World Grand Prix Championship 21 [RP/results]

[Diarcesia]

RP Credit: Auruna

---

Weather forecasts for the Circuit d'Arès called for rain. However, the mercurial climate off Normandy decided that sunshine was in order.

Ælund Grand Prix's Ted Pressley took the pole position in the event's traditional format, while Laura Haukanna shared the second row with Abdoulaye Goita for the second time in as many races. In the first full-fledged WGPC qualifying held in the track, a total of 16 racers surpassed the 1:36.031 lap record as published by the race organizers. With a solid performance from Pressley, he has ample opportunity to make up for his DNF in the previous race. Same also applied for Haukanna. Sam Blaatschapen, starting at P22, would have a difficult challenge ahead of her to try to finally gain a point for Pryfors Bilar.

PB Paddock
Post-Qualifying

While happy that she qualified P4, Laura was still unsure about how it would actually go for the race after noticing some instability through certain corners. Goita would be beside her again, but this time, he was ahead instead of her. She was wondering if she had to switch to "rally driver" mode once more for the race. In fact, she entered the paddock intending to discuss with Erik and the rest of the strategy staff her ideas for the race. What she had in mind is for an undercut to be a salient point so she can best adjust to the Ælunds' actions.

She entered the building with her teammate, reassuring the latter that she will be okay. While on the way to the paddock and thinking of Sam's situation being similar to Haru Jukkena's journey in WGP2, they wound up sharing their respective mythologies.

[Doubeia]

Gargantuan. Massive. Daunting. These were all words that described the job Nini had to do: climb ten places from her P20 position and finish in the points. At that point, finishing in the points was about regaining the trust she'd lost amongst the Pressley team, her fans, her nation. She knew she had an outside chance of tasting the sweet fruit of points then: races were often chaotic, and the Serizawa circuit provided her a great opportunity to do some overtaking. Now, it was the sixty-ninth lap, and Nini found herself eighth. Eighth.

She crossed the start-finish straight for the final lap. Her heart was palpitating.

Points. Points. Points.

This mantra repeated in her mind. Eighth place was a points position, and it was the final lap of the race. Okay, Nini, calm down. Or not. It's fucking points after all! As Nini navigated the first two right-handers, her fingers were shaking slightly. No, Nini. Not good. You're too jittery. You could screw up. Stay focused! She zoomed down the first DRS straight. She knew that Naveen Kalkar was behind her, but he wasn't the focus. In fact, she didn't care about it at all. Ninth was points. Tenth was points. She would be scoring points, for the first time in her WGPC career.

Nini took a few deep breaths in her stuffy helmet. The tight Sugiyama left hander was always a corner she lost time in, and for a while she feared her car might have oversteered. The feeling of the rear of her car shaking in instability spooked her for a second, but she quickly brought it back under control. The quest for points was on.

The lap continued as Nini's excitement only grew larger. Points. She would officially be a points-scorer in the WGPC. It was hard to calm down. As her already sweaty palms started to feel slippier, Nini held onto her steering wheel tight. She couldn't let this opportunity go. She had to get the lap over with. Entering the Kissan straight, Nini looked at her mirrors. Kalkar was nowhere to be seen. She didn't know what happened, but what she knew was that she had the lap under control. Stepping on the accelerator, Nini picked up speed along the straight. She didn't know if she was flooring the car out of excitement, but her surroundings started to blur. She was moving that fast.

Approaching the Widow's Peak, Nini remembered the several overtakes she'd made on the inside of the tight right-hander. Maybe other drivers didn't think the corner was a good overtaking spot, but it felt so satisfying to have the car turn in so sharply into the inside of the car ahead and make the overtake stick before taking off far and away. It was the last sector. A few more corners and she'd make it. The tree of life was so close yet so far, and the thought of tasting points for the first time made her entire body shiver in excitement. Within the cockpit, her body was shaking and sweating profusely as she progressed through the final corner complex. Turn right... and then turn left... As Nini saw the pit lane entrance, she knew she had made it. Rounding off the final corner, Nini stomped on the pedal and zoomed onto the start-finish straight. She passed by the Pressley pit wall who were holding out a sign she hoped she would see.

JOH P8

Nini's heartbeat only continued to quicken as she took some time to process what had just happened.

"And that's P8 Nini," her engineer Norman said through the radio, "Absolutely smashing performance, man. Twelve places gained!" Nini sat in silence for a while. She still didn't know how to respond. She wanted to scream and yell in celebration, but was that too childish? At the same time, how could she be lowkey about her excitement when she finally scored points?

"Let's go!" Nini finally yelped, "I will be here next race." In the spur of the moment, Nini had made a promise: she would score again next race. As she drove around the circuit, a wave of relief crashed into her body. Suddenly, the pressure of scoring points had been lifted off her shoulders. It felt good. As she spotted her fans in the grandstands, she waved to them enthusiastically. For once, she had given her supporters who travelled all the way from Doubeia a performance to gawk at. Everything felt good in that moment.

---

Nini had never been happier than ever. She laid on her bed with a beer on one hand and her phone on the other. She had finally decided to check out her socials, and it was vindicating to see haters and meme pages finally acknowledging her supreme racing prowess after ages of mocking her. Well, maybe not supreme, but it definitely was better than others thought. She knew it was unhealthy, fixating on what random people said about her online. Still, mockery only fueled her motivation.

Having just gotten off a phone call with her father, Nini felt truly at ease. She hadn't seen her father in so long; she hadn't stepped foot in Doubeia for at least a month. To hear her father all excited and happy for her? She wished she could witness that in person. It was rare to see her father smile, but when he did, the entire world brightened up. She couldn't wait to come back home.

Nini's DMs continued to overflow as random streamers and celebrities congratulated her on her achievement of scoring three points. People who she did not know existed, people she barely spoke to, and some old acquaintances... they all filled her messages. Nini didn't feel like answering them all. It just didn't feel right. Nini sat back up and downed another gulp of beer. She was going to get wasted wasted that night, and no one would stop her.

Just then, she heard a notification ring on her phone. Adriana had sent her a message.

Hey, Nini, congrats on scoring points! I know it's been a hard season for you, and I'm glad that your efforts have finally paid off! I'm sure you'll continue to do well! I know we don't have many opportunities to talk in-person, but here's to hoping we'll bump into each other in the paddock!

Readng Adriana's message gave Nini a sense of unbridled happiness. She knew Adriana had been through even worse than her: her team just disappeared! Still, to be able to keep up her cheery disposition whilst being genuine about it was something Nini looked up to. Maybe she was too negative and harsh on herself. Perhaps she was looking at the glass of water half-empty instead of half-full. Nini made a mental note to take a page out of Adriana's book. It seemed as if the positivity exuded from the message was contagious as Nini felt a warm fuzzy feeling when she finished reading it.

thxs adriana!!! we both have gone through our own sets of problems, but i'm positive we both can get through them together!!! maybe we can meet soon, who knows?

Nini, for the first time in a while, fell asleep a happy girl.

[Valentine Z]

Part 15 – The (Possible, Most Likely, Maybe) Answer is in the Qualifications.

Marty Lewis watched the race from the garage, pacing about and keeping in touch with the two teams for Kinu and Angela. The latter was off to great start thanks to the second in qualifications, while the former would have a little bit of fighting that he would need to do. Either way, he along with the rest of the team were determined to support the drivers until the end of the season, and they were certainly not going to leave them like what happened with the other team. “It was rather… unexpected, we shall say,” was the unspoken consensus of the team, vowing not to comment on it, lest they get more unwanted attention coming to their way. “I hope Adriana find a better place for her talents.” Going back to the race, they watched intently as one car already went onto a DNF. “A retirement at Lap 33. It was Laura!” as they would learn. While definitely unfortunate, the team’s focus was a lot more towards the two drivers of theirs. Kinu was gaining a couple of spots from his starting grid, so that was one good news. The other one came in the form of Angela still keeping her 2nd spot, seemingly unfazed by every corner, every turn, and all the other cars trying their best to claim her spot. It was only at one point that she was overtook by one Ryker Lane. “Keep it up, Angela!” her crew chief told her, “The other cars are still a bit far away from you, you should be good!” As the race went on, Angela finally crossed the finish line – much to the thrill and cheers from the team and from Angela herself who was screaming her heart out from all of the excitement. “Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling. 3rd place!”

“She… she did it! She did it!” the staff and engineers roared. A couple of claps, whistles, high-fives and down-lows (but not too-slow) towards one another, it was definitely a celebration. Marty Lewis cracked a small smirk as he noted this down in his reports. “I have always believed in you,” he said. In a relatively strange and twisted way, life works like that more often times than not – the fact that the struggles yield nothing but a relatively calm mind that has “let go slightly” and started focusing would have done a miracle. This has been the case in NSSCRA many times for both the Hapilopperians and the Valentians, and this is also now true in WGPC for the team which has been, at least for this season, to be running in Valentine Z while still based in Hapilopper. It was cited as “registered in Valentine Z”, with speculation abound as to what was the reasoning for this, as well as on the fate of the team. There were speculations that this was some logistical or business strategy behind the scene, and even as a gesture of the two nations being friendly and trusting towards each other despite the ups and the downs of the past. The fate, however, was a little too early to tell for most people. For deep down, however, Jim Preston is still here, and so are Marty Lewis and the rest of the members and staff. There were no Valentians having being hammed in the way of a hostile takeover, which is to say that in short – the team has been operating as it always used to. “If Clarissa is in the team, it definitely would be even more blue for us Team Blue,” a team member remarked in lighthearted jest.

Going back to the present and what is happening at the moment, it took a few minutes for the team to contain their excitement. She did it, she simply did. Some might say that this was a relatively cheesy line, but once Angela has learned to let go of herself just by a little bit (but not enough to be considered fully giving up), she managed to get back up and in the most spectacular way possible. It was so up high that she went from simply having one single point thanks to her fastest lap, to be able to sit comfortably in the middle of the driver standings. Granted, the remainder of the season may not be enough for her to beat the top scorers, but it has broken her doubts, along with herself feeling like a liability to the team, or the times she spent on the simulation so much so that the poor thing started heating up from continuous usage without break (and the steering wheel needing a couple of maintenance checks). “Now it is up to us to do better for the rest of the season. Surely, this must have been a relief for her now that she knows that she is getting somewhere,” Marty said, to which the rest of the team agreed. “Oh of course, we have not and will not forget about Kinu as well. He is just as determined as Angela, and he too will need our support. We celebrated today, yes, but after this – it’s business as usual: We will help him and Angela as best as we can.”

“Of course, it would also seem like we have to focus and do our best in the qualifications as well. While it does not always ring true that a good qualification will net you a good finish, there are also chances that this can also, well, happen. We can already see it from our two drivers today, along with the others. In particular, the likes of Abdoulaye Goita (4th to 4th), Janne Laukkanen (10th to 10th), Nik Hazrin Lutfi (13th to 16th), and Hanna Berezowska (17th to 18th). With that said, there are also total opposites, such as Laura Haukanna (3rd to 28th; to be fair, she got unlucky with a retirement), Adonis Fitzpatrick (5th to 17th), Cocoabo #23 (14th to 24th). Point being,” Marty paused for a moment to get to the next slide and part of the presentation, as well as to clear his throat. He realized that he has went on for so long without catching a breath, and more importantly for the others to take in as to what he is trying to convey to them, “My point being that I believe that we should not just let ourselves go on the qualifications. Oh and of course, this does not contradict what we have discussed with Angela a few days ago; we want them to know that they are not bringing us down or disappointing us too much. However, let us also focus on getting those fast laps during the qualification sessions. I mean, we get no downsides from having them, so let’s have them!”

With the meeting concluded (the talks towards both Angela and Kinu to come again another time), the team prepared for the next race at Circuit d'Arès.
“Should we let Mr. Preston know for this one?”
“No, not yet. I mean, for one: The man himself can see the results on his TV. And… well, I am not making light or devaluing Angela’s accomplishments but… let’s wait for more results.”
“That’s fair enough. Thanks, Lewis!”
“Yeah no problem.”

Deep down, it’s not so much that he didn’t like the results; he did and was elated for Angela and for the team. It was more of that, as he said, they should wait for more results instead of this being an one-trick wonder.

“If she did win that race, however, then… yeah, I guess that would deserve a bit more of a special mention. Oh don’t get me wrong, the 3rd place she got today was great! But… not disturb-the-founder levels of news, not yet.”

[Abanhfleft]

“Hey Donny, have you got a minute? I really need to talk to you.”

Adonis Fitzpatrick had to admit that he found it weird that his friend and fellow Fleftic driver William Archer would call him and ask if they could talk right at this moment, the night after the Ajian Grand Prix. He was always down to talk with Will, but there was something off in the younger man’s voice that elevated Donny’s concern levels to over 100. “Of course you know that I'm down to talk about whatever!” Donny said to William on the phone. “Fire away, brother.”

“No, not like this!” Will shouted. “Not over the phone anyway. I wanna talk face to face. Do you still have time to talk later tonight? No more team stuff or media stuff?”

“I can come up with something if I have to,” Donny shrugged. “What’s so important that you want to talk to me right now, face to face?”

“I told you, not over the phone! Just tell me if I can meet you outside the garages in twenty minutes!”

“Yes, yes! Of course I can!” Adonis confirmed. “See you in twenty minutes then.”

“Please be there, man,” William almost begged. “I really need you to be there tonight, Don.”

“I’ll be there, William. I promise.”

Twenty minutes later, Donny Fitzpatrick was standing on the path in between the team trailers and the garages leading out to the Serizawa Circuit’s pit lane. He was still somewhat unsure about this meeting that Will Archer had just set up with him, but he was a man of his word and was going to wait for Will no matter what. Besides, he was also curious about how and why his friend sounded like he was about to lose his mind. He didn’t know it just yet, but Donny was actually closer to the truth than he thought.

William Archer finally emerged from the shadows a few moments later. He did not look like someone who had finally managed to score a good haul of points for himself and his team that afternoon. In fact, William looked nervous and shifty, and the slightest bump and noise was enough to make him jump. “What the fuck is wrong with you, William?” Donny asked him once he saw his friend in the state that he was in. “Are you on drugs right now? Are you taking drugs, Will?”

“It’s not drugs, man,” Will shook his head. “But it might be better if I was actually on drugs. Might be easier to explain everything instead of what’s actually happening to me.”

“What is happening to you, man?!” Donny asked. “You look like a freaking wreck! You look worse than Abs after they pulled him out of his wreck! What the fuck is going on, man?”

William took a deep breath and then shook his head. “I messed up, Donny,” he finally managed to say. “I messed up real bad yesterday.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“My engine blew up during the spring race yesterday,” William continued.

“Yo, bro, that’s not your fault!” Donny assured him. “These things happen! You didn’t do anything to make your engine blow up. It’s not your fault.”

“I’m not talking about the engine, okay?” William almost shouted. “Shit happens sometimes. I know that. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I only mentioned that I blew an engine because I think it’s what led me to do… what I did. I broke down. I couldn’t take it anymore. And I think I took out my anger on someone who didn’t deserve it!”

“Okay, Will, slow down a little,” Adonis said. “Let’s take it from the top. So your engine blew up. What happened after that?”

“I was in the garage, trying to work my frustrations out,” William answered. “I had to learn how to do that after Preston became such a shitshow last season. But I… I must have taken it too far because the next thing I know, I was grabbing one of the Viska guus by his shirt, and God only knows what I was about to do to him. Viska hasn’t said anything but I just know that I’m fucked right now! I can’t just explain away why I tried to attack one of my own team’s guys! Nobody does that, right?”

“Just calm down for a moment, okay, Will?” Adonis said, and for once William actually managed to stand still. “Okay, first of all, you’re right. No one in their right mind would attack a member of their team without a good reason. And you don’t have a reason to attack that guy, right? So if word gets out about what happened, just admit it.”

“What?” William asked. “What are you talking about?”

“You blew an engine before everything else that happened, right? There’s your reason,” Donny explained. “You were venting because of the DNF, the guy walked in on you venting and you just ended up grabbing him! That’s all there is. Trust me, I’ve been there before.”

“I don’t think what happened to you is what happened to me,” Will said cautiously. But either Donny didn’t hear him or refused to understand what the younger driver was trying to say for fear of what it really was because he just went on talking.

“Just say you’re sorry for grabbing the guy because you were angry, and that you regret letting your temper get the better of you,” Adonis continued. “Sure, it’s only gonna add to your reputation, but at least you’re still on people’s minds, right?”

“That’s not what I’m trying to say, man,” William insisted. He looked around the place, and then he leaned closer to Adonis and whispered, “I think I’m losing my mind, man. I’m seeing things, hearing things, and now I almost attacked someone else because I’m seeing things. I think I’m going crazy, Donny!”

