in front of Vialiv on the grid will be the two most recent World Grand Prix drivers champions, Brendan Faloe and iBen Toralmintii. Ahead of them will be last weeks race winner and current WGPC Drivers Standings leader Janne Laukkanen along with the pay driver who could care less who they bump, break or wreck to hold their position. Vialiv's best hope may be to create a gap between herself and the cars in front and hope that the wrecking ball that is Vincent Von Visp makes enough of a mistake to cause enough chaos that Vialiv will have the time and space to maneuver around to come out with a solid finish.

It's really not an issue of whether the HMG Grand Prix cars have the pace to compete. Pace is there. The real question is reliability. Will the second lowest reliability chassis and the lowest reliability engine survive through to the end of a grueling first-ever Grand Prix on the Queensland Street Circuit? The answer to that question may depend entirely on what happens in the first few turns. If Vialiv can find a way to avoid the chaos and slip beyond the Championship drivers in front of them, then its very possible they can work their way up into the points and get the season kick started. Just one wrong turn on the opening lap, however, could spell doom, as Vialiv will have limited margin of error on a track that has been described as slightly difficult to overtake. Vialiv will likely need to focus on the exit of the large curve to take advantage of the raw power delivered by HMG Grand Prix's Preston Powerplant down the long straightaway with the slight right-hand kink on Orchard Street. Yet, no matter what happens on Sunday, Vialiv will have at least done better than she did in Round 1, simply by having actually qualified for the race.

[Liventia]

CUTOFF

for the Doubeinese Grand Prix at Queensland Street Circuit

[Liventia]

Week 5: Race

Conditions:      	Dry
Laps:              	51
Nation:         	DOU
Circuit:        	Queensland Street Circuit
Event:                	Doubeinese Grand Prix
Safety Car on Laps:	
Cars on Grid:        	26

Start               	POS  # ▍DRV Name                                         Team                                     	Time        	Pts	Fastest Lap	
 1 ▍HAU            	  1 88 ▍PRE Ted Pressley                                 Ælund Grand Prix                             	01:39:39.017	25		
 2 ▍PRE            	  2 89 ▍GTA Abdoulaye Goita                              Ælund Grand Prix                             	00:00:58.094	18		
 3 ▍CRU            	  3 51 ▍CRU R.L. Cruisin                                 Piers Ivchenko                               	00:00:58.979	14		
 4 ▍GTA            	  4 17 ▍LAU Janne Laukkanen                              Nexus Racing                                 	00:01:01.741	11		
 5 ▍MAR            	  5 37 ▍HAU Laura Haukanna                               Pryfors Bilar                                	00:01:03.390	8		
 6 ▍ARC            	  6  1 ▍FAE Brendan Faloe                                Cygnus                                       	00:01:08.614	6		
 7 ▍LNG            	  7 30 ▍MAR Otto Markul                                  WGPC Motorworks                              	00:01:09.872	4		
 8 ▍HAZ            	  8 63 ▍KIN Nepö Kinder                                  Urotovsky-Gatutin                            	00:01:23.984	3		
 9 ▍LAU            	  9 82 ▍LMN Kinu Luminna                                 Preston Autos                                	00:01:25.497	2		
10 ▍VVV            	 10 55 ▍LNG Gil Langdon                                  KISMO                                        	00:01:29.250	1		
11 ▍FAE            	 11 66 ▍VVV Vincent Von Visp                             Urotovsky-Gatutin                            	00:01:41.612			
12 ▍TII            	 12 21 ▍HAZ Nik Hazrin Lutfi                             Piers Ivchenko                               	00:01:58.233			
13 ▍VIA            	 13 77 ▍TII iBen Toralmintii                             Race Eelandii VTGP                           	Laps Down: 1			
14 ▍KIN            	 14 12 ▍SOM Ron Sommer                                   Viska                                        	Laps Down: 1			
15 ▍PLA            	 15 96 ▍ARC William Archer                               Viska                                        	Laps Down: 1			
16 ▍LMN            	 16 23 ▍C23 Cocoabo #23                                  Race Eelandii VTGP                           	Laps Down: 1			
17 ▍JOH            	 17 13 ▍PLA Pierre-Louis Archer                          WGPC Motorworks                              	Laps Down: 1			
18 ▍C23            	 18 40 ▍AKS Adriana Ela Kowalski Lillian                 Eminent                                      	Laps Down: 1			
19 ▍FTZ            	 19 14 ▍VIA Skiia Vialiv                                 HMG Grand Prix                               	Laps Down: 1			
20 ▍STO            	 20 74 ▍FTZ Adonis Fitzpatrick                           HMG Grand Prix                               	Laps Down: 1			
21 ▍DEV            	 21 94 ▍LAN Ryker Lane                                   Nexus Racing                                 	Laps Down: 1			
22 ▍SOM            	 22  7 ▍DEV Anneliese Devereux                           Eminent                                      	Laps Down: 1			
23 ▍NÜL            	 23 27 ▍NÜL Dario Nülkeschlager                          Pressley Racing                              	Laps Down: 1			
24 ▍AKS            	 24 22 ▍JOH Nini Johnsilvaturr                           Pressley Racing                              	Laps Down: 1			
25 ▍ANG            	 25 85 ▍STO Olivia Stone                                 Cygnus                                       	Laps Down: 1	 + 1	1:51.318	
26 ▍LAN            	 26 84 ▍ANG Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling                  Preston Autos                                	Laps Down: 2

Drivers' standings

Pos # ▍DRV Name                                          Team [Engine]                                                                                Tyres                                        Pts
 1 88 ▍PRE Ted Pressley                                  Ælund Grand Prix [Ælund CMYK-T20V8H]                                                         Tropicorp Racing Supply                      43
 2 17 ▍LAU Janne Laukkanen                               Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         36
 3  1 ▍FAE Brendan Faloe                                 Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    20
 4 89 ▍GTA Abdoulaye Goita                               Ælund Grand Prix [Ælund CMYK-T20V8H]                                                         Tropicorp Racing Supply                      18
 5 51 ▍CRU R.L. Cruisin                                  Piers Ivchenko [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                              Brimstone                                    14
 6 27 ▍NÜL Dario Nülkeschlager                           Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                       Tropicorp Racing Supply                      11
 6 37 ▍HAU Laura Haukanna                                Pryfors Bilar [Pryfors Bilar]                                                                Phoenician-In Motion                         11
 8 95 ▍BZW Hanna Berezowska                              HiTEN.gpt [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                                  Brimstone                                    8
 9 94 ▍LAN Ryker Lane                                    Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         6
10 74 ▍FTZ Adonis Fitzpatrick                            HMG Grand Prix [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                   Tropicorp Racing Supply                      4
10 30 ▍MAR Otto Markul                                   WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              4
12 63 ▍KIN Nepö Kinder                                   Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                           Solymok                                      3
13 82 ▍LMN Kinu Luminna                                  Preston Autos [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                    Brimstone                                    2
13 12 ▍SOM Ron Sommer                                    Viska [Viska RG Motors]                                                                      Phoenician-In Motion                         2
13 85 ▍STO Olivia Stone                                  Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    2
16 55 ▍LNG Gil Langdon                                   KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      1
16 21 ▍HAZ Nik Hazrin Lutfi                              Piers Ivchenko [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                              Brimstone                                    1