“No, you are not!” Adonis said loudly. “You’re not going crazy. You’re not hearing voices or seeing things. You’re not losing your mind. You’re just getting stressed out because you haven’t been getting the results you wanted to have. You’re just frustrated, man! It’s all going to pass. You can’t keep driving in the back forever, Will. You and I both know that. Sooner or later, you’re finally gonna get some good luck going your way. And maybe you need a hug too. Come here and I’ll give you one.”

William hesitated, but he eventually walked to Donny and let the latter embrace him. But as the two of them got close, Donny whispered into William’s ear, “Don’t ever let anyone know you’re seeing or hearing things. You and I both know that that could be the end of your career, and I don’t want that to happen to you.”

William had a combination of a shocked and curious look on his face after moving away from Adonis. “Take care of yourself, man,” the latter said, giving an affectionate pat to William’s cheek and shoulder before going back to the HMG trailers.

[Trans-Dniesters]

“Are the pieces already in place, my friend?”

“The pieces are all in place, Doctor. My boys and their winged friends are now only waiting for permission to start the game.”

“Good, good. That’s good. The window is growing narrower by the minute. It won’t be long before the devil we know is back in his lair and includes himself in the game. While we’re on the subject, when do you recommend that we start the game?”

“One more week to iron out the kinks, and then we should be good to go. Like I said, every piece is in place, and they only need my word to make the first move.”

“That’s good to know. I would really love it if we can wrap this up sooner rather than later. I think I’m about to be at my wit’s end trying to make sure that the devil we know has no idea of what’s about to happen in his backyard.”

“Really? I thought you said you were going to run the game plan past him to take care of both of your problems. What was that Westernism that you used to describe it? Ah, yes. ‘Kill two birds with one stone.’ Have you not told him you intend to kill his bird too?”

“Surprisingly, the opportunity never really came, and at this point it might be too late to bring him in. It could make it even harder for your boys to start playing in his backyard than it already is. Remember, the devil we know has eyes all over him right now. Adding him to the game would be most unwise.”

“For once, Doctor, you’ve actually said something that made some sense.”

“Don’t let the shock get to you, my friend. This happens more times than you care to admit. But speaking of shocking things I’ve heard, here’s something that’s sure to shock you once again. The devil we know has just asked me if I could file an insurance claim for him.”

“Is that so? What kind of claim did he want? Foreclosure or repossession?”

“He wasn’t very clear about it. It could be either one, although I have a feeling that he wants foreclosure. He might want to clean house even while he is being watched. The devil we know was remarkably indiscreet when asking about it. I have no idea how he had the bright idea of asking me to file his claims.”

“I’m personally not surprised, Doctor. Those in our line of work often do not make our fortunes out of the kindness of our hearts. He must have thought that you have a handful of insurance agents at your disposal ready to file your claims as necessary.”

“Perhaps, my friend, perhaps. Now, say that I actually entertained this request from the devil we know. I can’t do it myself, but can you? Or is this something that the actual insurance company will have to take care of?”

“I know some of my boys who can handle these claims, but this couldn’t have come at a worse time. I have a few ideas on how to perform a foreclosure, but they risk increasing the difficulty of the game, and that’s not why we’re there in the first place.”

“What are those plans, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“The followers of the faceless prophet could spread his teachings the old-fashioned way once again. Or perhaps the dirty underbelly exposes itself much to the distress and dismay of everyone else living alongside them. Like I said, this is something more suited for the insurance company, not my philharmonic. I personally wouldn’t go along with it. The risks to our own objectives are too great.”

“I know that that’s not the answer that he would have been hoping to hear from me. It might even be the first time in his life that someone has told him no.”

“That’s just how life is, Doctor. It would be better for the devil we know if he was to learn this lesson now rather than when it could compromise him to a permanent end.”

“Still, my friend, I believe that there could still be an opportunity to carry out a foreclosure or repossession in the midst of the big game. I’ve already received the analysis from the insurer. The devil we know is adamant about this account being foreclosed before the eyes are opened further.”

“Mother Hen was very insistent that his eagles should not get their feet wet. We aren’t trying to stage an intervention, after all. But let me see the account analysis anyway. Perhaps a repossession is the better course of action here.”

“Again, my friend, I appreciate the help. Now how about those meddlesome priests in the place that always goes in circles? Will they finally learn not to meddle in affairs which they do not understand?”

“I don’t know about that, Doctor. But they will definitely learn to fear the lightning. They will have no choice but to be afraid.”

[Aboveland]

Circuit d'Arès
Île Saint-Joseph

The bedding catches in the creases between Janne's shoulder blades. The folds in the fitted sheet jab across his back, scrunched and damp against his skin. He sighs, groans, throws his hands up and into the roots of his hair. He pulls gently and squeezes his face between his forearms before turning onto his stomach and biting his pillow.


"What went wrong at the Widow's Peak last weekend, Janne?"

He stares blankly at the pundit; if he hadn't been doing a terribly good job of hiding his guilty existential dread, it had absolutely come to the forefront now.

"Racing incident," he shrugged back, with his mouth in a grimace and his eyes in a slicing glare. The reporter countered with their own wide eyes and curled lips. What kind of insufferable prick had he become; what else was he supposed to say? It had clearly been a driving mistake, an over-ambitious dive on a fiercely defensive driver from rather far back — a dive that, maybe, he wouldn't have attempted on anyone else.


Growling, he turns back over and kicks the duvet off like a tantrumous child, freeing his searing sweaty limbs and letting the bay breeze wash over his legs and burning midriff. Then, with an arm outstretched, he double-taps his phone screen, and peeks at the gleam. He's supposed to be up in less than five hours, but he's lost count of how long he's been squirming and contorting in his own sorrow — and it didn't really matter, did it, starting from fuck-off back on the grid on the tightest circuit of the calendar. Not even the long-lost memories of his WGPC18 mid-season one-off rekindled any sense of excitement.


"Tough from all of us today, Janne. Don't stress it."

He nods at Max as they both gather around the data from qualifying but doesn't say anything. He's stoic and lost in thought, and none of them revolve around the speed and throttle graphs on the tablet before him. That Ryker had found himself even worse off was a bit of a relief — maybe he had in fact been able to shut off the gnashing, pummeling drum in his ears throughout the session, and had simply maximized his pace throughout.

Or, maybe, he had just simply sealed the fate that had his performance trend had led him to: from a home win and a near podium to smiting himself out of his title bid like a rookie. At least the collateral damage in all of this was driving a car that, now, seemed unbeatable, and had put on a legendary, unprecedented qualifying performance to dust his knees off and land on pole.

"Sorry," Janne ultimate mutters, his head hanging low, his apology covering the thoughts that barrel through his head and deafen his ears to the feedback his engineer has been giving for the past three minutes. He sighs back and rests a hand on his shoulder.

"Look at me, Janne," he commands gently with a paternal pinch of his neck. "You know how it works. Doesn't matter if it was Ted or Ryker or Tan Fang Ling: let's turn the page and get on with it, okay?" Janne nods back emphatically, biting his lower lip to stop it from quivering.

It's no use. A faraway rooster — how the hell did anybody have a rooster on Île Saint-Joseph? — crows loudly in the distance. The birds haven't started to chirp timidly yet, and the sun hasn't peeked over the horizon that extends off into the sea, but the pitch black twilight has shifted slightly to a deep petroleum blue. The sheets are still incisive against his sides, the base of his hairline is still damp and slippery, his underarms are still boiling hot and his temples continue to throb.

He leans over to his phone again and puts on some music to try to drown out his thoughts, then turns back over and shuts his eyes hard to try his final resort sleep technique. From the tips of his toes to the ends of the hairs on his head, he drives himself through every cell. The tingle of consciousness spreads from the capillaries on the bridge of his feet, to the balls of his ankles, to the tight tissue on his calves, to the sore muscles that cup his hips, and he only makes it as far as the nook of his navel before he's drifted away.

Janne freezes for an all-too-apparent instant as he stumbles out of the paddock bathroom, balaclava dangling off the end of one of his hands as the other rubs at his pink-flushed face. When it comes down from his eyes, he meets Ted's: they shimmer with radiant joy, framed in his red-shot cheeks and the streaks of wet scraggly hair that he has stuck to his forehead. The corners of his mouth, where his pillowy silky lips meet, are perked upwards, and the tips of his canine teeth are just barely visible above his tongue which hangs against his lower lip with satisfied exhaustion.

As their gazes lock together, a vice tightens around Janne's neck. He can almost see his own face as if he's wafted out of his own body: brows rigid, mouth stretched into a line, icy eyes popping against his suddenly paper-pale skin. In the distance, Ted's smirk fades away; his hands, idle beside him, rise and fall, as if he's unsure whether he's safe to engage or if he'll have his limbs bitten off. As the Tumbran's face contorts into disappointment, Janne snaps his eyes away and trundles off in the opposite direction. He can't look back, in case he dislodges the tears that have collected on the corners of his eyes.

[Turori]

Cruisin Breaks Career-Long Barrier with 2nd Victory of the Season

Ajian Grand Prix presented by Aji Air, Serizawa Racing Circuit, Serizawa, Aji No Moto :: R.L. Cruisin sat with rookie teammate Nik Hazrin Lutfi after the Ajian Grand Prix Sprint Race to encourage the youngster after their worst ever finish in a Grand Prix. Despite having not finished inside the Top 10 all season, Hazrin Lutfi had not previously finished outside the Top 18 either. The consistency shown by the Sharktail youngster had gone largely unnoticed beyond the Piers Ivchenko paddock due not only to the lack of points scored but the lack of pizzazz in doing it. With two rookie drivers now having taken the checkered flag first - Ron Sommer at the Grand Prix de Patriotlandia présenté par ASI Industries and Vincent Von Visp still celebrating their victory in the Ajian Grand Prix Sprint, Nik Hazrin Lutfi was being left behind in the Toys '4' All Rookie of the Season battle despite constantly displaying the composure needed to compete and fight through to the end of a Grand Prix week in, week out. Now, R.L. Cruisin recognized that as the veteran and mentor in the Piers Ivchenko paddock, it was up to them to make sure that the first crack - a finish outside the Top 20 - was mended and didn't completely derail Hazrin Lutfi's season... and subsequently their career.

If there was anyone in the WGPC paddock that could speak authoritatively on the fight to stay relevant from the mid-field places, it was R.L. Cruisin. The veteran has only been involved in a single season long battle, and that came during their own rookie campaign, ultimately losing out the championship battle to their teammate Stang Crax and a pair of Carvenlo drivers, Jai Kardaeri and Matthew Portland. From there, Cruisin would go on to drive for Carvenlo and a handful of other teams, keeping a clean car, collecting the occasional low points finish and largely living a life of opportunity just as Hazrin Lutfi has done, between 10th and 20th place.

While every driver naturally dreams of being the World Grand Prix Champion, Cruisin imparted on Hazrin Lutfi the need to focus on small goals first. In sharing this piece of knowledge, Cruisin reflected on a particularly powerful experience they had during World Grand Prix Championship Season 16. After driving for the struggling Arada team the season before, Cruisin made the leap to MSA-SinVal, the Eastfield Lodger team that had finished 8th in the Constructors championship the season before - 2 places below Cruisin's Arada team. MSA-Sinval appeared to be a team in free-fall. After the promise of placing 3rd in WGPC Season 14, their once promising driver Louis Krindle was out after regressing to just a single podium finish during WGPC Season 15. Many in the paddock felt that Krindle was still a solid prospect after consecutive Top 8 Finishes in the Drivers standings and 15 points finishes in 24 career Grands Prix. For MSA-SinVal however, it was time for a reset. While they weren't starting from scratch the way Piers Ivchenko were, they were still flipping the very fabric of their organization on its head. After recruiting Cruisin as their driver, the team cut their budget significantly, hanging the local rookie driver Cesaro Whittaker out to dry. At that point in their career, R.L. Cruisin wasn't yet in the mentoring mindset. They were trying to save their career and to many it seemed the move to MSA-SinVal might just have been the thing that ended it. But Cruisin persevered. Living much of the season either in the paddock for an early retirement or finishing in the 11-20 range, Cruisin would go the first 9 races of the season without a single Top 10 finish - much like their teammate Nik Hazrin Lutfi has so far this campaign. Then, something clicked. The team finally got the right upgrade. Cruisin was no longer trying to figure out the intricaces of an unfamiliar car and was able to focus on driving not fighting to hold things together. Over the final five races of the season, R.L. Cruisin had 4 Top 10 finishes, 3 of which were on the podium and one of which was a race victory - to date the first and only victory in the history of the MSA-SinVal team.

Many wonder what could have happened if funding wasn't pulled entirely from the MSA-SinVal team at the end of WGPC Season 16. There was no one better than R.L. Cruisin those last few weeks that would see them climb from not-classified to 9th in the final overall drivers standings. Cruisin reflected that it was that season that gave them the confidence that they belonged as a World Grand Prix Championship driver, because no matter what hurdles seemed to be keeping them down - no matter how out of reach a Top 10 finish might seem for any stretch of time, they could always recover. That season, they proved to themself that if you just stay determined - if you Believe you are good enough, Believe you can finish in the points - and Believe you can win. Then you just might do it.

For 10 consecutive seasons of World Grand Prix Competition, R.L. Cruisin has never had the same teammate two seasons in a row. They weren't sure whether or not they would be offered to drive again at Piers Ivchenko again next season, nor if Nik Hazrin Lutfi would be either. The reality is, the team was just barely holding its head above water to make sure they had a competitive car every week considering they had such a late start on both the technical side and track side missing most of pre-season testing. There really wasn't any bandwidth left at the end of the day to consider what came next. But Cruisin had been there. They had been 6, 7, 8, 9 races into a season without finishing in the points. They knew how hard it must have been for the rookie driver to sleep at night just wanting to crack the Top 10 more than anything. And they knew how important it was for them to keep focused to avoid the pressure from spiraling out of control.

Cruisin retired for the evening unsure if their talk with the Sharktail driver was going to make a difference. They had minimal time to get to know each other in the off season - basically none, and much of the time at the track is so scheduled that most of their discussions are about the race itself and very little getting to know the personality behind the helmet. The only thing that could truly tell the story would be how they performed on the track. When the timer ran out on the Saturday qualifying session in Aji No Moto, Cruisin's first question over the radio wasn't about where they had placed, but "How did Nik do?"

Race Engineer Stefen advised that Nik Hazrin Lutfi had qualified P13. Right in that sweet spot. Right where they've been all season. Of course, R.L. Cruisin wasn't expecting to give a motivational speech that instantly propelled their teammate into a Championship calibre driver in one evening. They knew from their own career that wasn't how it worked. The most important thing was not crashing out. Something like a quarter of all drivers to compete in the World Grand Prix Championship were one-and-done drivers unable to prove themselves worth of a second season at the pinnacle of the Open Wheels sporting world. As of right now, Nik Hazrin Lutfi had a Top-10 Qualifying average and a Top-20 Finishing average. They just needed to stay the course. So far, so good.

.... Feature Day ....

R.L. Cruisin walked the grid with helmet in hand. It was a comfortingly long walk to get from the Piers Ivchenko Paddock, last on the lot, up to the third row on the grid where Cruisin had qualified in position number 6. Their car was in a bit of an awkward position in the grid, a see of color surrounded it as they were sandwiched between the two Ælund Grand Prix cars in 4th and 8th position and crew members and sponsors were encroaching on the Piers Ivchenko team as they moved between the #88 and #89 machines. In front of them was Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling, the Preston Autos driver with her best qualifying run of the season. It was good news for Cruisin, however, as Angela was also on the same Brimstone tyres that Cruisin had. The Hapiloppian supplier had struggled to keep pace with the other brands for much of the season and the team had to be extra careful monitoring their performance and wear. At least seeing the Preston Autos machine on the front row, the team felt that they were ok performance was at the Serizawa Racing Circuit, and only needed to focus on the strategy and wear portion of the equation. Staring up at the front of the grid, Cruisin thought they saw Angela looking in their direction, so gave a head nod and a thumbus up before beginning their climb into the cockpit without waiting to see if there was any response. It was time to focus. This track had a number of Tricky Turns. Launch and acceleration would be paramount at the start, the long straightway followed by the open right hand Turn 1 then the much sharper Turn 2. Most importantly, Cruisin could not let anyone get to their right hand side. Beyond that, they really wanted to have no traffic on either side exiting Turn 1 so they could take a wider entry to turn 2 and have enough momentum around the Asahi Kerb to carry speed down the straightaway. If all went well they could potentially be in the Top 3 by the end of the first lap.

"Box Box Box!" Stefen shouted over the radio. The plan had always been a single stop strategy. It was still two or three laps from the teams planned stop to cut the race in half. Cruisin was wheeling turn 14 but didn't hesitate. Questions could be asked later. They had enough of a gap back that they shouldn't lose many spots, if any - that is if the team did their job quickly. Always one of the risks with a new team. They've certainly got the skill but not necessarily the experience. Sure they could put four tyres on the car in just a couple of seconds but what happens when things don't go right? Having driven for their fair share of new teams, Cruisin new how sometimes what should be a one or two second hold up can quickly become ten seconds. They were riding just outside podium placement at the moment, they couldn't afford any mistakes now.

Thankfully the stop was clean as a whistle. Cruisin returned to the track having lost some time but not much else, then quickly noticed the yellow flags. "It's a safety car" Stefen said over the radio "Be careful, watch you speed and get every thing back that you can". The timing was perfect. In front of them, contact, cars that hadn't yet pitted and the gap closing by the turn. The race was falling right into Cruisin's hands now all they needed to do was finish it off.

Just like that, it was a pair of Brimstone drivers behind the Safety Car. First and Second. They had the track position, now what were they going to do with it. The safety car sped off into the distance and any moment now, so would the field. Cruisin was ready. They had experienced this hundreds of times before. Not very often from the position they were in, however. Laser focused, Cruisin set sail....

When Ted Pressley retired from the race on lap 62, it came down to a three car battle between Cruisin, Angela and former World Drivers' Champion Ryker Lane. Cruisin had a healthy gap back to the duo and as long as they were racing each other, there was little concern. There was no denying that Ryker Lane's Chase Cutter was one of the fastest cars on the track. They had started the race in 22nd place and worked their way up to 11th by the safety car mid-way through the race. The only question left was when would they get around Angela, would they have enough time left to catch R.L. Cruisin and would Cruisin have anything left to defend against them....

With two laps to go, the team informed Cruisin that Lane was no longer gaining. They had likely worn every last bit of good speed out of their In-Motion tyres and appeared to be settling in for a runner-up finish. Inside the cockpit, R.L. Cruisin wasn't sure if that information was helpful or a distraction. They'd be doing fine just driving like they needed to drive. Now the realization set in. Its not only about driving but surviving the last two laps. Just survive. Two more laps. No mistakes. Don't run over any debris. Don't hit a wrong button. Don't screw it up....

Top of the Podium. Champagne flying through the air. Could their have been more excitement on a single Grand Prix Podium? After ten seasons of competition having never won more than a single Grand Prix in a season, R.L. Cruisin had their second victory of World Grand Prix Championship Season 21. To their right, a former champion trying to stay relevant in a sport getting younger by the season had just put on a driving clinic, up 20 positions to the runner-up position. Then to the left, Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling. Just a single point on the season coming into the day, now, on the podium. There was enough joy and happiness on the podium to power Monstropolis for weeks. The drivers were elated, with R.L. Cruisin moving into the Drivers Championship Lead. The teams were elated, with Nexus Racing moving atop the Constructors Standings and Preston Autos perhaps saving their season with a podium finish. Even the suppliers were on cloud 9, Brimstone with a double podium and Phoenician/In-Motion overtaking Tropicorp atop the supplier standings. There were many implications of the finish in Aji No Moto to be digested over the week to come, but for right now, none of them truly cared, it was time to celebrate.

.... Post Race ....

When the official celebrations came to an end, the enthusiastic trio made their way to the media center for questions. Most of them were the standard fare post race questions. "How do you feel?" "What does this mean for the championship race?" etc. Then one of the local media outlets dug an interesting one and directed it at Race Winner R.L. Cruisin and Runner-Up Ryker Lane:

"I'm not sure if you realized this, but the two of you are the only World Grand Prix Championship Drivers who have now competed in both World Grand Prix Championship Races held at the Serizawa Racing Circuit, this one, and the one contested during Round 2 of WGPC Season 16. What do you think it says that the only two drivers on the grid who had ever competed in a WGPC Grand Prix at this circuit before ended up finishing 1-2 in this race?"

The two drivers looked at each other. First a "hmmm". Then, "I guess experience counts for something after all!"

The mood in the press area turned jovial once more, and the trio were free to head back to celebrate with their teams once more.


R.L. Cruisin ✓

@Cruisin

Oh, and in recognition of that one question from the post race Media Availability, apparently I DNF'd out of that race in Aji No Moto back in WGPC 16 while Ryker finished albeit a lap down. So yea, I may have won this battle, but now Ryker is the only driver to have Finished both WGPC races at the Serizawa Racing Circuit. Well Done #94.

#WGPC : #PiersIvchenko : #AjiNoMoto

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Ajian Grand Prix presented by Aji Air, Serizawa Racing Circuit, Serizawa, Aji No Moto :: There wasn't much for Race Eelandii V&T Racer World Grand Prix Motorworks to take away from the Ajian Grand Prix. After having made two steps forward with both drivers collecting points heading into the mid-season break, it felt like 3 steps back as the team recorded its worst showing of the season at the Serizawa Racing Circuit. It was, in fact, the worst finish of the season for iBen Toralmintii, and, the worst finish of the season for Cocoabo #23. After having points in three straight events to close out the first half of the season it was a zero-points weekend to start the second half of the season. The only takeaway from the team was that perhaps the tyres were part of the issue. Generally, the Tropicorp rubber had been good to the team this season. However, it seemed to be missing something in Aji No Moto. Maybe it wasn't that it was missing something there but that the other suppliers had found something for that track that just made them a better match. It was the first time all season that no Tropicorp drivers were on the podium - although Dario Nülkeschlager did take the fastest lap for Pressley Racing. So what could it have been. There was little time to figure it out with just four races left in the season.

One positive for the team was that both of its drivers were among the few drivers with experience racing at the next circuit on the World Grand Prix Championship calendar. The Circuit d'Arès had previously hosted a non-points race during World Grand Prix Championship Season 18. While a single race a few seasons back would seemingly not make much of a difference experience wise, the results from the Serizawa Racing Circuit certainly indicated that they could have some effect after all. It was in fact a great track for "Fast" Cocoabo #23 who took a largely under powered Fireline Motorsports machine and placed it inside the Top 5 at the first ever Ile Saint-Joseph Grand Prix. For iBen Toralmintii, there would be no Top 10 finish but it was a day that Tropicorp Racing Ælund would largely ignore as nothing more than a distraction in their quest for back-to-back Constructors Championships.

This time, however, there would be no ignoring the Circuit d'Arès. The unique design and its long straightaways will be asking a lot out of the Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8 but the team are well prepared for the Technical battle ahead of them, faring better on average at these type of circuits and will look to use that to their advantage as they attempt to get both drivers into the points and back on track for the rest of the season

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V&T RACER Online ✓

@VTRacer

Breaking now from the Circuit d'Arès, @RaceEelandii drivers iBen Toralmintii (5th) and #Cocoabo23 (9th) have both qualified inside the Top 10 and will look to hold their positions at the difficult-to-overtake combination circuit on the Île Saint-Joseph. The drivers enter the race separated by just one point in 15th and 16th in the overall standings and many are keeping a close eye as to whether @iBen77 will end their career ahead of, or behind the 'Bird' in the standings.

#WGPC :: #SaintJoseph :: #Media

[Recuecn]

Vincent massaged his hand absent-mindedly. It was still quite sore, and he winced as he put too much pressure on the bruise. He glanced down at the base of this thumb as the pain summoned his attention. He could still see, even two weeks after the race in Patriotlandia, a ring of faded but dark-red tooth marks in a jaw-shaped line on the palm of his hand. He sighed. That bitch. What, you accidentally endanger someone’s life one time, and then respect goes out the window?

The lingering pain drove Vincent to anger, and in his exasperation he entirely forgot his simmering attraction to Nepö. Yes, Vincent was attracted to her—she was undeniably good-looking, certainly, in a whimsically asymmetrical kind of way, although for him a large part of the appeal was simply his desire for something forbidden. Being told he couldn’t have something only made Vincent want it more, and Nepö’s continued rejections had ignited in him a desire to win. But despite his attraction, whatever its roots, at the moment all that was forgotten, washed away in a wave of spite.

Vincent twirled his red moustache as he thought. He knew he was good at being petty. So how could he prod Nepö where it would annoy her as much as her refusals annoyed him?

Vincent pressed the little button he’d installed on the underside of his desk in his office at the top of La Tour Visp to summon Valérie.

His assistant stepped through the door seconds later. “Oui monsieur?”

“Valérie, I want you to print out a bumper sticker for me. Pink, probably. With the word ‘Kincent’ on it in cute lettering.”

“‘Kincent’, monsieur?”

“Yes, like the ship name for myself and Miss Kinder that’s been in the news recently. And below the text, put two little interlocking hearts.” Vincent made two half-hearts with his forefingers and thumbs and laced them together to demonstrate.

“Of course, monsieur, I’ll get it ready right away,” said Valérie. You never knew what it would be, working for Vincent, she thought. One day you’re organizing a hit job for a cover-up, or running someone’s charity into the ground to make some money on the stock market, and the next you’re printing a bumper sticker. Sure, why not. “What would you like me to do with the sticker?” she asked.

“Put it on the back of my car,” said Vincent. Valérie nodded, but then he caught himself. “Not the Magnier!” he cried, meaning his favorite silver convertible. “I mean my WGPC car, once we get back to the track.”

“And where on the car would you like me to put the sticker?” asked Valérie.

“Well, the point is for Nepö to see it,” said Vincent. “So you better put it on the rear of the car, pointing toward the back of the grid.”

Valérie smiled. “Of course.”

Vincent spun halfway around in his chair so his back was to Valérie and he could stare out his window over the Reçueçn City skyline. “Oh, one other thing I almost forgot. I spoke with Yakov about our problem with the douaniers. I’m of the opinion it’s nothing a little insurance fraud shouldn’t be able to take care of. Unfortunately, there was that one guard who was there when we got the cash, and if we just say the money is missing, the insurance company will definitely ask him to testify that we actually received it. So I need him to be taken care of.”

“How would you like to handle it?”

“I asked Yakov to do it for me,” said Vincent. “I figured that kind of thing was in his wheelhouse. I explained that the whole point was to get the douaniers off my back so I could start sending him payments again, and I think that convinced him. He said he might be able to have someone do the job for me—he must have people in Reçueçn, I guess. If he says they’re the people for the job, I trust him. Yakov has had my back ever since he signed me back in WGP2. He would never betray me.”

“So the security guard then—that job is taken care of?” asked Valérie.

“Well, not yet. It might take them some time to get everything set up—I don’t know how that stuff works. But before they can start hunting, they need a target. Obviously I don’t actually have any idea who that guard was, but that seems like info you ought to be able to figure out pretty easily. Could you get his identity and forward it to Monsieur Yurievsky for me?”

“Right away, monsieur.”

Vincent was right—for someone of Valérie’s considerable skill, it was trivial to find the security guard’s identity, especially knowing as much as she did about where he worked. His name, apparently, was Nicolas Courbet, and he had recently had a change of employer—Valérie laughed to herself when she saw the name of his new boss. At the beginning of the WGPC season, when Vincent and Valérie had gone to the central reserve bank to pick up the cash, Courbet had been working security for the central reserve. He still worked security at a highly-guarded bank. But now, he was much closer. He worked downstairs now—for Visp Financier itself!

Valérie compiled all the information pertaining to Courbet that she thought might be relevant, and sent the dossier off to Yurievsky via a secure encryption. As she hit send, she wondered… who in the world would the Pridnestrovian use to carry out a job like this on Reçuecian soil?

Valérie was not the only person who happened to be wondering about Pridnestrovian activity in Reçueçn. Benetto Conti was one man whose job was to do just that.

Benetto worked at the Ministère des Douanes et Impôts, and in fact, he was the very ministry agent who had confronted Vincent in the lobby of La Tour Visp a few weeks ago at the beginning of the ministry’s investigation. Although he was not in charge of the entire investigation—that responsibility fell to a directeur somewhere up the chain—he was heading up the file on Von Visp in particular.

Originally, the investigation had merely focused on the unusually high amount of Reçuecian guilders in circulation abroad, trying to figure out where they were coming from, and cracking down on unreported currency transfers that were likely signs of criminal activity. When Von Visp’s name had first come up, it had just been one lead among many. But the deeper Benetto dug, the more he began to suspect that the charming, handsome, and blackhearted billionaire was in fact at the center of it all.

Frustratingly, despite Benetto’s hunches and the mountains of circumstantial evidence, there was no direct proof that Von Visp had done anything illegal. There was the connection with UrGa, which was suspicious, given that the unreported guilders had been found in circulation in Myrilsk. And of course Vincent had access to large amounts of cash, was known for his heartless business practices, and came from a family whose reputation was one of thorough corruption, meaning he fit the suspect profile perfectly. But no proof of a crime.

Agent Conti had tried to scare Vincent into a confession by claiming that the bill numbers had been tracked, and showing him some of the very cash Conti knew he had withdrawn from the reserve bank. But taking a handful of hundred-guilder notes across the border wasn’t illegal, and the ministry only had some of the serial numbers, meaning the majority of the cash they’d found abroad couldn’t be directly traced to Vincent.

There had been a couple other tricks up Benetto’s sleeve as well. He’d tried Vincent’s family, hoping that some kind of infighting would lead to a resentful family member snitching or contributing some useful info. Instead the family had closed ranks around Vincent, refusing to cooperate with the government—in hindsight, that should have been predictable. Even if they couldn't stand each other, the Von Visps knew that they had to stick together against a common enemy.

Agent Conti’s most recent approach was to look up Von Visp’s Pridnestrovian connections. Who did he spend time with while in Myrilsk? Had any of his UrGa connections been noticed spashing a little extra cash lately? Was there anyone in Pridnestrovia who could possibly be blackmailing the Reçuecian banker?

Unfortunately for Benetto and the ministry, as much as he felt he was asking the right questions, he was far from getting any answers. The ministry was not a spy agency. Without proof a crime had been committed, there was no way to get domestic intelligence involved, and calling in help from the foreign intelligence agency was far beyond Agent Conti’s authority. Although by treaty the douaniers did have some amount of jurisdiction even outside Reçuecian, Benetto himself couldn’t leave Reçueçn City, let alone fly to Pridnestrovia. So he was forced to content himself with gleaning whatever information he could online.

It was while he was looking up the flight records of Vincent's private jet that he stumbled upon something interesting. Vincent had flown back and forth from Pridnestrovia at least once a week ever since the WGPC season started, and was constantly jetting all over the multiverse as he followed the Grand Prix calendar, so it was hard to tell if any one flight out of the dozens and dozens he was constantly making held any more importance than the others. But in trying to find a list of just Vincent’s flights from Reçueçn to Pridnestrovia, Benetto found that the billionaire was not the only person frequently making that trip.

Gavanavia, a Pridnestrovian cargo company, had regularly scheduled cargo flights between Myrilsk and their cargo hub in Reçueçn City. Gavanavia had connections to the Pridnestrovian military, and even an UrGa sponsorship, so it was highly possible they were connected to Von Visp in some way, through his WGPC team. But in the last few weeks, the company had had more frequent flights than before, sometimes multiple planes a day. It seemed to Benetto that the flights had become more frequent around the time Von Visp had learned of the douaniers’ investigation. Was the billionaire connected to Gavanavia? Was he trying to hide something from the ministry by flying it abroad, or maybe back home? Maybe he was trying to finish the transfers quickly before the ministry investigation caught up with him, and that was the reason for the elevated number of flights?

Benetto felt he had to investigate immediately. As a ministry agent, he could place a request for the douaniers—the armed enforcement branch of the ministry—to investigate, but such a request would be caught up in endless red tape. By the time it was approved, it might be too late. Maybe Von Visp would be done transporting whatever he was shipping across the border in those Gavanavia planes, and the warehouse at the cargo hub would be empty, yet another trail of evidence all dried up.

Instead, Benetto jumped in his car and drove to the airport.

The cargo terminal was quiet at this time of day (most cargo flights arriving at night). Only one person was at the Gavanavia counter, a stern-looking blonde woman. She eyed Agent Conti as he approached.

“Well, merde,” thought Benetto. “I guess I’ve got to go for it now.” He glanced around. There hadn’t really been anywhere to hide in the main cargo terminal lobby anyway, if his intention had been to remain unseen and spy from the shadows. And after all, he wasn’t a spy anyway. He was an agent of the law.

Straightening his shoulders, he felt himself back in his comfort zone as he reached into his black suit to pull out his ministry badge. Even if something fishy was going on here, everything he was doing was transparent and above board.

The woman eyed him coldly as she saw his badge. “I’m from the Ministère des Douanes et Impôts, and I’m conducting a routine inspection.” Okay, so maybe a little white lie just so these people wouldn’t panic. “If you could just let me see your copies of your cargo manifests and poke my head in your warehouse real quick, I’ll only take a moment of your time.”

The blonde Pridnestrovian (her nationality confirmed by her thick accent) hid her emotions well, but Benetto could read the surprise on her face. And was that a glimpse of consternation? But it was only fleeting. “Of course!” she replied with a smile. “The physical copies of the manifests are in the back, let me grab those for you! I”ll be right back.” She disappeared through a door behind the counter.