Constructors' standings

Pos NAT ▍Team [Engine]                                                                                Tyres                                        Pts
  1 ABL ▍Ælund Grand Prix [Ælund CMYK-T20V8H]                                                         Tropicorp Racing Supply                      61
  2 NIM ▍Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         42
  3 ESM ▍Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    22
  4 DOU ▍Piers Ivchenko [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                              Brimstone                                    15
  5 TMB ▍Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                       Tropicorp Racing Supply                      11
  6 DCS ▍Pryfors Bilar [Pryfors Bilar]                                                                Phoenician-In Motion                         11
  7 HDR ▍HiTEN.gpt [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                                  Brimstone                                    8
  8 HÜL ▍HMG Grand Prix [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                   Tropicorp Racing Supply                      4
  9 WGP ▍WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              4
 10 PDN ▍Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                           Solymok                                      3
 11 HAP ▍Preston Autos [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                    Brimstone                                    2
 12 AUR ▍Viska [Viska RG Motors]                                                                      Phoenician-In Motion                         2
 13 ANM ▍KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      1
 14 LIS ▍Eminent [Sidus 616W-1]                                                                       Blue Sulphurate                              0
 15 V&T ▍Race Eelandii VTGP [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                    Tropicorp Racing Supply                      0

[Diarcesia]

Neither Sam nor Laura expected how well the reset of the cars within PB would turn out. Laura was on pole and Sam could have grabbed it from her teammate had her rear left tyre not punctured. For the race, everyone knew this, including Aldauren, Erik, and most of all, Laura: with Sam unable to start the Doubeian Grand Prix, she was very vulnerable to the Ælunds behind her. The honest assessment was that a win was nigh-impossible without the Hand of God. Aldauren even considered the insane idea of switching the #37 car to Bluebirds on a pitstop without the preparations to accommodate such a change.

"Laura, it's good if we win. It'll be very challenging, so be prepared for our plan B," the director of strategy, Manwulf Garcredson, told her in the pre-race meeting. Plan B would be to minimize any tussles with the Ælunds and try to maximize the points she can get safely.

Lights out and away all went; Laura quickly achieved separation from the rest of the pack, including the scary duo of Pressley and Goita. She was unware of a contact incident behind her between William Archer and Otto Markul that ultimately put the former outside the points. The pit crew was very hopeful of what the PF-3s were capable of, but their high expectations were surpassed with how the gap to P2 widened when Laura was in the racing line, in clean air, and with her tyres being the Hi-Trac Phoenician-InMotion Blackbirds. That configuration, though, was to buy time. The time to pit and therefore lose the racing lead was inevitable, but before that, the solitary Laura Haukanna with the Hespera-decorated, airplane-like profile of the PF-3 was a sight to behold, as if its V10 was raging against the dying of the light.

In the garage, Sam Blaatschapen could only wish that she could also participate. Not only she thought the car looks and sounds good. It actually moves very fast... the maneuverability made the PF-2s of last season feel like a yacht in comparison.

A textbook undercut strategy from Ælund snatched the lead, with the helpless PB simply incapable of formulating a countermeasure. And a fastest lap attempt would have held—only for Olivia Stone to disappoint the Diarcesian team.

"P5, Laura, P5. Congratulations on a job well done. It was a tough race, trying to hold on to what you can, but you did splendidly. Let's keep it up in the next Grand Prix."

Next stop would be the Nimban Grand Prix. Aldauren felt cheeky and called Phoenician-InMotion if they could give his team an inventory of Bluebirds, just in case...

[Former Citizens of the Nimbus System]

The Nexus Wardship of Former Citizens of the Nimbus System bids you welcome to the WGPC 21
Nimban Grand Prix
!



Track Information

Circuit Name: Crossbay Circuit
Location: Nimbus Bay, Nexus Wardship of Former Citizens of the Nimbus System
Lap Record: 1:26.018 (Ryker Lane, Nexus Racing UHSGV-1)
Lap Length (km): 4.83
Qualifying Type: Elimination

The first World Grand Prix-rated track with a section that runs above a large body of water, Crossbay Circuit continues the long and proud Nimban tradition of race circuits built in areas of astounding natural beauty by running across, through and below the stark dolomite rock cliffs of Nimbus Bay. It combines sections from three famous courses of the Nimban origin universe, Vertigo Loop Racetrack, Keelhaul Canyon Raceway and Dragonmaw Chasm Raceway, and combines them with often fearsome elevation changes to form a track that demands both driver ability and daring to perform well.

A Lap of Crossbay Circuit

A lap of the track begins in Sector 1 with a short run down the end of the start/finish straight to Turn 1, a long and smooth left-hander that is deceptively tight in the middle of the turn, as well as descending by a few metres over its course. From Turn 1 a short straight leads into the gentle Turn 2 before the car enters the first of two tunnels on the course. This downward plunge, where the track meets the pit exit (redesigned before WGP2 III to cut off a larger portion of the lap, reducing time loss and thereby encouraging more varied and daring strategies), transitions rapidly into an underground stadium section featuring the moderately tight Turn 3 and the hairpin of Turn 4, both entailing significant elevation change. It then passes under itself before shooting down and out of the cliffs into the water-crossing Sector 2.

Immediately drivers are forced to deal with the esses of Turns 5, 6 and 7. While 5 does demand something of a decrease in speed, the latter two can be taken surprisingly quickly; the measure of a good driver here will be how much momentum they can retain into the straight leading up to the nudge that is Turn 8 and the sweeping, ever so slightly banked Turn 9. After Turn 9 the chicane of Turns 10 and 11 provides another momentum-holding test into Turn 12, which technically begins immediately after Turn 11 but really comprises the mid-speed corner at the very end of the sector.

Sector 3, by far the fastest on the track, begins as drivers dart into the cliff tunnel after 12. There they face a long, climbing straight; this is broken only by Turn 13, a left-hander whose core difficulty is its obstruction of a driver’s vision leading up to Turn 14, arguably the circuit’s trickiest corner. What would be a fast right-hand turn at the tunnel’s exit is made far more challenging by the sudden reduction in downforce that comes with the levelling gradient; maintaining momentum and stability there is vital for positioning into the mid-speed left-hander of Turn 15. From there, another small straight and the chicane of 16 and 17 brings drivers back to the far end of the start/finish straight and, through that, the finish line.

Safety

There are obvious safety-related challenges involved in high-speed racing above water. The organisers of the Nimban Grand Prix fully appreciate this and have taken steps to ensure that Crossbay Circuit is a paragonal track for motorsport safety, featuring:

• Traditional belt-and-tyre barriers;
• Imagikinetic force field technology to prevent cars or car parts from leaving the bounds of the racing environment;
• Imagikinetic recovery of crashed cars and car parts within Sector 2.

Environment

Motor racing typically has a significant environmental impact; all efforts have been made to minimise that impact at Crossbay.

• Significant care was taken before construction to relocate vulnerable wildlife away from the circuit to other areas around the cliffs of Nimbus Bay;
• Low-carbon hydraulic concrete has been employed throughout the construction of the circuit and its facilities;
• Harmful pollutants and greenhouse gasses created over the course of racing remain sealed within the confines of the Imagikinetic safety force field, whereupon they are scrubbed from the air by industrial-scale machinery housed underneath the track.

The Nimban Grand Prix - A Survival Guide

‘Need-to-Knows’

Language: Universal (English) (Higher [glyphic, formal] and Common [Latin, informal] Scripts)
Currency: Universal Standard Coinage (USC, commonly referred to as ‘coins’; symbol ‘ပ’) – 1 ပ worth approximately $1.8 NSD
Climate: Temperate Maritime
Time Zone: -10 AMT (Arcadian Mean Time)

Warning

Please refrain from taking items into the country where doing so is illegal. This particularly applies to drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco, and firearms. Such items will be seized upon entry and may be either destroyed or confiscated for collection upon your departure.