Benetto waited at the counter for a few minutes. He looked at his watch. Surely it couldn’t take this long just to find some documents? What was going on back there?

Just as he was about to push open the counter and make his way into the back, he bumped into the receptionist coming back through the door. She was carrying several large binders now, and dropped two of them on the ground as she careened into Benetto.

“Oh, excuse me!” she said.

Benetto helped her to pick up the binders. He grabbed one while she clumsily fumbled with the other. With her arms already full, she struggled to pick up the last one like a hapless character in an infomercial. Benetto began to wonder, was she intentionally stalling?

The woman was very helpful. Having set the flight manifests on the counter, she asked Benetto what he was looking for, to see if she could help him to find it in the documents. “All our records are such a mess,” she complained. “It takes forever to find anything.”

Benetto double-checked the manifests against what he had seen online. Of course, on paper, everything matched. Most of the flights were merely carrying bulk goods of different sorts, although one had come with several staff members, mechanics, loadmasters, and supervisors.

Benetto’s reading was interrupted by a loud bang from somewhere in the back of the terminal. He looked up. The woman smiled blissfully.

“Did you hear that?” Agent Conti asked.

“Hear what?”

“A loud bang.”

“Maybe one of the other terminals is loading up a plane. Tossing the baggage around can be pretty noisy. We don’t have any flights scheduled until tonight though.”

Benetto flipped through the last pages of the manifests and decided if he didn’t take the initiative, he was never going to be let into the warehouse. He opened the counter and curtly thanking the woman, moved past her into the back of the terminal. He thought he saw a brief twinge of annoyance on her face, but she immediately returned to her helpful demeanor, and followed him into the warehouse.

The warehouse was mostly empty. A few empty cardboard boxes leaned against the wall. In one corner, piles of crates were labeled with their contents, but Benetto could see that they matched the cargo manifests of a few of the recent, regularly scheduled flights. Nothing from the “extra” flights recently. More importantly, Benetto could hear the sound of a truck fading into the distance.

“There’s not much here,” said the woman from behind him. “Most of the cargo has already been distributed.”

Benetto poked around for a few minutes. There was nothing that looked like it might be related to Von Visp in any way. But his suspicion was that the woman had stalled long enough for the warehouse employees to put anything incriminating in a trailer and cart it away. On the other hand, it had only been about ten minutes. Did these people operate with enough military efficiency to clear out a warehouse at such short notice?

He smiled at her. “Well thank you for obliging me,” he said. “As I said, this was just a routine douanier inspection, but there don’t seem to be any problems. Take care,” he said, and giving a polite nod, turned and left.

He did not see the huge sigh of relief the Pridnestrovian woman breathed as soon as he left the room. Moments later, she was conferring with the rest of her team. Company Alfa had moved out all the accoutrements for the heist just in the nick of time. But now, the team was left wondering: was the ministry onto them? If so, how in the world had they caught wind of the plan? Or had the inspection just been a fluke?

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ⵜⵉⵍⴻⴷ ⵜⴰⵙⵏⵉⵜ, ⵜⵉⵍⴻⴷ ⴰⵛⵀⴰⴽⵡⴰ
ⵄⵢⵏⴰⵢⴰⵏ ⵡⴰⵔⴰⵏ ⵉⵙⵙⵉⵏⴷⵊⴰⵢ
ⵟⵉⵙⵙⴰⵏⴰⴷ ⵜⴰⴱⴰⵔⴰⵜ
ⵚ- ⴰⴽⴽoⵣ ⵉⵜⵔⴰⵏ ⴷⴰⴳⵀ ⵉⵛⵀⵉⵏⵏⴰⵡⴰⵏ

Ténéré sastanàqqàm
Indek tifut n- imidiwàn
Tiled tasnit, tiled achàkwa
Aynayàn wàràn issindjày
Tissanàd tabaràt
S- àkkoz itran dàgh ichinnawàn

Ténéré, can you tell me
of anything better than to have your friends
and your mount,
and a brand new goatskin, watertight,
to find your way by the light
of the four bright stars of heaven

The yellow AGP007 roared out of Widow’s Peak and onto the straight, throwing up a cloud of water behind it. It was hard enough to see through the windshield in the rain, but Abdoulaye’s mirrors were entirely useless, given the deluge he was creating in his wake.

The lack of visibility and traction hardly seemed to bother the Reçuecian. He drove like he had something to prove. He flew down the straight and threw himself into Kismo Complex, his every move radiating confidence and domination. Abdoulaye grinned as he drove. Something about Serizawa had just clicked for him, and now the sprint was almost over.

It had gone by in a flash. Abdoulaye had flubbed the start a little, letting Ron Sommer pull ahead of him into the first turn. But since then, it had gone great. Laura Haukanna led the way, a train of three cars working their way up into podium position: Haukanna, then Sommer, then Goita. They passed Fitzpatrick, then Kinder, then Faloe, and finally Langdon. By that point more than twenty laps were behind them and the sprint was nearly over.

Abdoulaye felt proud of himself. His biggest fear after the crash in Patriotlandia was that it would somehow affect his confidence. He’d been struggling to really find his groove since the start of the season, and being pulled out of a fiery wreck only seemed likely to worsen the issue. But Abdoulaye wouldn’t accept that mediocrity from himself anymore. His team was counting on him. He burst out of Kismo Complex and onto the start/finish straight with a triumphant surge of energy.

Sadly, it seemed Abdoulaye wasn’t going to get a podium. The Haukanna-Sommer-Goita train was indestructible, but at the head, Laura Haukanna refused to make any moves that might be a real threat to Von Visp, who had started in pole position and still held first place. Ironically, perhaps Abdoulaye’s crash at the hands of Von Visp had affected other drivers’ confidence, at least where Von Visp was concerned.

Behind him, through the spray, Abdoulaye caught a glimpse of a green Cygnus, and gasped in surprise when he realized it wasn’t Brendan Faloe. It was Olivia Stone. The Nimban had been Abdoulaye’s teammate back in Season 18, and Abdoulaye highly admired her sportsmanship and skill. How could he not!? Stone had just driven all the way from twenty-first place to fifth!

In horror, Abdoulaye realized that she was gaining on him now. He prepared to mount a desperate defence.

Fortunately for Abdoulaye, the sprint ended just a couple laps later, before Stone had a chance to find a successful opening. Abdoulaye breathed a sigh of relief and happiness. He was just short of the podium perhaps, but he’d found his confidence back.

And anyway, looking at the theatrics happening on the podium right now, Abdoulaye didn’t want to be up there next to the other Reçuecian anyway.

After the sprint, as usual, Abdoulaye called his father. It was their first phone call in a couple weeks. Moussa had called Abdoulaye after his accident to check on him, but without the excuse of a race to catch up on, neither of them had called the other during the mid-season break. Despite that, Abdoulaye was itching to hear from his dad. Ever since Malick had told him about the bandit attack on the way out of Timbuktu, Abdoulaye needed to hear his dad’s side of the story.

It was the first thing he asked about after his father had congratulated him on the sprint race.

“Fa, Malick told me that on the way out of Timbuktu, you were attacked by bandits, and you had to take over driving to get away.”

Abdoulaye waited for a response, but none was forthcoming.

“Well?” he said. “Is it true?”

“It happened, yes,” Moussa said cautiously.

“Why did you never tell that story before!?” exclaimed Abdoulaye. “That’s awesome! Outrunning attacking bandits? Driving through the desert under gunfire? I knew I got my driving skills from you, but I didn’t realize you were a racer! It sounds like an action movie!”

“Perhaps your brother looks back on it that way now,” said Moussa. “It was not like a movie. It was life or death.”

“Do you hear yourself!? Life or death!? That sounds exactly like an action move!”

“Movies are fake. This was real. Believe me, it was not entertaining. I wish it had never happened.”

Abdoulaye seemd a little put out. “But it’s such a cool story! And it’s all in the past now! I know you like to tell stories! Why don’t you like to tell that one?”

There was a long pause. “Let me tell you the story as it happened to me, and you will see why… why it is so painful for me,” said Moussa. “I was about your age, Abdoulaye, when it happened. Imagine if you had a wife and family. Everything I did was for them—for you. You and Malick, and your mother. I worked so you could eat, I took care of you and tried to make you happy. But we were poor and it was difficult. Then, I heard of a wonderful country where everybody was rich. If I could take you there, you would have everything they needed. So taking you with me, we set out on a journey.”

“But in my desire to achieve this thing for my family, I lost sight of who I was doing it for in the first place. Fanta—your mother never wanted to come to Reçueçn for herself. She came because I told her it would be good. And when we began the journey, it should have been obvious that it would be long and dangerous—too dangerous.

“But I was blinded to this, so I pushed on, even after setbacks that should have convinced me to turn around. When vehicles broke down or we ran out of money, I found a way to keep going. We came to the desert and I thought it was a good idea to take my wife and my young children out into the wilderness on camelback. What was I thinking!?

“Maybe when you heard me tell these stories, you saw them as exciting tales of adventure. But these have been the stories of a young man who was too ignorant to see the danger he was causing to his own family. When those bandits came, I could have turned the car around and gone back to Timbuktu. But I drove north. In Bamako, when we had problems and needed money, the answer was always to drive more, to do more taxi runs, so I could earn more to pay for it. In the desert, I thought I could still just outrun my problems by getting behind the wheel and pushing the gas.

“When I grabbed the steering wheel in that pickup truck and got us out of the robbers’ gunshot range, that was not a heroic deed. That was a fight or flight response. I got in the car, and I drove. The same thing I’d always done to solve all my problems. But that doesn’t mean it was the right solution.”

Abdoulaye pondered his father’s words. Abdoulaye knew his love of driving had come from his father. He knew he drove to escape. But he hadn’t known that second trait was inherited as well.

“It seems that the solution worked though,” he countered. “We all got away. We all got to Reçueçn.”

“Abdoulaye, we escaped the bandits, but we continued the journey. And you know your mother did not survive it.”

Abdoulaye was in shock. Moussa had never mentioned Fanta’s death so directly. A flood of questions and emotions poured into Abdoulaye’s brain. But before he could say anything, Moussa spoke again.

“That is why I have never told you the story of our journey before. It reminds me of losing your mother. And that is not something I can bear to remember.” Moussa went silent, but Abdoulaye thought he heard… a sob? Surely not. Not from Moussa, the impregnable bastion of stoicism.

“I’m sorry, Papa… I didn’t know.”

ⵟⴻⵏⴻⵔⴻ ⵙⴰⵙⵜⴰⵏⴰⵇⵇⴰⵎ
ⵉⵏⴷⴻⴽ ⵜⵉⴼⵓⵜ ⵏ-ⵉⵎⵉⴷⵉⵡⴰⵏ
ⵟⵉⵙⵙⴰⵏⴰⴷ ⵓⵎⴰⴳⵀ ⵉ-ⴰⵎⴰⵏ
ⴹⴰⴳⵀ-ⵉⴷⴰⴳⴳⴰⵏ ⵡⴰⵔⴰⵏ ⴰⵏⴼⴰⵍⴰⵍ
ⵟⵉⵙⵙⴰⵏⴰⴷ ⴰⵙⵉⵙⵙⵉⵏⴽⴰⵔ
ⴹⴰⵜ ⴰⴷⵓ ⵉⵏⴷⵉⴷ ⵉⵏⴽⴰⵔ

Ténéré sastanàqqàm
Indek tifut n-imidiwàn
Tissanàd umàgh i-aman
Dàgh-idàggàn wàràn anfalàl
Tissanàd asissinkàr
Dat adu indid inkàr

Ténéré, can you tell me
of anything better than to have your friends,
To know how to find water in
the unlikeliest of places,
and enlist the momentum of the wind
to help you move forward

Abdoulaye often found himself lost in his thoughts that weekend. Qualifying the next day went by in a blur. Abdoulaye thought only of his mother. Fanta was a woman he did not know, yet whose absence was a deep wound in his soul. Like his father, Abdoulaye had spent most of his life avoiding that emptiness. Now, for the first time, he looked into that void.

To his surprise, it was filled with more than he expected.

His memories were vague, nothing more than a color, a sound, or a smell. Abdoulaye associated his mother, more than anything else, with a sense of warmth—the warmth of Africa. He could feel himself a child again, comforted in her embrace. He had a vision of lying under the stars with her, looking up at the clearest sky he’d ever seen, while she pointed out the constellations Cheik must have shown her earlier.

“Look,” she said. “The guiding star. If we follow it, we will come safely to our journey’s end.”

But for Abdoulaye, his mother was his lodestar.

He marveled now at his childhood thoughts. Had she really been all of that to him, his guide and constant? Now her absence was a painful gulf that he avoided. Where was she now when he needed her? Her guiding light was gone, leaving only a dark hole in the sky.

Abdoulaye didn’t know if he could handle this. Until hearing his father mention it so explicitly, he’d never confronted the pain of his mother’s absence. As a family, all three Goita men had made an unspoken decision never to speak of her. For Moussa, clearly, it was a conscious suppression of the pain, but for Abdoulaye, who had been only a young child, it was an unconscious repression. Now, as the unconscious barrier started to fail, he needed another line of defense. It was race day, now, in Aji No Moto, and he needed to be functional.

He found himself turning to the same escape mechanism his father had used. Abdoulaye got into his car and determined to outrun his problems. Lost in the wilderness… the desert in which Moussa had escaped bandits symbolized, perhaps, his own emotional landscape. Yet Cheik, who had led them through those wastelands, called the desert Ténéré, and spoke of it lovingly, as if it was his own mother. Could there be any kind of nurture in this pain and emptiness?

All his philosophical questions evaporated as the race began. Maybe it wasn’t healthy, but driving certainly worked a charm as an escape mechanism. Abdoulaye roared away from the starting line, all his problems forgotten for now.

He had qualified in fourth, and was determined to make the most of it. Around him once again were Haukanna and Fitzpatrick. This time, Abdoulaye was not going to let Haukanna set the pace, as she had in the sprint. He launched his challenge early.

Twice, Laura foresaw his moves and blocked him out. But on his third attempt, on lap five, as the pair navigated through the Complex side-by-side, he’d made his way far enough alongside that when Haukanna made her defensive move, it was too late. For a brief instant, his front wheels rubbed her side-pod, before both drivers quickly pulled away to the side to avoid worse contact. Both cars seemed fine. Now that he’d taken a spot far enough alongside, Abdoulaye was able to get to the final corner in Complex on the inside. He rocketed away down the straight, crossing the line to begin lap six, as Haukanna fell into the slipstream behind him.

It would be twenty-two laps later that Haukanna would be forced to retire, with damage to her front suspension from the contact deteriorating as she raced and ultimately leading to a spin-off. Abdoulaye was blissfully unaware that he’d been responsible. He was too focused on his own race.

It seemed his confidence and poise from the sprint had not been a fluke. The pace was noticeably faster during the feature race than it had been during the sprint, likely thanks to the weather clearing up. Abdoulaye decided if the circuit was going to continue to treat him this well, that he rather liked Serizawa.

P3 was not too last. R.L. Cruisin was having an even better day on the track than Abdoulaye was, and got past him, as did Ted. And on lap fifty-three, Ryker Lane, who had started in twenty-second place, soared past.

These Nimbans, thought Abdoulaye. They’re unstoppable.

Then, nine laps later, terrible news.

Agreka’s voice over the radio. “Abdoulaye, Ted is out of the race.”

“What happened?”

“Laukannen drove through him and he crashed. He’s okay.”

“That’s good.” That didn’t make sense. Janne, drive through his own boyfriend? Abdoulaye felt he had to missing some part of that picture. But he couldn’t let it affect him. He was the only one driving for Ælund now, and he had to make it count.

A final overtake, past Skiia Vialiv, got Abdoulaye back into fourth place, where he’d started the race. And when the checkered flag waved, he was in the same position. Abdoulaye had finished six races now, and in half of them, had finished fourth. A podium would be nice one of these days, he thought. But he was happy with fourth. With his own crash still fresh in his mind, he was happy to have proved that the success in the sprint wasn’t a fluke.

The race over, Abdoulaye dropped by to visit a recovering Ted as soon as he could. They’d both retired twice now, and Abdoulaye hoped having someone else who shared the same pain was helpful for Ted. Not to mention, both of them had now been run off the track by another driver. Abdoulaye still couldn't understand why someone would do that. Other people’s risk assessment was just entirely different from his own, apparently.

He didn’t visit Ted long—only staying long enough to say a kind word before getting out of the Tumbran’s hair—Ted clearly had a lot on his mind, so Abdoulaye gave him some space. “Let me know if you want to come over for dinner once we’re back in Aboveland,” he said before leaving.

And with that, Abdoulaye was once again left alone with his thoughts. He found himself thinking of Mali. A country he hadn’t seen since childhood.

Abdoulaye was entirely Reçuecian now. He raced under a Reçuecian flag, spoke French better than Bambara, and considered the alpine nation his home. What was it in his past or his father’s stories that pulled his thoughts to that foreign land in the desert?