Getting to Crossbay Circuit

By Air:
Most attendees of the Nimban Grand Prix will arrive by air at First City Airport in the First City. From there, take the inbound Airport Terralev Line to Tower Station, then transfer to the outbound Seaport Terralev Line. Be sure to board a service that specifically lists Crossbay Circuit as the penultimate stop. Alternatively, if you wish to land at Second City Airport, take the inbound Airport Terralev Line to Harmony Station, then take the Ultrarail to Tower Station in the First City, a journey which will take no more than half an hour, before taking the outbound Seaport Terralev Line in the same manner. If you require help, staff in white and blue uniforms will be on hand; information can also be found in both the Higher and Common Scripts and in a variety of other languages on boards around all Nimban Rail facilities.

By Sea:
A few attendees of the Nimban Grand Prix may arrive by sea at Nimbus Bay Seaport. From there, take the inbound Seaport Terralev Line directly to Crossbay Circuit. Be sure to board a service that specifically lists Crossbay Circuit as the second stop. If you require help, staff in white and blue uniforms will be on hand; information can also be found in both the Higher and Common Scripts and in a variety of other languages on boards around all Nimban Rail facilities.

Accommodation

In Situ:
Accommodation at Crossbay Circuit will be available in the Hospitality Village attached to the main race facility. Staying here is recommended for those who only wish to attend the Nimban Grand Prix and related events around Crossbay Circuit during their stay.

First City:
A huge variety of accommodation is available in the First City, from lodgings in the hospitality sector, including state-run NimbInn hotels offering three-star lodging at market price, to individual room-sharing. Staying here is recommended for those who wish to combine their attendance of the Nimban Grand Prix with more general sightseeing in the First City, featuring such attractions as the famous New Nexus Tower, home of the Nimban legislature and executive alongside the world’s only Imagination Nexus.

Events

Main Events:

Drivers’ Parade: Thursday, 12:30 p.m. (22:30 AMT)

WGPC Practice Start: Friday, 10:00 a.m. (20:00 AMT)

WGPC Qualifying Start: Saturday, 10:00 a.m. (20:00 AMT)

WGPC Race Start: Sunday, 10:00 a.m. (20:00 AMT)

Concert:
A concert will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Friday in the Hospitality Village, including a performance of the Nimban national anthem ‘Together Unto Possibility’ by the Nimban Symphony Orchestra and a reinterpretation of classic Fleetwood Mac song and unofficial World Grand Prix theme ‘The Chain’ by performers to be revealed during the concert itself.

Lectures:
A series of lectures from guest speakers will be held in the Lecture Hall within the Hospitality Village during the race weekend. WGPC 21 marks the first time that an open invitation has been made for participation by those from outside the Wardship; the timetable will be updated as submissions are received, evaluated and confirmed. We look forward to the heightened spirit of learning and collaboration that results.

• Friday, 13:00 p.m. – Gertrude Thompsonas, Project Manager for Nexus Racing and Regular Speaker, and Lucia Vanderbilt, Head Designer for Nexus Racing – ‘Starting from Zero: Re-evaluation and Reinvention in the UHSGV-6’
• Friday, 14:30 p.m. – Marty Lewis, Team Principal for Preston Autos Grand Prix Racing, and Shawn Hammer, Head of Preston Performance Products – ‘“Keep it Simple, Stupid”: Preston Autos' Philosophy to Succeeding in Grand Prix Racing’
  Friday, 16:00 p.m. - William Emerson, Doctor of Engineering and Team Principal of Cygnus Motorsport Team - ‘Walking The Tightrope: Striking A Balance Between What Works And What Could Work’
• Saturday, 13:30 p.m. – Henriesse Lane, Circuit Design Consultant and Three-Time Cityprix Drivers’ Champion – ‘How to Make a Track for Racing’
• Saturday, 15:00 p.m. – Heinrich Aross, Project Manager for the Crossbay Circuit Construction Collective – ‘Cerulean Dreams, Azure Realities – How We Built Crossbay’
• Saturday, 16:30 p.m. - Yitzhak Rosenbaum, Political Analyst, Podcaster and Writer - ‘The Long Hard Arm of Internationstatal Soft Power: How Nations Use Sports to Spread Their Influence Throughout the Multiverse’
• Sunday, 13:30 p.m. – Marina Smirnitskaya, Head of Public Relations for Urotovsky-Gatutin Motorsports – ‘Truth and Lies, Belief and Disbelief: The Potential for Social Media Manipulation in the Motorsports Sphere’
• Sunday, 15:00 p.m. – Maddie Ericsson, Podcaster - ‘How Memes Made Me a Fan of Motorsports’
• Sunday, 16:30 p.m. – Fox Wanderwhere, Doctor of Organisational Planning for the University of the Second City – ‘Onwards and Upwards? An Examination of WGP3 Series’ Aims and Executions’

World Grand Prix Experience Centre:
The Crossbay Circuit World Grand Prix Experience Centre in the Hospitality Village will be open throughout the weekend. Visitors will be able to participate in a sequence of activities explaining and simulating some of the key events of a World Grand Prix team’s race weekend, such as formulating race strategies, performing last-minute repairs on a car, changing tyres at a pit stop and competing in Practice, Qualifying and Race sessions, while their progress is tracked throughout by keycard so that each simulation adapts to their previous decisions and performance. After completing the experience, visitors will receive a full race report of their activities, allowing them to test their skills on repeated visits. Should they wish, they can also enter their final race time on a public leaderboard for others to see and compete with.

NRCU Open Radio Car Challenge Tournament

• Thursday, 9:00 a.m., to Saturday, 13:00 p.m. – Qualifying
• Saturday, 16:00 p.m. – Race

In association with the Nimban Radio Car Union, the centre of the Hospitality Village will host an all-comers-welcome radio car tournament. Racers may enter the tournament while the Time Trial Qualifying is open, using either their own radio-controlled car (subject to the NRCU ‘Circuit Midi’-class regulations; see ‘www.nrcu.nim/regs’ for details) or use one of a selection of cars available for the duration of the tournament. Multi-racer 15-minute qualifying sessions will run continuously for competitors to participate in (each entrant may only participate in one session per day) from the circuit opening on Thursday to 13:00 p.m. on Saturday; the fastest 15 racers will then be invited to participate in a 30-minute + 1 lap race. WGPC team members are encouraged to join the competition!

[Deiorus]

Royal Chancellery for Foreign Domains & Emissaries ✓

@DeiorusRCFDE

OFFICIAL FELICITATIONS FROM THE ROYAL CHANCELLERY FOR FOREIGN DOMAINS AND EMISSARIES

By the command of His Most Sovereign Majesty, we hereby extend royal congratulations to Sir Igne Spupuo for his most valiant second-place triumph at the Fjellutfordring race, where he bravely fought against the arctic colds of Aboveland. His Majesty observes that Sir Spupuo continues to bring honour to Deiorus on his mechanical beast, even after many years of service to the crown, wishing many more to come.
#SirIgneSpupuo :: #SupportSeries :: #Fjellutfordring

[Tumbra]

Doubeia
Three hours before the race

"Not hungry, Ted?" offered Edvin, team principal of Ælund, kindly, as he saw Ted stab at his slab of chicken breast during the pre-race meal. The chicken was good — well, as good as chicken breast could be, anyway — but Ted seemed more happy to simply try and shred his chicken than put the pieces in his mouth.

"Can't feel much," came the reply from the Tumbran driver as he lifted his fork to his mouth. On it were a few strings of shredded chicken; but hardly enough to finish the entire block in the time left.

"You'll be fine, hm?" Edvin replied as he lifted his own fork, resplendent with chicken, some cheese, and a bit of lettuce on it. The chicken in particular was tasteless — After swallowing the food, he decided to try and calm Ted's nerves a little. "I know you're nervous. This is your first-ever front row start?"