Abdoulaye fidgeted, his fingers restless for the grip of a steering wheel between them. Maybe he would go out for a drive tonight, and try once again to forget everything.

ⵟⴻⵏⴻⵔⴻ ⵙⴰⵙⵜⴰⵏⴰⵇⵇⴰⵎ
ⵉⵏⴷⴻⴽ ⵉⵎⵎⵉⴽ ⵡⴰⵙ ⵎⴰⴷ ⵏⴰⵔⵜⵉ
Nⴰⴽⴽ ⴷ- ⴽⴰⵎⵎ ⵡⴰⵔ ⵏⴰⵏⵎⴰⴽⵙⴰⵏ
Nⴰⴽⴽ ⵉⴷⵊoⴷⴰⴷⴰⴳⵀ ⵏⵉⵍⵎⴰⴷ ⵜⴻⴽⵍⴻ
ⵉⵙⵉⴽⵉⵍⴰⵏ ⴷⵊⴻⵔ ⵉⴽⴰⵍⵍⴰⵏ
ⵟⴻⵏⴻⵔⴻ ⵟⴻⵏⴻⵔⴻ
ⵟⴻⵏⴻⵔⴻ ⵏⴰⴳⵀⴻⵀⴰⴷ-ⴽⴰⵎⵎ

Ténéré sastanàqqàm
Indek immik was mad nàrti
Nàkk d- kàmm wàr nànmàksàn
Nàkk idjodadàgh nilmàd tekle
Isikilàn djer ikallàn
Ténéré Ténéré
Ténéré naghehàd-kàmm

Tell me, Ténéré,
how you and I can remain united,
with no hate for each other.
Ténéré, I can now admit that
I have travelled far through this wide world.
Ténéré, I give you my oath
That as long as I’m alive,
I will always come back to you

[Tropicorp]

. Drivers Standings:  13 pts (16th)
       Average Qual:  13.8   (15th)
     Average Finish:  16.0   (21st)
Positions Over Grid:  -1.4   (21st)

At the conclusion of World Grand Prix Championship Season 20, there was absolutely no question in anyone's minds that Cocoabo #23 was the best Cocoabo driver in the multiverse. The best Cocoabo driver there ever was, and possibly the best Cocoabo driver there ever will be. After becoming the first Cocoabo to win a World Grand Prix Championship event, Cocoabo #23 led the drivers standings for the majority of the season until a minor collapse late in the season dropped them down to the 4th position. Even still, it was a season to be remembered. Grand Prix victory. TMW 500 victory. For a Cocoabo, that was about as much as anyone could have imagined, if not more.

However, being a full-time driver can take its toll on a Cocoabo, and very few Cocoabo, if any, have been able to sustain a level of performance for long durations. Cocoabo #28 and Cocoabo #78 both winners in the NSSCRA Multiversal Cup Series both saw their peak of success come within a range of about a season and a half. Cocoabo #78 ultimately dropped down into regional racing and Cocoabo #28 still drives but struggles to even qualify at times, no less compete for victories. As such, the true test of Greatness for Cocoabo #23 is not just whether they can win a World Grand Prix Championship race - but if they can ever do it... again. If they can achieve sustained performance over an extended period of time and establish themselves as more than just "That Cocoabo that won a Grand Prix that one time" and really live into their nickname, "Fast Cocoabo", and earn it as a legacy and not just a marketing tool.

Of course, as far as marketing goes, considering the performance of Cocoabo #23 so far this season, they may no longer even be the Top Grossing Cocoabo on the season in merchandise sales. This seasons hottest item in the Cove region is the "Cocoabo Hoodie" - naturally popular with youngsters this hoodie is even selling out in adult sizes. While a "neutral" version is available, each Cocoabo Hoodie sold also comes with complimentary number customization on the arm and as of now, requests for "#37" currently out pace requests for "#23" by three-to-one.

"The Next Great Cocoabo" - Cocoabo #37 was groomed in a way similar to that of Cocoabo #23, spending multiple seasons in lower tier motorsports before being thrust to the top tier. It was a lesson that the trainers at the Cocoabo Enrichment and Enhancement Project learned as one of the takeaways from the narrow peak of success for Cocoabo's #28 and #78. After multiple seasons in the Everlong Contenders Series, Cocoabo #37 has burst onto the scene as de-facto Rookie of the Season and a Championship Contender in Stock Car Racing's premier tier, the Multiversal Cup Series. The butterfly effect is all too real for Cocoabo #23. Less commercial filming and less marketing propeganda focused solely on them this season has also meant less interaction with other Cocoabo. There are no native Cocoabo in Patriotlandia - but one season ago, Cocoa-bo was all in on having a booth featuring actual Cocoabo. Tropicorp was advertising for Cocoabo Park and the benefits of the Cocoabo Enrichment and Enhancement Project and would bring a handful of Cocoabo from track to track. Having the Cocoabo on site for the fans to interact with also meant that during time off, there were other Cocoabo for Cocoabo #23 to interact with. Now, with many of those marketing resources split or redirected entirely to follow Cocoabo #37 on the NSSCRA circuit, it leaves Cocoabo #23 with less Cocoabo interaction on a weekly basis.

During the mid-season break, Cocoabo #23 returned to Cocoabo Park to frolic in the forest with their Cocoabo families. But the reunion was short lived as it was quickly time to get back on track and back on the road again. Of course, success heals everything and a return to form could be just the thing that Cocoabo #23 needs to power them forward. However, if they are going to re-claim their fame as the top Cocoabo driver in the Multiverse... and write their story as the top Cocoabo driver of all time, then they will have to find a way to endure for the long term, and perhaps find a partner to share that long term with.

---

. Drivers Standings:  10 pts (18th)
       Average Qual:  15.8   (20th)
     Average Finish:  16.7   (23rd)
Positions Over Grid:  -2.8   (26th)

There was absolutely no question that the Ajian Grand Prix presented by Aji Air was a golden opportunity for Skiia Vialiv to re-establish her credentials as a World Grand Prix Championship driver. While it is likely that her current or any future employers would understand the slow start that Skiia had to the WGPC 21 campaign, considering being unceremoniously dumped just prior to the season in one of the most shocking team-driver split ups in recent memory, but she was still trailing her teammate Adonis Fitzpatrick in the standings. The Engine and Tyres were the same as the season before. Sure the chassis was different and the team didn't have as much experience, but the longer the season went on, the fewer excuses Skiia would have.

Finally, at the Serizawa Racing Circuit, she achieved something she could point to as an accomplishment for this season. Pole Position. It was the first of her career - something she hadn't even achieved as part of the Constructors Championship winning Urotovsky-Gatutin team one season ago. Now, the only question left was could she back it up with a race victory.

It wasn't the best of starts for Skiia, nor Angela beside her and it was a bit of a jumble at the start of the race. Unfortunately it seemed to cause a chain reaction that hurt Skiia's teammate, Adonis Fitzpatrick, the most as Donny got shuffled wide in Turn 1 and couldn't get back to the bottom for Turn 2 losing a ton of spots at the start. Still, Skiia was in there. She still had a fight and a chance.

Battling hard, Skiia was fighting her way back at the front until she ran over debris from Laura Haukanna's car on Lap 33. Skiia tried to battle it out but something was hurt and her pace slowed. After being overtaken for fourth position by Abdoulaye Goita, she took her HMG machine back to the pits and got four fresh tyres along with a new front wing. Back on track and ready for action.

Over the final 15 laps Skiia would have the occasional fight but at the end, it was more about protecting the points she had and the pride of finishing on the lead lap. Out of no where was the car of WGPC Motorworks driver Naveen Kalkar. One of the unlikely beneficiaries of the Safety Car, Kalkar was in position to finish just ahead of Skiia but something went south on the WGPC Motorworks car in the final lap. Skiia backed way down to make sure she didn't take herself out and waited for the right opportunity to navigate around. In doing so, she could now see the car of Pressley Racing driver Nini Johnsilvaturr in her mirror. She had already given up too many points today, and wasn't about to give this one up also.

Luckily for Vialiv, Johnsilvaturr was already in bonus territory. After being upstaged by their teammate Dario Nülkeschlager all season long, Nini was just content to finally get the 0 out of her points column and actually contribute toward Pressley Racing's Constructors Championship hopes. The Tropicorp Supplied duo safely crossed the line in 7th and 8th position, happy to salvage a handful of points a piece in a season where those valuable points have been very difficult to come by.

---

SKIIA VIALIV ✓

@Skiia

ArrrrrrgH! So Close!!! Really thought we had a chance at back-to-back poles. What a stunner of a lap by Ted! Really beat us all hands down. Still thrilled with the progress we have made as a team, back to back front row starts and Donny is in the Top 10 as well. Lets do this HMG!!!!

#WGPC21 :: #CircuitdAres :: #ForzaHMG

TROPICORP RACING SUPPLY ✓

@TropicorpRS

It was a tough week for our partners in Aji No Moto as well failed to make the podium for the first time this season. What a response across the board here at the Circuit d'Arès with @Tropicorp Tyres on four of the top five cars on the grid including the top 3 Qualifiers. Hoping for a great race on Sunday and show them who truly is #1 in Tyres!

#WGPC :: #Supplier

**NOTE: Cocoabo Hoodie originally posted with #37 variant in NSSCRA Thread when announced 2 weeks ago. Base hoodie design from AI source cited in NSSCRA Thread, with modifications to match Cocoabo design and Tropicorp designations.

[Former Citizens of the Nimbus System]

Astra Light’s Apartment, Torchlight Community, the First City, the Nexus Wardship of Former Citizens of the Nimbus System
2nd of July
Two years ago

“Really, ‘Toria, it’s been a Maelstrom,” Astra Light told her as she glided around her polished wooden counter and towards the sofa, laying down the tray bearing two mugs of tea and accompanying honey breadsticks, ideal for dunking. “Nobody can agree on the cause except that it has something to do with the Spark, nobody is certain who’s capable of performing surgery or even basic care any longer, morale is through the floor and while we’ve floundered there have been far, far too many secondary injuries.” She shook her head with a sigh, collapsing back next to her sister. “As Coalessa once said, ‘When the cats go hungry, see about the mice.’ Reginald says that there are far too many afflicted for any kind of meaningful palliative response but surely needs to be something in place, else we’ll be swept away by the consequences of our inaction…”

She shook her head again, carefully bringing her tea up to her face to take a deep, deep breath, drawing in the scent and the heat, before exhaling again. “Listen to me complain. We are coping, don’t worry too much – it’s just going to take a lot of planning and effort for us to keep up,” Astra concluded with a quiet smile.

“Well… I’m glad one of us is,” Victoria answered with a wan smile of her own, skimming a breadstick across the top of the hot liquid in her own mug.

“Sorry, sorry – today was meant to be about you, we already see each other far too little, and here I go…” Astra reached up, placing a soothing hand on her sister’s forearm. “I’d be more than happy to hear anything that you might have to say, Victoria. How have things been treating you? I can’t imagine that Nexus Racing’s been any less all-consuming…”

“No, that’s actually… I mean,” Victoria equivocated, pursing her lip, “there was some junk code to sort out when we woke up, but nothing important got deleted so once we got it straightened out… Plain sailing, mostly. Tiffany’s still as spirited as ever – she could carry the three of us on that alone.” She grinned.

“There you are!” Astra laughed. “But that’s not it, is it?”

“Nope, not really.” Victoria raised her mug to her lips, taking a draught, feeling the light, comforting warmth pass down her throat and settle in her stomach, before replacing it on the tray and leaning forward. “I don’t know, sis. I’ve been… I’ve been wanting to have a conversation with Ryker for a while. We… Something happened during the Dullness between us, I don’t remember what, but we broke up. Neither of us wanted it, at least we don’t think so, and we’ve been trying to settle back into things but I’ve been…” She screwed her eyes shut, posture tensing, breadstick chipping beneath vice-like fingers. “I’ve been pushing him away, and I don’t know why. I thought I did, and I tried to tell him, and I was so horrorstruck by the idea that I just couldn’t go through with it, I…”

“‘Tori…” Astra shuffled closer, moved her hand to her back to rub comfortingly. “I… I don’t know what to say.”

Victoria scoffed. “You’re you, Astra, you always know what to say. Probably dealt with stuff like this a dozen times.” She blinked. “I mean, not exactly like this, metaphysical plagues aren’t exactly –”

“No… Really,” Astra cut in, looking towards her with honest, silvery eyes. “I’ve never had anything like that. A couple of month-long romances at uni but… There’s never been the time for much more.”

“Wait… Seriously?”

“No, nothing like what you and Ryker have.” She smiled, exuding all of the same warmth as the tea, and squeezed her in her half-embrace. “Even when you introduced him to us that night, I could tell how important he was to you. I was so, so happy for you, even as a friend and confidante – I’d never seen you like that with anyone else before.”

“Oh.” Victoria blushed.

Then she frowned.

Wait, what did she…

Oh.

---

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12. Feeling

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14. Unending

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[Nico Hulkenberg]

Dario

Pressley Racing’s first double points finish at the previous race had given them some much-needed buoyancy to their momentum heading into the Grand Prix d’Île Saint-Joseph weekend. In the last four qualifying sessions - albeit with two only counting for sprint races - Dario had only qualified 14th, 18th, 11th, and 9th. Thus, it was somewhat less of a surprise when he found himself sitting once again in 14th after a few laps of the Circuit d'Arès, with his teammate a few grid positions further up the field. This mattered very little to Dario, naturally, as from his aforementioned lacklustre qualifying he had more than made up for it in the races, climbing fifteen positions in Patriotlandia, four positions in Aji No Moto, and ten at the Crossbay Circuit. All in all, Dario could easily be described as a ‘race merchant’, but with the Hülkenberger sat in second place in the driver’s standings such a status would be more than desirable for most other drivers in the field. His position on the grid did sting somewhat, however, especially with almost every championship contender (barring everyone’s favourite homosexual Janne Laukkanen) qualifying ahead of him - and Ted Pressley notching his first pole position of the season. Less than ideal for NülkeNation, one would think.

HMG

By some mysterious divine miracle, after sacrificing a multitude of sessions and weekends to the racing gods and going through the turmoil of multiple DNQs, things finally looked to be on the up for the upstart team from Emmerich. Skiia Vialiv had placed her car in 6th and on pole in the past few sessions, and had once more managed to place it on the front row for this weekend. Adonis, meanwhile, was also finding slightly more pace despite a shock DNQ in Patriotlandia, lining up in tenth. Thus far, they were still struggling to convert such qualifying pace into actual results, but a glimmer of light seemed to be appearing at the end of the tunnel for HMG - they just had to hope it wasn’t coming from an oncoming train.

[TJUN-ia]

WGPC 21
Round 7
Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph
Circuit d'Arès, Ile Saint-Jospeh/France

Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. Time is a tricky thing to deal with at times. Sometimes, it can too short at the wrong time. Other times, it is too long and its magnitude feels unnerving to the beholding. What a human being does with time, with their time, is the ultimate human liberty that one can grant another. The act of doing whatever, of doing things for the sake of doing them - not because you have to do them, but because you want to do them. Time is eternally finite, both too long to comprehend and too short to be infinite - but that makes it beautiful in the eyes of science.

Île Saint-Joseph, off the coast of Normandy in France, knows all too well about time. Ever since they gained their own autonomy long ago, they have learned to deal with time when it comes to fishing and when it comes to the tides. For every night, this small island is separated from the mainline by the sea and its residents are forced to enjoy life upon the hilly land they call their own - a symbiotic existence with France that can be freely let go under the light of the moon. It is an existence that can both be fulfilling and isolating at the same time - and it was this place that the WGPC found itself in for Round 7 of this Championship.

Batu Tüvshinbayar, the TJUN-ian representative of this season, has driver around this famous island and its French extension before, so he knew all too well the challenges that were to come as we resumed the normal weekend format. No other circuit in the WGPO arsenal is this important when it comes to car placement and track position - so everything was going to depend on both Saturday and Sunday in this place. Within his Norman hotel room, Batu knew that things would get tight and tough out there, but he couldn't just accept fate at this point. He knew that that fact, the long wait for a TJUN-ian points scorer since his miracle podium last season, was a disgrace back home and Batu was desperate to change that...but after two weekends of a strong qualifying leading towards a slump in the race, he was determined not to strike out thrice.

When we got back to that WGPC Motorworks car for Practice, the drive within his face behind that helmet said it all...he wanted nothing more than to try his best and prove everyone wrong. He knew which areas he wanted to focus on in his laps around this special place - the entry into La Herse, the tricky section of Alchimiste and Épingle, the tight corner at Mairie, the run from Marches to the causeway and both Frontiére and Dernier on the French section of track. Those areas would be where he focused on the most, trying to find the best lines where he could attack safely and (in the case of the French section) try to pull off a rare overtake in this tight lap. He would end up in 13th during this important session, three-tenths off William Archer in 1st but significantly ahead of his Motorworks teammates. He knew he had some pace potential in this car and he knew a good qualifying session could be critical for the overall weekend...which why he spent that night dreaming about the laps, dreaming about the course, dreaming about what he would have to do to break through and take something from this weekend.

When Qualifying day arrived, Batu felt he deeply understood the contours and ridges of this island and the track it is a part of - just like he had studied his face in his dreams a few times. Getting into that car for the most important Saturday of the season, potentially the most important 90 minutes of the whole weekend, was filled with goosebumps and the eternal questions of how and what and why...but he knew he had to do something, so he went out there to try and do it. The pace ended up ramping up significantly as all 28 drivers dared Île Saint-Joseph to bite back, to tell them what they couldn't do as they flew across her shell with great speed and precision, and Batu felt at home here. This track, this tight-knit circuit, was a challenge he seemed to relish, and when he put in a 1:35.476 towards the end of the day, he knew that had to mean something. In the end, Ted Pressley grabbed pole over Skiia Vialiv and Abdoulaye Goita, beating Batu's time by three-tenths...but while Nini Johnsilvaturr set the same time as the Mongolian, she would have to start behind him - Batu in 7th, Nini in 8th. Naveen Kalkar and Giancarlo Rahel made it, but Pierre-Louis Archer missed out by just under two seconds...so only three Motorworks cars will start tomorrow.

Euphoria. Considering everything that Batu had been through this season, qualifying 7th on Île Saint-Joseph was Batu's best result of the season by a country mile. That lap did feel good, but to actually see his name in that Top 10 was just incredible. Pressley, Vialiv, Goita, Haukanna, Toralmintii, Cruisin, Tüvshinbayar, Johnsilvaturr, Cocaobo #23 ...and Fitzpatrick. Being up there was an absolute dream but while this place was infamous for tough to overtake, that didn't mean it was impossible in the slightest. Batu knows he will have to be on his A-Game tomorrow if he wants to join Kalkar and the departed Otto Markul in the points club. That would be his mission tomorrow: keep it clean, don't end up in the walls, and bring home something.

That night, he thought about the race tomorrow...and the fact that Adonis would be starting three positions behind him tomorrow, in Batu's mirrors, and in a position where he would certainly see the rear of his car. A battle between the two seemed more likely than ever before, something Batu has wanted to experience for the longest time, and that fact certainly didn't leave Batu's brain and he prepared for bed. Right now, on the Norman shore, Batu was on his own. Lam Chow-Cheung, one of his closest friends, was battling in NSSCRA's Chase. Tshering Gyeltshen, his other close friend, was preparing for an Elephant Chess Cup. Two of his teammates would be in the race, but they were rookies with their own admissions. And Donny, the one he felt closest to on this grid, hasn't spoken to Batu in a while but would be starting right behind him. Out here, in the Norman night, Batu was isolated and, to be frank, alone. But as he prepared to sleep, he knew what he had to do. He didn't want to be alone...but tomorrow, he knew he would have to fight alone. And he hoped to be ready.

[Liventia]

CUTOFF

for the Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph at Circuit d'Arès

[Liventia]

Week 12: Race

Conditions:      	Rainy
Laps:              	61
Nation:         	ISJ
Circuit:        	Circuit d'Arès
Event:                	Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph
Safety Car on Laps:	18, 19
Cars on Grid:        	28

Start               	POS  # ▍DRV Name                                         Team                                     	Time        	Pts	Fastest Lap	
 1 ▍PRE            	  1 88 ▍PRE Ted Pressley                                 Ælund Grand Prix                             	02:00:42.391	25		
 2 ▍VIA            	  2 51 ▍CRU R.L. Cruisin                                 Piers Ivchenko                               	00:00:17.323	18		
 3 ▍GTA            	  3 89 ▍GTA Abdoulaye Goita                              Ælund Grand Prix                             	00:00:28.564	14		
 4 ▍HAU            	  4 77 ▍TII iBen Toralmintii                             Race Eelandii VTGP                           	00:01:19.372	11		
 5 ▍TII            	  5 22 ▍JOH Nini Johnsilvaturr                           Pressley Racing                              	00:01:44.896	8		
 6 ▍CRU            	  6 37 ▍HAU Laura Haukanna                               Pryfors Bilar                                	00:01:49.417	6		
 7 ▍TUV            	  7 82 ▍LMN Kinu Luminna                                 Preston Autos                                	00:01:53.664	4		
 8 ▍JOH            	  8  9 ▍TUV Batu Tüvshinbayar                            WGPC Motorworks                              	Laps Down: 1	3		
 9 ▍C23            	  9 63 ▍KIN Nepö Kinder                                  Urotovsky-Gatutin                            	Laps Down: 1	2		
10 ▍FTZ            	 10 23 ▍C23 Cocoabo #23                                  Race Eelandii VTGP                           	Laps Down: 1	1		
11 ▍ANG            	 11 17 ▍LAU Janne Laukkanen                              Nexus Racing                                 	Laps Down: 1			
12 ▍LMN            	 12 84 ▍ANG Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling                  Preston Autos                                	Laps Down: 1			
13 ▍KAM            	 13 66 ▍VVV Vincent Von Visp                             Urotovsky-Gatutin                            	Laps Down: 1			
14 ▍NÜL            	 14 14 ▍VIA Skiia Vialiv                                 HMG Grand Prix                               	Laps Down: 1			
15 ▍VVV            	 15 74 ▍FTZ Adonis Fitzpatrick                           HMG Grand Prix                               	Laps Down: 1	 + 1	1:52.398	
16 ▍SOM            	 16 55 ▍LNG Gil Langdon                                  KISMO                                        	Laps Down: 1			
17 ▍KIN            	 17 12 ▍SOM Ron Sommer                                   Viska                                        	Laps Down: 1			
18 ▍LNG            	 18 96 ▍ARC William Archer                               Viska                                        	Laps Down: 1			
19 ▍ARC            	 19 95 ▍BZW Hanna Berezowska                             HiTEN.gpt                                    	Laps Down: 1			
20 ▍BZW            	 20 94 ▍LAN Ryker Lane                                   Nexus Racing                                 	Laps Down: 2			
21 ▍LAU            	 21 58 ▍KAM Shuhei Kamado                                KISMO                                        	Laps Down: 2			
22 ▍BLA            	 22  1 ▍FAE Brendan Faloe                                Cygnus                                       	Laps Down: 2			
23 ▍FAE            	 23 85 ▍STO Olivia Stone                                 Cygnus                                       	Laps Down: 2			
24 ▍KAL            	 24 33 ▍BLA Sam Blaatschapen                             Pryfors Bilar                                	Laps Down: 2			
25 ▍HAZ            	 25 18 ▍RAH Giancarlo Rahel                              WGPC Motorworks                              	Laps Down: 2			
26 ▍RAH            	 26 91 ▍KAL Naveen Kalkar                                WGPC Motorworks                              	Laps Down: 2			
27 ▍STO            	 27 27 ▍NÜL Dario Nülkeschlager                          Pressley Racing                              	Ret. lap 57*			
28 ▍LAN            	DNF 21 ▍HAZ Nik Hazrin Lutfi                             Piers Ivchenko                               	Ret. lap 17			

*Classified finish (90% of race distance = 55 laps)

Drivers' standings

Pos # ▍DRV Name                                          Team [Engine]                                                                                Tyres                                        Pts
 1 51 ▍CRU R.L. Cruisin                                  Piers Ivchenko [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                              Brimstone                                    86
 2 88 ▍PRE Ted Pressley                                  Ælund Grand Prix [Ælund CMYK-T20V8H]                                                         Tropicorp Racing Supply                      79
 3 27 ▍NÜL Dario Nülkeschlager                           Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                       Tropicorp Racing Supply                      62
 4 89 ▍GTA Abdoulaye Goita                               Ælund Grand Prix [Ælund CMYK-T20V8H]                                                         Tropicorp Racing Supply                      61
 5 17 ▍LAU Janne Laukkanen                               Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         54
 6 94 ▍LAN Ryker Lane                                    Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         51
 7 37 ▍HAU Laura Haukanna                                Pryfors Bilar [Pryfors Bilar]                                                                Phoenician-In Motion                         44
 8 12 ▍SOM Ron Sommer                                    Viska [Viska RG Motors]                                                                      Phoenician-In Motion                         39
 9 66 ▍VVV Vincent Von Visp                              Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                           Solymok                                      26
10 63 ▍KIN Nepö Kinder                                   Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                           Solymok                                      25
10 77 ▍TII iBen Toralmintii                              Race Eelandii VTGP [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                    Tropicorp Racing Supply                      25
12 55 ▍LNG Gil Langdon                                   KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      24
12 74 ▍FTZ Adonis Fitzpatrick                            HMG Grand Prix [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                   Tropicorp Racing Supply                      24
14  1 ▍FAE Brendan Faloe                                 Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    20
15 82 ▍LMN Kinu Luminna                                  Preston Autos [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                    Brimstone                                    16
16 84 ▍ANG Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling                   Preston Autos [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                    Brimstone                                    15
17 23 ▍C23 Cocoabo #23                                   Race Eelandii VTGP [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                    Tropicorp Racing Supply                      14
18 22 ▍JOH Nini Johnsilvaturr                            Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                       Tropicorp Racing Supply                      11
19 14 ▍VIA Skiia Vialiv                                  HMG Grand Prix [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                   Tropicorp Racing Supply                      10
20 96 ▍ARC William Archer                                Viska [Viska RG Motors]                                                                      Phoenician-In Motion                         9
21 95 ▍BZW Hanna Berezowska                              HiTEN.gpt [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                                  Brimstone                                    8

22 85 ▍STO Olivia Stone                                  Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    6
23 58 ▍KAM Shuhei Kamado                                 KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      4
23 30 ▍MAR Otto Markul                                   WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              4
25  9 ▍TUV Batu Tüvshinbayar                             WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              3
26 91 ▍KAL Naveen Kalkar                                 WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              2
27 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                      140
  2 NIM ▍Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         105
  3 DOU ▍Piers Ivchenko [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                              Brimstone                                    87
  4 TMB ▍Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                       Tropicorp Racing Supply                      73
  5 PDN ▍Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                           Solymok                                      51
  6 AUR ▍Viska [Viska RG Motors]                                                                      Phoenician-In Motion                         48
  7 DCS ▍Pryfors Bilar [Pryfors Bilar]                                                                Phoenician-In Motion                         44
  8 V&T ▍Race Eelandii VTGP [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                    Tropicorp Racing Supply                      39
  9 HÜL ▍HMG Grand Prix [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                   Tropicorp Racing Supply                      34
 10 HVZ ▍Preston Autos [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                    Brimstone                                    31
 11 ANM ▍KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      28
 12 ESM ▍Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    26
 13 WGP ▍WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              9
 14 HDR ▍HiTEN.gpt [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                                  Brimstone                                    8

 15 LIS ▍Eminent [Sidus 616W-1]                                                                       Blue Sulphurate                              0

[Diarcesia]

The trademark l'Île Saint-Joseph rain greeted the WGPC participants as the rain started. This weather did not deter the audience, who filled the grandstands, in addition to those watching from boats and yachts.

Unlike their last rainy outing, PB guessed wrong. They thought the precipitation would stop and told the drivers to stay out and finish their stint on inters. Big mistake as both Laura and Sam were overtaken by those who changed to the full-wet tyres.

Sam's spirits deflated as she realized her predicament. This season had been miserable for her. She felt like a ship off her moorings, tossed by the waves, the wind blowing her wherever it pleases.

After the race and the celebrations, she took her leave and decided to spend her time alone on one of the island's beaches. She sat down on the sand, hugging her knees and watching the calm waters moving to shore. Her state of mind was anything but that.

She loved racing, but it looked like it didn't love her back. She thought she could improve from last season. Instead, what occurred was regression. She had only made her teammate's campaign miserable. She was a total nonfactor in the team. Laura was doing her best, and because of Sam's inability to produce results, the former could only be in the midpack.

She sighed, then laughed, then tears fell down. She knew it. She was cooked.

Maybe it was time to retire.

---

Sometime Later...
Aldauren's Office

"Hey Aldauren."

"Yeah, Sam?"

"I won't return for the next season."

Aldauren was slightly surprised at Sam's revelation. It was indisputable that Sam's performance was lackluster. Now that it continued in the second half, he had to make a decision about Sam's future in Pryfors Bilar. And she made the decision for him.

"I...", Aldauren coughed. "Are you sure about this?" was all he asked.

"Yes. I'm not naïve. I did not produce anything for the team this season. I let the team down. This is the least I can do."

"Okay. I understand you made this decision with a clear conscience. All I ask is for you to do your best for the rest of the season. You will continue as a PB driver until then."

"That, I can do."

---

Pryfors Bilar Won't Renuew Sam Blaatschapen's Contract After WGPC 21

[Tumbra]

OOC: This is an additional RP as context for Ban's upcoming RP. More will come later in the week.

From: Marcus Abreu [marcusabreu@pressleyracing.com]
To: Jjuko Okafor [...]
CC: Stephen Cheung [stephencheungtw@pressleyracing.com], Minerva O'Leary [minervaoleary@pressleyracing.com], Kelly Patel [kellyp@pressleyracing.com], Daniel Brnovic [danielbrno@pressleyracing.com], Sophie McCreary [sophiemcc42@pressleyracing.com], 3 others
Subject: Itinerary for Pressley-Kim Racing Engineering Factory Visit and Test Drive

Dear Mr. Okafor,

All of us at Pressley Racing are happy to know that you're interested in coming down for our factory tour. Attached is the itinerary for your one-day visit to our facilities, as well as a test-drive in the WGP2 Constructor's Championship winning car, the PRE-024. This trip will serve as a great opportunity for you to try out what it is like to drive in a car that is close to that of a WGPC-standard car, and also serve as an introduction to the operations of a WGPO-affiliated team, should you choose to further your racing career here or with one of the many other capable teams on the grid.

JJUKO OKAFOR'S VISIT TO PRESSLEY RACING — ITINERARY

0900: Arrival and reception with Mr. Ian Ashburn, interim CEO of Pressley Racing, and Mr. Thomas Kim, Special Advisor @ Pressley Racing Museum
You will meet Mr. Ashburn and Mr. Kim in a short reception. Also present will be Stephen Cheung, the Deputy Team Principal and Head of Factory Operations of Pressley-Kim Racing. We are unable to confirm at this time if Jack Brook, the Team Principal of Pressley-Kim Racing, will be in attendance. Representatives from Tropicorp, Pressley Racing's tyre and engine supplier, will also be present. Breakfast will be served. Please indicate if anyone arriving with you might have any potential allergens or other dietary requirements.

0930: Tour of the Pressley-Kim Factory with Chief Technical Director Kelly Patel @ Pressley Factory
You will be taken on a tour of the factory floor, design centre, and on-site wind tunnel with Chief Technical Director Kelly Patel. During this time, you will also take part in a seat fitting. This seat will take several hours to create, and will be used in your test run in the WGP2 car in the afternoon; however, you will only need to be present for your measurements to be taken. Please note that all information that will be shared during this tour is strictly confidential, and only official photographs taken by our in-house photographer are allowed.

1130: Tour of the Pressley-Kim Driver Development Facilities with Chief Sporting Director Daniel Brnovic @ Driver Development Facilities
You will be given a tour of the driver development facilities, including our fitness facilities, race command centre, and driving simulator with Chief Sporting Director Daniel Brnovic. Please feel free to take a few laps in our simulator, or to take part in a bit of driver conditioning.

1300: Lunch and Break @ Pressley Canteen
Lunch will be served in the Pressley Racing Canteen. We will endeavour to serve what we normally serve our drivers during track days and weekends. Please indicate if anyone arriving with you might have any potential allergens or other dietary requirements.

1400: Transport to the Grantfeldt Raceway for Test Drive
Being based in Grantfeldt, the Pressley Racing HQ is located but a few kilometres away from the main racing track in the state. A layout is provided within this email for you to begin to familiarise yourself with the track; the track is also included in multiple computer games and driving simulators should you wish to practice the track if you would like. We have no doubt that you are already familiar with these simulators, but the most well-known and accurate one is eRacing, which has a laser-scanned version of the track included.

1430: Arrival and Preparation for Test Drive
1500: Testing Programme
1800: Debriefing and End of Day
The testing programme will take approximately two and a half hours, and is meant as a general familiarisation session in a WGP2 car, which goes at approximately 90% of the pace of an actual WGPC car. You and Ms. McCreary will be driving the WGP2 Constructors' Championship-winning PRE-024 car. Three chassis will be present on site. The post-session debriefing will take place on-site at the Grantfeldt Raceway. Should you wish, transport can be provided back to the Pressley Racing team headquarters, or to your accomodation in Tumbra. Unfortunately, no aerial transport will be available, as Pressley Racing abides by a strict no-helicopter policy.