Ted nodded as he lifted another few slices of chicken to his mouth. It was clear he was nervous; despite having spent two years in the sport beforehand, he didn't seem to know what to do when being on the front row. Two years in a backmarker would do that to anyone.

"Well, just do what you've always done and you'll be fine. You love the car, the car loves you. She'll do right by you if you do right by her. Have you..."

"Rehearsed the race start?" Ted replied without missing a beat, looking up at Edvin. "Yeah. Have been since yesterday. Slightly inwards, try to cut her off, and then go from there." Her obviously referred to Laura Haukanna, the Aurunan who'd taken pole position at the death by five and a half hundredths; while Ted had quietly simmered a bit following the qualifying session that he hadn't been on pole, he'd clearly gotten over it relatively quickly. For the first time in a long while, he wasn't even thinking about Janne Laukkanen; merely just replaying the events of the start of the race in his head over and over, visualising how he'd place the car on the grid, where he wanted to angle it in relation to Laura, how fast he'd shift up into third or fourth in the short run-in to the first turn —

"You clearly know what you want to happen, Ted, but what makes an elite driver is knowing what to do when it doesn't happen. You've considered that, at least?"

Ted looked scandalised at that thought for a second, but nodded slightly, as if giving it a few more nods would seemingly manifest those moments that he feared.

"Did you even get enough sleep?"

"Yeah. I made sure to wind down early, put up the blackout curtains early, so by the end of my thoughts..."

"...it'd be the standard time you fall asleep. Sometimes I forget you've done this for two seasons already."

Ted said nothing but smiled in response. By virtue of being on the grid for three seasons, he was already in the upper half of experience for the grid; turnover in this sport was particularly high.

"Do you normally do this?"

"Only did it once."

"When was that?"

"WGP2 finale. Slept like crap, woke up at like 4am."

"Hmm. And...how did you sleep today?" Edvin raised a cursory eyebrow. The hmm Edvin had let out was somewhat concerning.

"Just fine, actually," Ted said, truthfully. He had fallen asleep after replaying the same scenario about seventy times; it was a bit like counting sheep, in all honesty.

Edvin audibly exhaled, evidently satisfied at Ted's quality of rest while taking his response at face value. "Still, you'll be fine. Plus, you did great last week already, so don't stress yourself out too much, mmhm? Relax-those-muscles, you've been hunching your shoulders for almost the entire time you've sat down. And eat more. If you leave it any further the chicken'll be exiting the same way it came from during the race, and we wouldn't want that, would we?"

Thirty minutes before the race

The past two hours had been a blur. He'd practically forced himself to finish the meal — despite wanting it to be tasteless, he had to admit, the chefs had done a pretty good job making the hunk of chicken breast taste at least a bit appealing, but he'd resorted to secretly dunking peri-peri sauce on it — had headed down to the circuit, with sunglasses on, signed autographs, offered mechanical smiles to fans, and so on. The lucky twenty-six who'd qualified — tough luck for both HiTENs, but particularly Hanna Berezowska, who seemed to be lumbered with the worst team-mate one could ever ask for — were shoved onto an open-top bus and then paraded around the circuit for the spectators to smile and wave at.

Nini Johnsilvaturr seemed to be the darling of the crowd, sporting his father's purple-and-pink team colours as she waved gaily at the gathered spectators; Pressley seemed to be ones to watch this year, particularly with their explosive pace during the pre-season testing portion of the season. He'd wondered how his father had been doing on some occasions — his mother, Mavis, had emailed him after he had his stroke, begging Ted to reconcile with his father Charlie, yet Ted hadn't replied — but it was too close to the race to be thinking about those.

Sometimes there was a sense of destiny about these things, but destiny only remained such until it was acted upon. What was it that the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach said about action? Something about how one could only interpret the world in various ways, but the point was to change it? Again, he had no idea why his mind had flitted with Marxist thought, which he'd barely explored when he was sometimes in high school, at this critical moment; perhaps it was his weird way of calming himself down.

He felt a pair of hands on his shoulders, pressing down; he thought for a moment it was Janne, wishing him luck before the race; but as he turned around, what he saw was his team-mate Abdoulaye Goita giving him a reassuring squeeze, and part amateur massage on his shoulders. Clearly he'd noticed that Ted was nervous. Abdoulaye smiled widely; Ted gave a small grin back.

"Relax, Ted. You've been tense the whole morning, balimakɛ¹," he murmured, ending his sentence with a word that sounded extremely foreign yet somehow reassuring to the Tumbran. "...and you're tense now. Sheesh. But regardless, I know you can do it. You finished second last week, the car is fast, and so on. We know what works, we know what doesn't, we know when we're pitting and stuff. Just drive according to plan, make the killer move —"

"Yeah."

"— and we'll be home free. I've got to get past Cruisin, you past Haukanna, we'll be fine. Maybe I'll even get past Laura and we'll hammer it down."

"Just don't go too far forward, you hear? Only at the start. If we meet on track we'll give it a good go. Just out of the walls, at least."

"Mmhm, definitely," replied Abdoulaye, smiling at Ted's ability to make a joke even now, perhaps reassured that he'd helped Ted with his nerves. There was something naturally disarming about Abdoulaye; the more grounded, calm perspective performing a good contrast to Ted's somewhat more highly-strung personality in these moments. Ted could only hope he would be able to return the favour if Goita found himself in the same situation.

Five minutes before the race

"And that's that, Ted," came the reassuring sounds from his race engineer, Urmo. "You're slightly underfueled, so absolutely no party mode today, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be a good boy," replied Ted, who now felt vastly more comfortable now that he was in the warm, slightly toasty cocoon of his AGP-007. It had taken him a bit to adjust to the car not having the halo — something that he thought would at least be standard-issue on the twelve teams whose cars at least looked like they came from this century — but there was something about being able to see the long run down to turn 1 that he thought was liberating. From here, the distance from him to Laura seemed nearly negligible; all he needed to do was get a better start, and he'd done plenty of those in the simulator.

The cars peeled off for the formation lap; Laura was going perhaps too agonisingly slowly for his tastes, weaving a bit too much, but he was probably just impatient to get to the start of the race. But it went as planned; he'd angled his Ælund extremely aggressively, while somehow still keeping within his grid slot. Ted's Tropicorp boots had begun to cool substantially by the time the eight-wheeled baby blue bathtub of Ryker Lane rolled into its grid slot on the outside of the thirteenth row; but the only sign that the one-time world champion had done so was the first red light flashing up on the starting lights board. A few years ago the WGPO had put speakers above the sounds of the starting lights; it had been derided as something extravagant back then, but Ted liked the audio cue, even if they were slightly less reliable than, well, looking at the lights.

Two. Grasp the steering wheel. Hard. Clutch in.

Three. Relax the shoulders more. Don't look at Laura; just the road.

Four. Hold the clutch. The RPM counter is showing nice numbers. The CMYK engine is —

Five. Purring nicely. Don't let go too early now.

Onetwothr-

And off.

The feeling of being pushed back into his seat as the AGP-007 went from zero to a hundred in less than two seconds was by now familiar to Ted; the feeling of the noise, everything all around him seemed to explode in a cacophony of sound as an orchestra of V6s, V8s, and the V10 in particular next to him screamed as he made his way down to the first corner. But he had timed everything perfectly; the black nose of the sole Pryfors Bilar on the grid disappeared almost as soon as he reached the end of the pitlane, but he still pre-emptively cut the driver directly behind him off as the field went surging into the first hairpin, a medium right that led into a long, yawning left as the field did a 180 on itself.

But then he was home free.

There was no opposition on the run down Orchard Street; no opposition through the kink; none for the set of two ninety-degree corners that were mainstays of street circuits, and none as he began the run into the chicane complex of the Bullseye. He gave himself a glance at the mirror, but didn't see too much; black, orange, yellow, gold all melded as he started to settle into a rhythm, far away from the rest of the field, and decided there wasn't too much to be gained from it; he hoped Abdoulaye had made it up to second, but now really wasn't the time.