Our test and reserve driver for the WGPC 21 season, Sophie McCreary, will be on hand for the day and present throughout to act as a guide and get you up to speed with how the WGP2 car operates. We understand that this will be your first time driving in such a car; we'll give enough time for you to get up to speed through a familiarisation program designed for young drivers. Please note that while we have spare race-suits and helmets, they may not exactly fit your dimensions — we recommend that you bring your own. Please ensure that your helmet has a Head And Neck Support Device (HANS device) attached.

Please let us know which Tumbran airport you will be landing at and whether anyone will be accompanying you so we may make the necessary preparations. Please also let us know at the earliest convenience if you require help with booking accomodation in a nearby city, other transport arrangements, &c.

We hope to see you soon — all of us can't wait to meet you!

Best wishes,
Marcus Abreu
Director, Communications and Sponsor Relationships, Pressley-Kim Racing Engineering

Attachments:
Grantfeldt_Raceway_Track_Diagram.png

[Recuecn]

Abdoulaye had dreamt this before: he was sailing across the desert in a rowboat, tossed by rolling waves of sand. He was a child again, small and powerless, and his boat was small too. The great sand dunes grew larger and larger as they welled across the surface of the sea, or desert, or whatever it was. He tried to avoid them—somehow the boat had a steering wheel, and now it was a car, and the car began to sink under the waves, just as a great breaker began to crash over him—

Abdoulaye awoke bathed in sweat. He could hear the tide coming in, cutting off Île Saint-Joseph from the mainland. It was early Sunday morning: race day. All things he could handle.

Qualifying in Île Saint-Joseph had gone smoothly for Abdoulaye. In Aji No Moto he’d been fourth in the sprint, fourth in qualifying, and fourth in the feature race; here on the island he qualified in third place, which was a slight improvement, but more importantly to Abdoulaye, showed good consistency. He was quite content and even rather proud of himself that his good form was continuing: he still felt that he needed to prove that the crash just before the mid-season break hadn’t affected his confidence. Now it was looking like the second half of the championship was off to a good start, so that was good news.

Abdoulaye was happy that the championship was demanding less mental effort from him. He was still dedicating all his time and energy to the sport, putting in long hours at Lintulahti, on the track and in the simulator. But his mind was elsewhere. Some of the comments his dad and Malick had made had stuck with him.

“The story of our journey… reminds me of losing your mother. And that is not something I can bear to remember,” Moussa had said.

“She was everything to me,” Malick had said. “I don’t think I could ever forget.”

Abdoulaye, on the other hand, hardly remembered everything. What was left of his memories was only the colors, sounds, and smells. The rest had been lost to the sands of time and the Sahara.

But with each story he heard from his father or brother, more and more pieces began to return to Abdoulaye. Perhaps those memories had been there all along, sunken under the sand. Maybe they had been repressed by his child mind, unable to comprehend the significance of the journey and the loss of his mother. Abdoulaye knew that he had lost his mother at some point during the journey, but still he had no recollection of it. It was a fact he had been told by his father, but until now it had been history, not his own experience.

There was an empty place in his memories. In everything afterward, it had just been him, his father, and Malick. He remembered little prior to that missing moment, but after hearing his dad describe life in Bamako, snippets had begun to return to him, like a montage. Now, the same thing was happening with the voyage out of Africa. And in those scenes that came back to him, Fanta was there, laughing, or nervous sometimes, but always full of love and tenderness, holding him close to her. And that empty void of repressed memory continued to shrink.

Moussa had called him the evening after qualifying and filled in the next portion of the journey, telling the story of the rest of the trip across the desert. Once the bandits had been left in the dust, everything went smoothly. The camels had been left to the bandits, but all of the family belongings had made it into the truck, and they drove north, sleeping under the stars at night.

Cheik navigated, telling the way by landmarks, familiar with all the terrain between Timbuktu and Taoudenni. Moussa drove, following his directions. It was almost a week before they arrived in Taoudenni. Taoudenni was not a city—it was an outpost in the desert. It was a salt mine, where the miners lived here alone, carving out slabs of salt from the ancient salt beds, digging them out by hand. Their only contact with the rest of the world was the caravans, two a year, that came to take away the salt.

The miners looked up curiously when the Goitas arrived with Cheik. A truck, arriving out of season, and carrying a woman and children? Why could that be? The other men that had been in the truck with them disembarked here. They had business at the mines.

Moussa, however, didn’t want to stay long. He asked Cheik if they could continue north toward Algeria the very next day.

Cheik refused. He hadn’t planned to go further than Taoudenni. Yes, he was a nomad, but his people lived to the south, closer to Timbuktu. He had no business leaving his homeland, he said, let alone going to Algeria, a nation torn by civil war.

Moussa begged him to reconsider. The salt caravans only went to Timbuktu, and there was no one else traveling north. The journey would be impossible on foot. Whether through the mountains or across the ergs, any route they could take would require more provisions than they could carry, and it was hundreds of kilometers to the next outpost of civilization. Even once they made it through the wilderness, Moussa pointed out, they wouldn’t speak the language. Only Cheik could be their guide and translator. They were entirely at his mercy.

Moussa promised to give Cheik everything he could—almost everything he had. Fortunately, Cheik took pity on the young family and relented. They stayed at Taoudenni just one day. They drove north again after two nights, Moussa at the wheel once more, and the hammering of the picks faded into the distance behind them.

The drive across the desert—days on end of monotonous driving across flat, rocky hamada where nothing grew, and Cheik found the way by landmarks so subtle that no one else could even distinguish them—were the smoothest of the entire trip, Moussa explained to Abdoulaye. Things settled into a routine. For the first time, since the bandit attack, he felt optimistic. The money had essentially run out, but the desert crossing, the most difficult part of the journey, was behind them. The rest of the trek might be remote, but not through utter wilderness like the Malian Sahara.

The truck ran well. The food lasted as long as it needed to. No sandstorms or bandits troubled them. Travel was slow through the trackless hamada, but steady.

A week out of Taoudenni, Moussa spotted tire tracks in the basalt. Even a dirt road felt luxurious and smooth after the endless rocks of the hamada. Soon—after counting days, hours flew by—there was a house, then a village.

At the first town, Cheik stopped. He stayed to translate, just enough to get Moussa, Fanta, and the boys bus tickets, still heading north. Before they boarded, Moussa thanked Cheik profusely. He knew how incredibly fortunate they were to be brought across the border by someone who was not trying to take advantage of them—thousands of other migrants would find a much worse fate. With a final farewell, Cheik left to return home, and the Goitas continued their journey, always heading north, toward Tunis and the sea.

Abdoulaye, listening to his father recount the story over the phone, tried to remember it, or at least to imagine what it was like. He couldn’t tell how much he remembered, and how much he made up himself. He was surprised, after his father’s comments about Fanta, how little his mother appeared in the story. Perhaps in Moussa’s memory, he was driving, and his family was just along for the ride, passengers without agency. Yet Abdoulaye knew his mother played a key emotional role in his father’s recollection of the trip.

Abdoulaye was happy at least to learn that one portion of the trip had gone smoothly. It seemed a good omen. Abdoulaye too was preparing to drive—the Grand Prix d’Île Saint-Joseph was in just a few hours now—and he hoped it went as smoothly as his father’s retelling of the journey across the Sahara.

It seemed everything was going well. Abdoulaye was starting in the second row, with Ted immediately in front of him. Abdoulaye wanted another one-two finish, like they’d had in Doubeia, and with both of them qualifying in podium position, this seemed like the chance to pull it off again.

When Abdoulaye overtook Vialiv, partway through the race, it seemed like it was possible. But Abdoulaye couldn’t quite hang on. But R.L. Cruisin was having a great race, and Abdoulaye couldn’t stop him from taking P2. It was unfortunate, even more so, since it meant even Ted’s first-place finish did little to cut down on Cruisin’s championship lead.

By the time he passed the checkered flag, however, Abdoulaye was happy to end the race as he had started it, in third place. After so many fourth-place finishes, finally, another podium! And another podium shared with his teammate, even better. If qualifying hadn’t proved his form was back, then certainly this settled all doubt.

Abdoulaye was looking forward to the Ælund celebrations. Despite everything that had happened lately—difficult DNFs for both himself and Ted, Ted’s father passing away, and now Abdoulaye’s own emotional distraction as he considered his past, with the race result today, there was enough to be happy about. He smiled. He’d head over to the Ælund party in a little bit, but first he had a quick phone call to make.

“Papa, did you see my race!?”

[Hapilopper]

WELCOME TO HAPILOPPER CITY!

The Hapilopper City Grand Prix Circuit, home of the Preston Autos Grand Prix of Hapilopper, is the host of the 7th round of the World Grand Prix Championship, and has become known as one of the leading natural-terrain road race circuits in the Dominion. Located on the western outskirts of Hapilopper City, the track features a beautiful collection of elevation changes and challenging corners that are sure to give even the most cynical driver that little bit of driving pleasure. Over 150,000 fans are expected on the grounds of the Grand Prix Circuit for the third running of the Hapiloppian Grand Prix, and the race will be beamed live across Hapilopper over the Hapilopper Television Network, as well as across the multiverse on the WGPC's many broadcast partners.

Of course, while auto racing has long been king in Hapilopper, and while the Hapilopper National Exhibition will be underway for the next several weeks, there’s plenty of other things to do in the Dominion beside watching auto racing. Hapilopper City, for example, the largest city and capital of the Dominion, is one of the cultural centers in the region. The National Museum of Natural and Unnatural History, for instance, is a popular place for out-of-town residents, and features exhibits such as the dinosaurs that once roamed the lands of Hapilopper, the drum kit used by the famous rock band “The Kingslayers,” and the car driven by Team Blue driver Chet Byrd to win the 1980 HASCAR Challenge Cup.

Hamilton Square in downtown Hapilopper City
is the sentimental center of town.

Not interested in historic artifacts? How about checking out a concert? Hapilopper City has more than their fair share of concert halls, and on a given night in downtown Hapilopper City, you’ll find your favorite genre of music, regardless of what it is. There’s the Stockyards, one of the leading country music venues in the country, that features a headliner almost every night. There’s Palmwoods Hall, one of the top venues for up-and-coming rock stars, that has a show every night this week. There’s Riverside Park, which features some of the top rap and hip-hop stars in the country, and Kenwood’s, one of the top dance music venues in the country.

If loud music isn't your thing, there's plenty of other things to enjoy. Some of the finest culinary selections in all of Atlantian Oceania reside in Hapilopper City, including Craven's Steakhouse, rated by "Chunk o'Meat Monthly", Hapilopper's guide to restaurants, as the best steakhouse in all of the Dominion. Like beer? Check out Andrew's Pub, located on the north side of Hapilopper City! Andrew McPherson, the proprietor, and a former HASCAR driver, carries no less than three dozen beers on tap and carries all the major sporting events on four big-screen televisions in the bar. You might even see one of Team Blue's famous drivers, all of whom frequent the watering hole!

The city, with a population of 36,140,000, is the largest city in Hapilopper, and is moving every single minute of the day and night. The sentimental center of town, of course, is Hamilton Square. Almost 250 years ago, Hapilopper City, then known as Hamilton City, grew out of that square, and in 1879, to celebrate the city’s and the nation’s centennial, a giant fountain was erected in the middle of Hamilton Square. Since then, the area has become the site of major concerts and watch parties for some of the biggest moments in Hapiloppian Sport, most notably two years ago when the Hapilopper National Football Team stunned the world and won the Baptism of Fire. Thousands of fans are expected to congregate on Hamilton Square this weekend to watch their favorite drivers, Rudy Edwards and William Archer, go for glory at the Grand Prix Circuit this weekend.

---

The Hapilopper City Grand Prix Circuit:

The Hapilopper City Grand Prix Circuit is located on the western outskirts of Hapilopper City, actually located in the nearby suburb of Paulson. The circuit was built back in the late 1990s in an effort to attract international road racing to the Dominion, and an estimated 120,000 fans are expected to fill the circuit grounds for a Grand Prix weekend, should the circuit be granted a Grand Prix. What kind of race the circuit will present depends on the weather. If Hapilopper's notoriously-finicky weather gets involved, mayhem could ensure. If not, many expect a fantastic race anyway with lots of passing opportunities and high speed ruling the day. Below is some information about the corners and portions of the track drivers will encounter.

FIRST RIGHT:
Your lap starts with First Right, a flat-out right kink leading downhill to Downhill Pass. Typically, it is not considered wise to make a passing move here, unless the trailing car has picked up a huge draft off the leading car. Expect speeds to approach 210 mph past First Right, which should give fans on the pit straight a real thrill as they see cars haul ass at top speed towards Downhill Pass.

DOWNHILL PASS:
Your first real opportunity at passing comes at Downhill Pass, a downhill left hand corner, and a possible trouble spot throughout the race. Drivers in the Hapilopper Championship Series have been known for missing their braking point and hurtling right off the track and into the neighboring sand trap. Behind Downhill Pass, fans will congregate on a viewing area hill, known as "Spectator Hill," which gives fans a great view of Downhill Pass and the McLaughlin's complex. Drivers, marshals and photographers have told stories of watching smoke from barbecues on Spectator Hill wafting across the circuit and becoming momentarily distracted by the scent of barbecue chicken and ribs.

McLAUGHLIN'S:
Named for former gentleman driver Peter McLaughlin, who competed in sports car racing across three decades in the Dominion, and the designer of this circuit, the McLaughlin's circuit consists of two uphill corners. The first one comes after a short straight following Downhill Pass, and gives drivers another opportunity to perform overtaking maneuvers. Maybe someone might want to repass whoever got by them at Downhill Pass. A short straight connects the two McLaughlin corners, which leads towards a small almost straight leading to Slidey Right.

SLIDEY RIGHT:
This corner gained its name following a rainy day a few years ago when the corner, already slick from a car blowing an engine and oiling down the track, sent car after car off the track due to virtually no traction on the track. Slidey Right is a tough corner on a dry day, a pain in the ass on a rainy day, and a bold place to make a passing move for the braves of drivers. Look for a lot of action here.

FLAT LEFT AND RIGHT:
An unofficial series of esses, Flat Left and Flat Right, as the name would suggest, are taken at full-throttle as drivers make their way to one of the most interestingly-named sections of the track. Don't expect a lot of passing on Flat Left and Right, unless the drivers involved in such a move are either a.) unspeakably brave or b.) terminally stupid. A handful of drivers have tried making passing moves either leading up to, or in the middle of, Flat Right, which have led to some horrific accidents in the past, most notably during a Hapilopper Championship Series race a few years ago when Leroy Keegan ran over the left-rear of Blake Broadbent, sending him skyward, before tumbling all the way to Oh Crap There's A Wall.

OH CRAP THERE'S A WALL:
Perhaps the most famous feature of the Hap City Grand Prix Circuit, "Oh Crap There's a Wall" is a sudden left-hand corner accompanied by an unforgiving concrete wall along the track surface. Top WGPC cars will take Flat Right at full-throttle before having to slam on the brakes for the relatively slow Oh Crap There's A Wall, taken at an estimated 80 mph. Drivers in the Hapilopper Championship Series have hit the outside wall on multiple occasions, wrecking their day and leading to increased discussions that maybe there should be a little bit of runoff just the racing surface. Either way, Oh Crap There's A Wall is a great place for a driver to make a balls-to-the-wall passing move on the braking from 180 to 80 - or less. In recent years, the Hapilopper Television Network has painted a giant red bullseye on the wall at "Oh Crap There's a Wall" for drivers to hit, as part of a controversial contest where fans can win if the driver of their choice smacks that wall.

CHICKEN BONE ALLEY:
A number of road circuits across Hapilopper (and yes, they do exist) have named perhaps the most remote part of their circuit "Chicken Bone Alley" for the cheap seats typically located there. Chicken Bone Alley on the Hap City Grand Prix Circuit is the straight between Oh Crap There's A Wall and the Triple Diamond and features grandstands on either side. Drivers in multiple racing series have accused fans in this section of the track of throwing fried chicken bones at their cars midrace. No bones were found by corner workers, but the accusation still stands.

TRIPLE DIAMOND COMPLEX:
The Triple Diamond Complex, at one point, featured a long triple-apex corner leading onto the Final Straight. However, due to concerns that this corner could allow some of the top teams to run somewhere in the neighborhood of three kilometers plus at full throttle, officials with the Grand Prix circuit made the hard decision to install a chicane between the second and third apexes of Triple Diamond. The chicane - a slow right hander in the middle of apex two - slows cars down, and again for the left-right segment leading onto Final Straight.

---

"Oh Crap, There's A Wall" to receive round-the-clock security, 'Olivia Stone Memorial Cup' announced
HAPILOPPER CITY - In the wake of last year's unfortunate vandalism incident, the Hapilopper City Grand Prix Circuit will have round-the-clock security, especially in the "Oh Crap, There's A Wall" corner. Last season, the wall at "Oh Crap, There's A Wall" was allegedly defaced by Nimban operatives.