It took until the fifth lap until the radio crackled and Urmo provided an update; but first, a wellness check.

"You alright?"

"Yeah."

"Need anything?"

"Gap."

"Three seconds."

"To whom?"

The response was mostly indecipherable, but from what he could gather Abdoulaye, Cruisin, and Haukanna were engaged in a three-way tussle for second. The exact details escaped him; he'd have to hear from them if and when they decided to recollect the race with him after.

"Okay."

"How are the tyres?"

"They're good. Maybe we can extend the stint."

"Yeah, we'll look into it."

Lap 12

What very few people talk about in their experiences of driving a WGPC car is how much it feels like the driver is continually trying to hold together an animal that's always about a minute away from grinding itself to little bits. And the monster, bless it, wants to drive itself to bits, because that's the best way to go fast. It's constant crisis management from the moment the five red lights extinguish; though the car's interface will never tell you directly, there is and there always will be something going wrong with the car. And that's the correct way to go about it, mind; if there's nothing wrong with the car at the current moment, either something is about to; or the car is going too slowly.

By this time in the race he was basically alone; he didn't know how far behind the other cars were, though in the small amounts of time amidst the constant management of his bucking mare that he could get, he hoped Abdoulaye was doing well. It was the least the Recuecian deserved after his cruel elimination last race; he, too, deserved a result to remember in the car. The corners melted into straight lines, the grey buildings surrounding the track slowly melting into a tunnel; he began shifting automatically, adjusting the brake bias specifically...

"Temps are high," came the short message from the pitwall, breaking Ted out of his reverie.

"Damnit," was all Ted offered as a response, both to the message and being snapped out of his rhythm, though he hoped the latter didn't reach the pitwall. "How is the stint? It's all fine, but if temps are high..."

"We'll be fine if you are fine. Plan A is still standing as is."

"Gap?"

"Fifteen."

The number slightly took him out; thankfully he was on Orchard Street, and not, say, about to take on the Junction kink when he received this news. He briefly contemplated easing off a little, but he was in this for himself first and foremost. No, he answered; he would push as hard and as much as he could.

"How are the tyres?" crackled the radio.

"Good. We'll keep to A. No extending, no risks."

"No extending, no risks, got it."

Lap 44

And the gap to the peloton kept growing.

And growing.

And growing.

No extending, no risks, but the gap just kept growing.

Mediums onto hards onto softs; both pit stops had gone well, almost too well; but Ted kept lapping, worming his way past the league of cars that had been shown blue flags. His second and last stop on lap 43 meant he had the green light to go for a fastest lap attempt, even though he promised himself he'd only go for it on the last lap of the race. He'd nearly screamed at Urmo after Urmo decided to talk to him on the run-up to Convention on his out-lap; while Ted hadn't screamed, his response was audibly strained and short, and Urmo had wisely kept quiet since.

Somehow by now he felt like he didn't need to see every braking point; he just needed to feel. The lapped cars didn't really feel like obstacles, for they would get out of his way anyway. The last conscious thing he really felt he was doing was turning the engine mode down a little; it pained him a little to do it, but his worst fear was not having enough fuel to provide the requisite sample to the stewards at the end of the race. Was it complacency? Maybe, but to him there was about a fifty-fifty chance he would win this race, and he was not going to let it go. There were more than enough things to manage, anyway; the temperatures, brakes, gearshifts.

Only glimpses at the screen as the car raced past the start-finish straight; he liked what he saw, but couldn't let up at any moment.

1:51:408.
1:51.403.
1:51:397.
1:51:386.
1:51:375.

Lap after lap; sometimes green, sometimes white popped up on his screen; but it all didn't mean anything anymore. Fuck the point, he was out for the gold.

The car felt lighter, and easier to control. He was one with the car now. His tailbone was complaining, but he didn't feel the pain; he sipped his liquid, but the scalding hot globules had no taste. His neck strained against the g-forces pulling him in the other direction, but he willed himself to keep his head straight. His hands clenched down on the paddles that shifted the gear; but there was no pain. His feet made the motions, but he didn't feel anything. Sweat trickled down his nose and out of every pore, which was usually his biggest annoyance, but there was no tickling today. Nothing on the radio; just him, in sync with his V8, driving like his life depended on it, desperately keeping his car out of the walls. His body was screaming at him, as he usually did; but he ignored it.

The end was close, now. But it still felt like it was an eternity away.

He didn't even notice that he'd lost eighth gear with three laps to go.

Lap 51

It was about halfway through the end of the final lap that Ted entertained the possibility that the win was his; after passing a limpid Preston for the second time in the race and a brown-coloured car in the run up to Convention that he finally began to entertain the possibility that everything had fallen his way; that him, yes, him, the driver of two Kaylans which could probably be better described as also-rans, and now the driver of an Ælund which had become an early-season darling.

For the last time, he ran down the back straight; his eyes began to cloud, but he held it back. No, there were still three corners left; not now, not now!

But the flesh was giving; he felt himself breathing louder as he broke for the first of those three turns, turn 17; then as he guided the car through 18 and 19 his nerves nearly gave; but as soon as he saw the small chequered flag waving, all he wanted to do was slam the accelerator, perform the last five gearshifts, to the roar of the crowd, the murmur of the vuvuzelas, the horns —

And it was all over in an instant. The moment the chequered flag dropped, he let out something that was a cross between an ear-shattering cry and a scream; the tears started streaming down his face, but he was still lucid enough to drive; he began turning dials down, hoping they were correct; but that was something that he could figure out later.

He was a Grand Prix winner.

He'd finally arrived, and by some margin. There were so many thoughts running through his mind, but the one that stuck was the fact that he'd finally broken his duck on the twenty-second time of asking. There would be no doubts about whether Ælund had chosen wrong when they went with him over Archer anymore; no doubts over whether he'd squandered his potential he'd shown during his one season in WGP2; no doubts over whether he was the right fit for the seat.

He was a Grand Prix winner.

While he trundled back to the pits he had to wait an agonisingly long time for the news to flow through that Abdoulaye had scored second by nine-tenths; but the tears were flowing. They kept flowing, and flowing, as he waved to the stewards as they waved their flags for him. Him, the Grand Prix winner, the winner of the streets of Doubeia.

And when he got back to the pits, and drove right up to the "1" sign at the end of the pitlane that was his, rightfully his, by dint of him finishing fifty-eight seconds ahead of the second-placed driver, he still couldn't believe it.

He was a Grand Prix winner.

And now the world seemed to wait, waiting for him, waiting for the moment where he would get out of the car and perform some kind of victory flourish; the moment where a hundred, a thousand shutters would go off, marking the crowning moment of a career that, so far, had gone largely in the direction of nowhere. But at this moment, right at the crucial moment, he didn't want to; Ted didn't feel ready. By this time he'd stopped sobbing. He felt the tears drying; he opened his visor slightly and tried to dry his eyes with his dirty, grimy gloves as best he could; and then he sat there and leant back against his seat.

He breathed. Tried to. His heart was pounding; his feet felt numb, like they were three hundred and five kilometres away, back at the start of the race; even if he stood up now there was a nonzero chance he would instantly topple over.

But then, to his left, a familiar yellow car pulled up, slightly behind him almost as if in deference to the race winner; and then a yellow helmet and a yellow jumpsuit with an 89 on the left breast came over to him, tapped him on the chest, bringing him back into reality. An arm was extended to him, the visor on the other man's helmet lifted, an expression of pure joy behind it.

It was time.

Ted undid his seatbelt, slowly, then grasped onto Abdoulaye's arm as if he was a drowning man being offered a lifeboat; Abdoulaye pulled him and Ted pushed against his own car as Ted eased himself out of the battered and bruised warhorse that ultimately got him his first-ever victory. Abdoulaye grunted and Ted struggled.

And finally, he rose out of the cockpit.

^{1 "Brother" in Bambara, the most commonly-spoken language in Mali.}

[Liventia]

A very quick but important OOC host note:
Please keep RPs in here semi-related to the WGPC season. If you're only signed up for a non-WGPC series, please don't post your RPs related to that series here. After all, WGPC driver signups are always open – but if you're not participating, then it does not make sense for you to post about a different tournament here.

[Diarcesia]

Neither Sam nor Laura expected how well the reset of the cars within PB would turn out. Laura was on pole and Sam could have grabbed it from her teammate had her rear left tyre not punctured. For the race, everyone knew this, including Aldauren, Erik, and most of all, Laura: with Sam unable to start the Doubeian Grand Prix, she was very vulnerable to the Ælunds behind her. The honest assessment was that a win was nigh-impossible without the Hand of God. Aldauren even considered the insane idea of switching the #37 car to Bluebirds on a pitstop without the preparations to accommodate such a change.

"Laura, it's good if we win. It'll be very challenging, so be prepared for our plan B," the director of strategy, Manwulf Garcredson, told her in the pre-race meeting. Plan B would be to minimize any tussles with the Ælunds and try to maximize the points she can get safely.

Lights out and away all went; Pressley made quick work of his situation and took the race lead promptly. Plan B instantly came to Laura's mind and did not mount so much of a challenge. She was unware of a contact incident behind her between William Archer and Otto Markul that ultimately put the former outside the points. The pit crew was very hopeful of what the PF-3s were capable of, but their high expectations were surpassed with how Laura could keep up when she was in the racing line, in clean air, and with her tyres being the Hi-Trac Phoenician-InMotion Blackbirds. That configuration, though, was to buy time. The time to pit and therefore lose track position was inevitable. PB was simply unable to counteract other teams with two drivers when it comes to race strategy in this GP. But before that, Laura Haukanna with the Hespera-decorated, airplane-like profile of the PF-3 was a sight to behold, as if its V10 was raging against the dying of the light.

In the garage, Sam Blaatschapen could only wish that she could also participate. Not only she thought the car looks and sounds good. It actually moves very fast... the maneuverability made the PF-2s of last season feel like a yacht in comparison.

A fastest lap attempt would have held—only for Olivia Stone to disappoint the Diarcesian team.

"P5, Laura, P5. Congratulations on a job well done. It was a tough race, trying to hold on to what you can, but you did splendidly. Let's keep it up in the next Grand Prix."

Next stop would be the Nimban Grand Prix. Aldauren felt cheeky and called Phoenician-InMotion if they could give his team an inventory of Bluebirds, just in case...

[Trans-Dniesters]

UROTOVSKY–GATUTIN MOTORSPORTS DIVISION ✓ Join twii.tur blue services to unlock extended messages like this one!

@URGA_Motorsports_ENG

We are pleased to announce that the head of our Public Relations Department, Ms. Marina Smirnitskaya, head of public relations of Urotovsky-Gatutin Motorsports, is delivering her first ever international lecture* at the Crossbay Circuit Hospitality Village Lecture Hall in the Nexus Wardship during the weekend of the Nimban Grand Prix! Her lecture, titled “Truth and Lies, Belief and Disbelief: The Potential for Social Media Manipulation in the Motorsports Sphere” will cover topics such as scam farms using the names of popular drivers and teams to attract victims, and the possible use of bots to create the impression of a team or driver that is much more popular on social media than they actually are. We will announce the time and date of her lecture as soon as it becomes available to us.

*Subject to the organizers’ approval.


#WGPC : #WGPCSeason21 : #NimbanGrandPrix : #LectureTime : #TruthAndLies : #BeliefAndDisbelief : #ThePotentialOfSocialMedia : #PowerOfThePeople

---

The results of the first race of the new twii.tur Support Series, an open-wheel series designed to accommodate most of the drivers who failed to find a seat on the grid of the 21st season of the World Grand Prix Championship, did not make for good reading for Vasily Semyonovich Gatutin. He was already suffering the aftereffects of dealing with the aftermath of a terrible first race for the Urotovsky-Gatutin Motorsports Division in their defense of the WGPC constructors’ championship, and his hopes that the team would do better in the new support series unfortunately did not come true.

UrGa had not intended to participate in the new support series in the first place, mostly because nobody in the team believed that the series was going to get off the ground as quickly as it did. But the microblogging website twii.tur, in partnership with a group called “Partnership for All Internationstatal Drivers,” had managed to acquire the assets to the discontinued Atlantian Oceania Grand Prix in record time and renamed it into the Overflow Grand Prix, and in their press release they had claimed that UrGa was going to take part by fielding their reserve drivers Lane Carter and Zsanett Bokor. The announcement had taken everyone in UrGa completely by surprise as they had not been contacted by this new series before, and this was the first time that they had even heard of it. It would appear that the @OGP organizers had somehow conflated UrGa with Oonaftco Oontaz AOGP Team, the Oontaznik team owned by Prince Bismillah bin Kudarat al Untas, which led to their claim that UrGa would be taking part. UrGa thus had to scramble to find the chassis and equipment that the Prince’s team had used in order to get their reserve team off the ground, and they also ended up borrowing some of the Prince’s personnel in order to complete the team’s needs.

Many in the WGPC circle had thought it strange that UrGa had opted to sign two reserve drivers for their team this season, as most teams did just fine with one and others had not even bothered with a reserve. It was almost as if Vasily Gatutin had foreseen the arrival (or return, depending on one’s point of view) of @OGP and recruited two drivers in preparation. In reality, Gatutin simply wanted to reward the drivers whom he had seen perform well during the in-team preseason trial, and Lane Carter had not received any offers from the other teams so the UrGa team principal welcomed him back to the fold with open arms. Zsanett Bokor was decent but not fast, and the main reason why Gatutin brought her in as well was to be the team’s primary tire tester thanks to her relationship with the team’s new tire supplier Solymok. But Gatutin certainly didn’t expect the two to be racing in a support series anytime soon, and if it wasn’t for @OGP announcing that UrGa was taking part, he wouldn’t even have given this series the time of day. But Gatutin didn’t want to look like an asshole for countering @OGP’s claims (he was no Yakov Yurievsky, after all) so he decided to just go along with it.

The problem with @OGP was that nobody affiliated with UrGa had been prepared for the task of taking part in a support series; the “special racing operation” that Yakov Yurievsky had mounted was supposed to be only for WGPC itself. The bastard seemed to have his own problems to deal with though, so once again Vasily Gatutin had taken on the responsibility of making sure that this support series team got off the ground without making the Pridnestrovian look like absolute fools. It may have been a moot point anyway; Gatutin had a feeling that UrGa already looked like fools after they had dropped the driver pairing that had led them to the constructors’ title last season in the first place. The fact that the season was starting in Aboveland, specifically the Fjellutfordring, was another thing that could definitely go against UrGa because it was one of the coldest places, if not the coldest place, to host an official Grand Prix. Vasily Gatutin knew that his machines had never done well in cold conditions, and the fact that UrGa got a podium at this same track last season was more about the fact that it was no longer winter in Aboveland then, and that the UrGa cars were survivors of a war of attrition which led to, among other things, the final straw in William Archer’s decision to leave Preston.

Gatutin was not confident at all that the new car, the GPC21-2, could handle the much colder conditions better than its predecessor, and his worst fears came to life as both Nepö Kinder and Vincent Von Visp failed to finish inside the points in the first race of the new season. Kinder was the victim of a poor qualifying session and thus was unable to extricate herself from the back of the field, while Von Visp fell like a stone from what was supposed to be a lofty qualifying position and finished just outside the top ten. Gatutin was sure that the Recuecian would complain about his crew dismantling his car as the reason why his race fell apart, but Vasily had already seen that Von Visp was not good at race starts so it was all about agreeing to disagree. He really hoped that the results of the support series would lift his spirits after the disappointment of the main team, but even that was about to sour his mood even further.

Lane Carter was the first driver from outside the APOC Coalition to drive for UrGa, and the Galarian (who held a TJUN-ian license) also happened to be the only driver to take part in UrGa’s inaugural open trials during their debut in WGP2 Season 3. Since they didn’t really have a choice, Carter would end up being signed by UrGa to partner Taras Matviyenko for that inaugural season of UrGa in a truly international open wheel series. Lane Carter was an impressive technical driver, and he was also a safe pair of hands just like Taras, but there just wasn’t a single aggressive bone in his body. Then again, there had to have been a reason why he was so reliable, and it was almost impossible to be both reliable and aggressive. In any case, Vasily knew that while Lane Carter was never going to fail to finish a race barring truly unforeseen circumstances, if he wasn’t anywhere near the sharp end of the field then he wasn’t going to get there anyway.

On the other hand, Zsanett Bokor was practically the complete opposite of Lane Carter. She was all aggression and almost no reliability at all. The statisticians and profilers had given her a technicality rating of 3.9, almost good enough to be average, but for all intents and purposes it was overshadowed by her sheer and utter aggression. She had never seen a fight for a position that she didn’t like, and there were moments when it definitely felt like she was going for gaps that may not have actually existed. Vasily Gatutin was ready to admit that he was wincing more times than not every time he saw Bokor attempting an overtake, but for some reason or another the Gergarian driver had managed to emerge unscathed each and every time. The overall design principles of Urotovsky-Gatutin suggested that an aggressive driver like Zsanett Bokor might actually benefit greatly from it, but nothing in either qualifying or the support race itself suggested to Vasily that Bokor was benefiting from UrGa’s speed. She was rock bottom in practice, she was rock bottom in qualifying, and she was rock bottom at the end of the race. Heck, if it wasn’t for the fact that both of HMG’s drivers actually failed to finish the race, Bokor would have been stone-dead last in literally every session of the Abovian Overflow Grand Prix.

In other words, Zsanett Bokor was everything that Yakov Yurievsky claimed Skiia Vialiv to be to the board of directors of the Urotovsky-Gatutin General Machine Building Enterprise.

Gatutin was poring over pages of data collected from the races that had been run so far, trying (perhaps in vain) to find something that would show that the team was on a positive and upward trend. Nothing stood out to him, so he put the papers aside and began scrolling through his tablet computer for more pages of data that had not yet been printed out. While he was scrolling, his secretary buzzed his intercom. “Sir, His Majesty is here to see you,” she said.

“Let him in, Nina,” Gatutin ordered. A few seconds later, the door to his office opened, and in walked HRH Prince Bismillah bin Kudarat Al Untas, brother of Sultan Farooq of the Sultanate of Oontaz.

“Salaam alaykum, Vasily bin Semyon,” the Prince said in greeting.

“Alaykum al-salam, Bismillah Kudaratovich,” Gatutin said back, and the two men shook hands.

“I have to admit, Vasily, that I have been waiting for you to call me ever since this new support series was announced on twii.tur,” the Prince said as he took the seat across from Gatutin’s desk. “It’s not the kind of thing that you had expected to be running when you made the move up to WGPC, is it?”

“Indeed it isn’t, Your Majesty,” Gatutin said with a wry smile. “Well, you clearly know why I’ve asked for you to come here to Myrilsk, although I am glad that you were able to find the time in your busy schedule to accommodate this meeting.”

“I haven’t been as busy these past few months, Vasily,” the Prince shrugged. “I’ve already begun winding down operations on some of my teams scattered throughout the multiverse, which should allow me to focus on the things that I actually want to focus on.”

“Is that so?” Gatutin asked. “Is there anything that you can disclose at the moment?”

“Unfortunately, no,” the Prince shook his head. “Not at the moment anyway. But you will hear about it soon enough.”

“I see,” Gatutin nodded again. “Dare I ask if that now gives you enough time to take over the operations of the support series team?”

Prince Bismillah let out a genuine hearty laugh. “You know that I would love to do so, Vasily,” he said. “But unfortunately, you have caught me at a bad time. I am currently in a transition so I cannot offer you any help at this time. However,” Prince Bismillah added before Gatutin could say anything, “I can offer you some assistance in the form of a new team principal for the support series. I’ve been thinking of a way to reward a man who has been a loyal and faithful servant since the foundation of my drivers’ academy. His name is Hamaki Benhaim, and he has been both managing director and supervising director for my academy at various times. While he has done admirably in those roles for the past fifteen years, I also know that he would like to be much more. A number of teams in the CGPRA have already approached him for the role, but I would like Hamaki to get some experience in a… let’s say a controlled environment, and perhaps UrGa’s team in the support series can be that for him.”

“I’ll see what I can do for him, your Majesty,” Gatutin nodded. “Have him come down here to Myrilsk to get acquainted with the facilities and personnel, and I will see if I actually fancy him in the role. Sorry, what’s his name again?”

“Hamaki Benhaim,” the Prince replied.

“Very well,” Vasily said as he wrote down the name on his personal notepad. “Have Hamaki come down here to Myrilsk, and then we’ll talk business.”

“Thank you for giving him a chance, Vasily,” Prince Bismillah said.

“No, your Majesty. Thank you for the assist,” Vasily said back.

[Lisander]

"So. Five races, zero points. What's going up with you, Anneliese?" - the woman was there to wake her up. It was Tuesday Morning in Neomaris.

"Huh? Whos'ere? Close the damn window! My eyes hurt." - Anneliese was blinded by the sunlight entering the windows of her flat.

"Yes, it should hurt. You've been drinking out your problems for weeks now, Anneliese. How can we run a team if our first driver keeps acting like this?" - The voice was easily recognizable, even below the covers of the futon bed.

"Will the stupid Team Principal finally get us a working car? It's hard to read Adriana's messages. She does her best, and we get no results either way." - She kept badmouthing Team Principal Lasseps, ignoring the fact that the one opening the windows to the bright rays of the Neomarisian summer sun to fill the room was Lasseps herself.

"You're very close to a fine, or maybe a dismissal. Be at the factory today, by 10 am. So, in 45 minutes. And please, dress something other than a team hoodie and these horrible undergarments." - Lasseps handed the message, and walked to the door.

Anneliese jumped off the bed. What had made Lasseps change his mind so abruptly? She had made a point of keeping the drivers out of the factory so that they could focus solely on racing. However, as the results were far from what was expected... a change like that must have had a very serious motive.

"So, now Your Majesty is allowing me to access the factory? What's made of 'worry only about your work?' " - Anneliese could still be snarky.

"Well, some changes happened in the upper echelons. I'm pulling back from the money-handing. Now you'll be paid in Neomarisian Credits. Maybe it's for the best if you immigrate."

"What? You're talking a lot of stuff, and not explaining anything." - Anneliese stretched herself for a moment, before going to the bathroom, to brush her teeth.

"Yes, what you have heard. I have sold my stakes in Eminent to Asteras. This team is not Lisanderian anymore. I mean... it's still Lisanderian until the end of this season, but God knows if it will ever be reaccepted after the ridiculous results we got until now. I'd even start thinking about retirement or a new series to race." - Lasseps said, leaving Anneliese to her toothbrush and thoughts.

[Indusse]

OOC: This is an AI Generated Image of the Driver.

Naveen Kalkar, is not yet a household name for people in Indusse even though they are going to be the first one competing in the World Grand Prix Championship. It's not a surprise since Motorsports have never been a big sporting event in the country. But now the spot light is on him. This twenty six year old racer hailing from Sindvpore City in Indusse has also brought up revolution in the Motorsport Base in the country. Naveen Kalkar and Harry Riggs, who was another leading driver from the country ended up convincing the government and the ministry of sports to establish an independent federation for motorsports in the country.

The Indussean Federation for Motorsports (IFM) has been established to be the governing body of Motorsports in the country. The IFM has been allotted nine hundred acres land near Panausar, Sindvpore. The IFM has plans to setup their headquarters in this alloted land, building a training institute and an international level circuit that could in future host Grand Prix. Fiarti Racing, which had recently registered themselves for the support series has offered help for the construction of Panausar International Circuit.

Naveen looking for his debut WGPC Race, is known for his aggressive racing style, fearless attitude, and a short temper that has landed him in trouble more than once. Once you ask him about his interest in motorsports he says, From a young age, he has been passionate about speed. He loved cars, bikes, and anything that could go fast. He started racing in local events and quickly made a name for himself between motorsport enthusiasts who are minority in the sporting realm with his daring moves and bold driving. Unlike many racers who play it safe, Naveen believes in taking risks. He pushes his car to the limit, makes sharp overtakes, and never hesitates to fight for every position. This style has won him many admirers but has also made him a controversial figure.

Critics claim that Naveen is overconfident compared to a lot of other drivers. Naveen truly believes he is the best, and that attitude shows in the way he drives. But this confidence sometimes turns into aggression. He has been involved in several fights, both with fellow racers and even with his own team members. He hates losing and gets frustrated when things don’t go his way. Because of this, he has gained a reputation for being hot-headed. Some people admire his passion, while others think he is too reckless and this behaviour is sure to cause a lot of problems for Naveen in WGPC. Riggs, his counterpart is way smarter on keeping control on his temper.

Keeping his temper aside, Naveen is a hardworking and talented racer. He understands cars pretty well and knows how to get the best performance out of them. His ability to control a car at high speeds is impressive, and he has the skills to compete at the highest level. He just doesn’t just want to be a good racer in Indusse but he wants to be the best in the world. He hopes to compete in international racing events and bring glory to his country. His constant efforts to bring up motorsports in Indusse is also impressive.

Indussean Motorsports enthusiasts are currently looking forward to see how much can this individual achieve for the nation. Is it going to be Naveen or Riggs who is going to make the nation proud? or are they both going to be the superstars of future WGPC Races? It's time to sit glued to your televisions and find out what is going to happen.

[Crpostran]

Suite 101 (Bay View)
Unnamed beach resort
Nimbus System

---

Giancarlo Rahel stood in front of the large mirror in the bathroom. The sunrise cast golden rays through the large windows overlooking the bay, but he barely looked at the view. Instead, he checked his reflection with a tired sigh. His dark-brown hair was messy (no not his trademark messy curls, actual messy), proof of a restless night’s sleep.

He ran fingers into his mustache, grimacing at the absurd length of a few stray strands. With some quick snips, he took them out. He started inspecting his face by taking a step back, tilting his head, checking every angle. Next, the skincare routine. If there was one thing Rahel was known for outside of racing, Kestrel, his family background, designs, yadayada, it was his looks, and he had no intention of letting that reputation slip. His fans expected a certain level of polish, and he took pride in maintaining it.

He carefully washed his face with a premium cleanser, ensuring no impurities from the night before stayed. The toner came on next, rubbing it in vigorously. And finally, the moisturiser. He took his time massaging it in, making sure it absorbed evenly. A hint of Vitamin & Collagen serum for an extra glow, and finally, a light under-eye cream to hide those shitty dark circles creeping in. He leaned forward, inspecting himself once again. “Looking good, Rahel. Looking damn good”, he said with a nod. “Now if only your driving was as flawless as your skin.”

The thought made his stomach tighten. Nimban Grand Prix. Another qualifier. Another chance. The last two qualifiers had been a disaster, leaving him at the bottom five both times. His WGPC Motorworks team had managed to earn their first points through Otto Markul’s skill, but Rahel had yet to contribute (let alone enter the Grand Prix proper). The pressure was mounting, with some staff whispering that he is in a zone where he could get kicked out, and so, today felt like a do-or-die moment. He exhaled sharply, shaking his nerves off. There was still time to turn things around. He sighed, running a hand over his face. “Come on, Rahel. Focus. One good run. Just one.”

With that done, he moved toward the mini-kitchen, where a sleek, but unfamiliar coffee machine awaited. He stared at it confused, before taking out the manual from the drawer & then, pressing a few buttons. The machine whirred, clicked, and then dribbled out an unimpressive stream of black coffee. He took a small sip....... and immediately recoiled. “Ugh, what the fuck is this?” he muttered, rubbing his temple. He eyed the machine like it had personally wronged him. “How hard is it to make decent coffee? ESPECIALLY IN THE MORNING!” he groaned, opening and closing different compartments as if some secret function might magically appear. He was too used to his daily caramel frappuccino from Mooncents, Crpostran’s largest coffee house chain (within which his family had major investments into aswell), the perfect balance of sweetness and energy to start his day. This... whatever this was, was an insult. Sighing, he grabbed a sugar packet, then another, and another.... and one final packet, then a small tetra-pak of cream, pouring in generous amounts before taking another sip. He smacked his lips, thinking. “Slightly better I guess, still garbage.”

Still grumbling about the betrayal of bad, "not sweet enough", coffee, he set the cup aside and flipped open his laptop. The screen flickered as he went through his daily bout of checking e-mails, reading some, deleting some, taking notes of certain fan emails (he loved reading most of them). Most of it was the usual—team updates, sponsorship emails, automated messages from the WGPC. And then, a name he hadn’t seen in a long time: Pierre. Pierre Laguard. Rahel frowned. Pierre Laguard, the Rahel Family’s press secretary, had been a constant inbox invader back when he still worked at Kestrel, the family’s luxury auto manufacturer. Ever since he had walked away from his post there, he hadn’t heard a single word from the man. Not even a bye. Yet here it was, an email with a...news clipping? His stomach twisted as he opened it.

Rahel exhaled slowly ande clicked on the attachment.

He clenched his jaw. "Will this event be the end....". Atleast they had put up a good, handsome photo of his. He had known the pressure was high, but this, was not something he expected to see. He had left Kestrel to chase his dream, to prove he was more than just an heir to a fortune. But so far, the track had been unkind, and now the very people who had once hailed his entry into racing were doubting him. Ouch.

Rahel shut the laptop and pushed himself away from the table. Taking one last, reluctant sip of his overly sugar-loaded coffee, he stood up, stretching his shoulders. It was time to get ready for the track. He could bath and do his additional skincare after practise. There will definitely be more time after his training & morning practise runs. He grabbed his gear bag, cleaned his beloved helmet and put on his classic, cheeky smile for the day ahead. “No more distractions, he muttered to himself, stepping toward the door. “Just racing.” As he stepped outside, the cold, early morning ocean breeze hit his face. The resort was peaceful, well-developed, friendly staff, good options at the bar. But now, the track awaited, and with it, another chance to prove himself. He wasn’t ready to give up (not yet anyway). He pulled out his phone, going through messages from the team. Strategies. Fuel loads. He barely processed them. One thing mattered today, i.e, putting together a good race that would silence the doubters. He clenched his fist, took a deep breath, and walked toward his rental car, heading for the practise track. Today had to be different.