"The actions from last season were reprehensible," said Jim Connor, director of the Hapilopper City Grand Prix Circuit. "We had a company pay good money to put ad space on that wall and it was vandalized. This will, flatly, not happen again."

Witnesses at the circuit reported armed guards surrounding every opening of the track. Connor said the move is necessary to prevent any further incidents from taking place. While there is no "They Crash, You Win" contest this year held by the event's host broadcaster, several Hapiloppian businesses are holding a contest giving away $1 million to a fan should a Nexus Racing car hit the wall at "Oh Crap, There's A Wall" during the Hapiloppian Grand Prix. $500,000 will be given away should a Nexus Racing car crash, and $250,000 given away should one retire from the race.

In addition, a $10 million prize will be given away should Olivia Stone, driver for Cygnus Racing, crash at "Oh Crap, There's A Wall."

The award, the "Olivia Stone Memorial Cup," is dedicated to the Nimban driver reportedly involved in the vandalism last season.

"We are not involved in those contests," Connor said. "We can't control what a company does. Evidently Ms. Stone has quite the target on her back."

For the record, Stone is alive and well. She sits 22nd in WGPC points.

[Banija]

Jjuko Okafor and his agent, Umar Adewale, the morning of their visit to Pressley Racing's facilities in Tumbra

Jjuko Okafor was sitting at his hotel, on the ground in Tumbra, alongside his agent, Umar Adewale. They were an interesting pairing. Umar Adewale was an up and coming sports agent in Banija- one known for his 'dogmatic' belief that motorsports could be a successful enterprise in the Kingdom, an attitude not shared by most business experts in the country. While he mostly represented S-FPL players, he had been trying to branch out into motorsport for a number of years, but he couldn't for a simple reason- there were no Banijans looking to go big in the sport. But finally, he had found a guy who was willing to put it all on the line, to get big in the sport, and most importantly, to go international with it- and his name was Jjuko Okafor.

Okafor was a raw driver, by any stretch of the imagination. Adewale had been a fan for a few years- just watching WGPC on various streams, and having attended a few races, as a fan, over the years. It would be a steep learning curve- as one could imagine, motorsports was pretty poorly funded in Banija, and so the cars that they were driving in Aissa would probably make any WGPC driver laugh. That said, Okafor was getting some attention, and due to connections that Adewale had with the racing scene in Aissa, he was able to set up an interview with Okafor. He really dug into the young lad's life story- he had the exact type of story, and the edge, that was needed for him to probably make up the gap between him and other WGPC drivers. A gap that could only be made up through some hard work.

And so during the Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph, he had put his boys to work. He ran a small agency- he didn't have many employees, and considering how high-risk this was, he couldn't afford to put too many of his agents on this. But instead of being at the race himself, he sent one of his deputies to the race, alongside Jjuko Okafor, where he tried to do some publicity for the young gun. If they were trying to get an offer from a team, any team, they would need to ensure that Okafor's name was known. Meanwhile, at home, Adewale had sent his family on vacation to Teusland. He needed to simply study up. He knew a ton about soccer, but despite his interest in this sport, he had needed to do some deep reading. With the family gone, he spent the weekend poring over every single resource that was available on the WGPC, and how these types of contracts would work. How visits work.

He didn't have a network in the game, and nor did any Banijan. So of course, they would be journeying together. But he had convinced Okafor- the young driver needed somebody who understood him, understood where he came from, to be an agent during this phase of his career. Okafor had grilled him as well- what he knew about the competition, asking him what he didn't know, and asking him, just generally, how he felt about what was going to happen.

And so, the day following the race in l'Île Saint-Joseph, a rainy day where Okafor had watched Ted Pressley win the race, in person, the two met up together, meeting each other in Tumbra.

"You ready for this Jjuko?" Umar asked.

"I'm nervous for sure." Jjuko responded. Umar was a bit of a flashy dresser normally, generally known for his bright colored suits. That's why Jjuko was a bit surprised that his agent was wearing a jet black suit. "You're wearing a black suit? Honestly, I didn't even know you owned one." Jjuko joked.

"Ha." Umar fake laughed. "Nah, when you don't know anybody... Got to make the connections. This is our first ever visit to a facility. Like I said- we've been working the phones. I've been in contact with @RaceEelandii, we're locking in the details of a visit to Turori. And while talks are still pretty early, I'm hopeful we can get you on a plane to Aji No Moto at some point as well. So don't be so nervous. See- Jjuko, take a deep breath." The Banijan driver took one.

"I know, a lot of pressure. It would be great if your Dad was here, helping you out... But look, you'll prove him wrong." Okafor simply nodded. "Now- let's show these guys what you got." As soon as he said that, four other Banijans walked into the hotel lobby, and they shook hands with Okafor's agent.

"Who are these guys?" He asked.

"Ah- the rest of your team. Agents from my office. You're mostly a 2 man operation, for now- but we have to show these guys that you've got a full on operation. None of them will say much today at all, you and I will basically do all the talking."

---

Jjuko Okafor and his agent, Umar Adewale, arriving at the Grantfeldt Raceway for their Test Drive on their visit at Pressley

The Banijans had been through a whirlwind of a morning. What a day it had been so far. Okafor, especially, had never quite been wined and dined in this way.

First, meeting Ian Ashburn was pretty cool. He had met his fair share of professional footballers- it made sense when your Father was a footballer himself- but it was cool to meet another. All sorts of suits, of course. Adewale was showcasing why he was put into this world to be an agent. His ability to talk to all of the suits, a slightly overwhelming task for someone like Okafor, had been critical. During the opening short reception, Adewale had brought along a gift for their hosts, something that they would not be able to find in Tumbra- passes to go on a Triceratops sightseeing trip, in Banija, if and when they ever decided to go visit the country. Adewale's agency was a big donor to one of the preserves in Buganda, and so was able to pull something like this. The food, of course, was excellent.

As they took a tour of the Pressley Factory floor, Okafor and Adewale could not hide the fact that they were blown away. Almost literally, at least when they were in the on-site wind tunnel. "Aissa's garage doesn't look anything like this, or even anything close to this." Okafor whispered to Adewale right before he started his seat fitting. And that was certainly true.

"Ms. Patel, these facilities... Are impressive." Adewale had told his tour guide, Pressley Chief Technical Director Kelly Patel. He had even laughed nervously. "We don't have racing facilities like this back home. How do you..." As he pointed at something and started asking some questions. Okafor was looking around, still starstruck in a sense- he could imagine himself coming here regularly. It was clearer than ever that he was entering the big leagues, and the quality gap in all senses of the term that he would be experiencing. But he could imagine himself with these kinds of facilities. Why not him, eh?

Where Okafor was the most locked in, of coures, was when they went to the Driver Development facilities. Taking a look in the race command center- the brains behind the operations here were made impressive. "Man, the Banijan tour in Aissa simply doesn't compare in any way, shape, or form." Adewale told Okafor as they were walking around. "These are how the pros do it. But stop looking so wide-eyed. Yes, I know, we've got a long way to go get things up to scruff at home. But that's not our focus right now. They know we haven't seen anything like these before, but you can't look so wide-eyed that it looks like you have no idea what you're doing. Remember- you belong here." Okafor nodded, and then stepped away from his agent as he started asking Daniel Brnovic about potential driver development.

And now, they were about ready to test drive. That's when the reserve driver for Pressley, Sophie McCreary, came into play.

"Good afternoon, Jjuko!" She said, beaming, as she stuck her hand out for a firm handshake. "And Umar- welcome to Tumbra!"

"Thank you!" He responded. "The tour has been magnificent. We're excited to get him ready to test drive."

"When was the last time you were here Your father's World Cup Final?" She nodded at Jjuko.

"I was pretty young then." Jjuko responded. As they continued making pleasantries, she got him ready, and through, the familiarisation program that Pressley Racing had for young drivers. And right before he got into his car, he walked up to his agent again. "Dang- this is only their second circuit car, but man- way more powerful than anything we have back home."

"This is what happens when you spend real money on this." Umar responded. "This could be big in Banija if people invested properly..."

"Well, time for me to get in." He had brought his own race-suit and helmet- it had taken some string pulling for them to make him one without logos, as they didn't want to violate any of Pressley Racing's sponsor agreements. But just an orange spacesuit and a green helmet- the colors of the Banijan flag. "Let's go." The Banijans, naturally, were nervous. Okafor might have been more nervous still. His heart was pounding. The speed, the handle, the control of this car... Far better than anything of the sort he had driven in the past. He knew that he didn't want to crash into the wall.

He took a few spins around the track. Going slowly, and then speeding up each time- gaining more and more confidence as he drove the car more. At the end of the programme, and the debriefing session, they were driven back to their hotel.

Okafor and his agent simply had one word for each other. "Wow."

Jjuko.Okafor

21 minutes ago

Thanks to @Pressley.Racing for bringing me out to Tumbra today. What an experience!

[Trans-Dniesters]

“Nous ne voulons faire de mal à personne.” We want to hurt no one.

Ravil Ivanovich Yanenko repeated the sentence in French over and over, using the pronunciation notes that he had scribbled on the margins of his phrasebook to guide him towards something that resembled fluency in the main language of Recuecn. It would seem as if the sentence that Yanenko was practicing was a weird one for a tourist to pick up, but that assumption rested on yet another assumption, which is that Ravil Yanenko was just the average tourist taking a trip to Recuecn for reasons known only to him.

The truth of the matter was that Ravil Yanenko was in Recuecn for a clandestine mission on behalf of the Pridnestrovian Republic. There were a lot of things that made the truth about Yanenko almost as fantastical as the cover story that he had built around himself. For one, Ravil Yanenko looked nothing like the average Pridnestrovian. The average Pridnestrovian was a white-skinned Slavic person, and Ravil Yanenko was not even white. Yanenko was one of the exceedingly rare “Afro-Pridnestrovians,” Pridnestrovians with black ancestry who were usually the result of “liaisons” between the locals and visitors from the African continent, usually exchange students or military personnel or even a handful of diplomats. Ravil’s own story began with his mother entering a relationship with a cultural exchange student from Kirungabi, or so she claimed. Yanenko’s biological father went back to Kirungabi before he knew that Ravil’s mother was pregnant, and that was the last that anyone heard of the man.

Growing up in the post-communist era of Pridnestrovia was already a difficult task for anyone, but it was infinitely more so for an Afro-Pridnestrovian like Ravil Yanenko. Anyone who stood out was subjected to teasing, and Ravil’s dark skin made him a bigger target than most. Racism was a constant in his life, and these experiences had cemented Ravil’s belief that Pridnestrovia was one of the most racist nations that he had ever seen. This then made it almost incomprehensible to Ravil how the ignorant liberals and “socialists” in the West pointed to Pridnestrovia as a shining beacon of equality compared to their own countries. Pridnestrovia was an egalitarian utopia… for the Slavs and the white minorities. Anyone else, like the Hatayese and the Afro-Pridnestrovians, were shit out of luck in the “socialist utopia” of the Democratic People’s Republic of the United Socialist States of Pridnestrovia.

Ravil could have always gone to another place and left behind the racism of Pridnestrovia. He could have gone to Kirungabi and tried to find his biological father. He could have gone to a place like Abanhfleft and lived a life in which the liberals catered to his every whim, no matter how silly or stupid, for fear of being labeled a racist by their peers. But the problem was that Ravil had known no culture other than the Pridnestrovian culture, and he had never felt comfortable anywhere else. It seemed paradoxical, but the inherent racism that Pridnestrovian society had shown Ravil and his fellow Afro-Prids was somehow more comforting to him than the acceptance of other nations. Many would have called him a self-hating black man for holding such opinions about a culture and society that clearly hated Ravil Yanenko for something that he could never change, and maybe they were right. But Ravil would rather have familiar hatred than strange and uncomfortable acceptance. At least he knew that a fellow Pridnestrovian would look down on him without another care in the world. A Western liberal might like Ravil, but it could only be because they wanted to pat themselves on the back for being such a good and benevolent ally to a poor and struggling minority. That, to Ravil, was worse than being racist straight to his face, as if the liberal was saying that they and only they could help someone like Ravil get on his feet.

The only way for Pridnestrovian society to acknowledge that Afro-Pridnestrovians like Ravil were equal was through the military, and Ravil would get the chance to show what he could really do, but not in the way that he expected. The Second Pridnestrovian-Ixanian War (also known in Pridnestrovia as the Second Great Patriotic War) had started with sneak attacks on major Pridnestrovian bases that crippled the Army and the Air Force and allowed Ixania to storm through the border and capture large amounts of territory. The Pridnestrovian government turned to mass conscription to rebuild the Army’s strength, and that was how Ravil Yanenko got into the Pridnestrovian Armed Forces. Ravil started off in the Army, but he would be one of only a handful of survivors in his unit following a failed assault during the Battle of Bender. It was during Ravil’s attempt to get back to friendly lines that he would come across a defiant officer from the Airborne Forces gathering stragglers to bolster his depleted unit in order to complete the final objective of his mission. That officer turned out to be the future commander of the VDV, Mikhail Yevgeniyevich Kutuzov, and it would be under Kutuzov that Ravil would finally get to show his true worth to the Pridnestrovian people.

Kutuzov was one of the few white Pridnestrovians whom Ravil had encountered that truly saw beyond things like skin color and judged his men based on their abilities. And under Kutuzov, Ravil showed that he was a great warfighter, someone ready and willing to do whatever it took to get the victory. Following the eventual costly Pridnestrovian victory in the Battle of Bender, Mikhail Kutuzov fought tooth and nail to get Ravil reassigned from the Army to the VDV. The Army fought back to keep their hands on Ravil, not because they wanted him as well but because he was technically still under their command despite his unit suffering such terrible losses in Bender that it might as well have been disbanded. Kutuzov would eventually win the bureaucratic fight for Ravil, and Kutuzov would put the young Afro-Pridnestrovian under his direct command for the rest of the war. Ravil served alongside Kutuzov during two key battles for the VDV during the Second Patriotic War, the Battle of Senichersk Pass and the Battle of Brekonav that followed immediately after. For his actions in both battles, Ravil Yanenko would be twice awarded the Order of Umayev, the second highest decoration in the Pridnestrovian military. And after the end of the war, Ravil opted to stay in the VDV as he felt like he had finally found a place in Pridnestrovia where he was appreciated for who he was, what he had done, and for what he was capable of doing.

That was how Ravil Yanenko ended up becoming part of Company Alfa. He was one of the six original members of Kutuzov’s brainchild and helped prove that it had a place among Pridnestrovia’s Spetsnaz units. And that was how Ravil Yanenko ended up in Recuecn playing all sorts of different parts. Ravil’s primary part in Recuecn was one of the six members of Company Alfa carrying out their strangest and perhaps most audacious mission in their history. The second part that he was playing was one of the cargo technicians for Gavanavia newly reassigned to Recuecn, which was a cover story for his and Company Alfa’s real roles in the country. And now here he was playing his third role of an innocent tourist strolling around Recuecn City’s old quarter so he could get a closer look at the other target of the coming heist, the Societe Credit Recuecienne. Ravil had come to the old quarter complete with the usual accoutrements of a tourist such as the phrasebook and a phone to take all the pictures that he could ever want. But Ravil himself wasn’t taking any pictures himself because his companion had all of that covered.

That companion of his was Arya Vladimirovna Nukova. Nukova looked like what the Westerners called “a ditzy blonde airhead,” and that had been true of her on many occasions. Arya was the only daughter of former governor of Frivolov Province and current Union Councilor Vladimir Nukov, and Arya certainly carried herself like someone who knew that her family could get her out of any sticky situation she could ever find herself in. But there was another side of Arya that only a few people knew about, and it was a side that even she didn’t know she had until the Second Great Patriotic War brought it out of her. For while Arya Nukova was the daughter of a prominent political family in Pridnestrovia, she was also one of the best soldiers that the Pridnestrovian Airborne Forces had ever produced. Arya was another one of Mikhail Kutuzov’s proteges, and one of the six original members of Company Alfa. But while Arya was a capable and ruthless fighter in her own right, she also had the ability to play any character asked of her, an indispensable ability for any unit operating in utmost secrecy.

Arya had already had to use her acting abilities on more than one occasion once Company Alfa had arrived in Recuecn. Her skills had made her the easy candidate to play the terminal manager for Gavanavia’s new cargo operations in Recuecn City, and Arya had already had to deal with a handful of locals since they first got here. But it was the latest meeting with the natives that had been the most difficult for her, not because her acting abilities had been put to the test but because it suggested that the local authorities might now be on Company Alfa’s trail. That had been a close shave, but a combination of an early warning and quick thinking had allowed the Pridnestrovians to shake the authorities off of their tail, for now. But now that the Gavanavia location was undoubtedly under suspicion, their window of opportunity had just gotten a lot smaller.

Company Alfa was undoubtedly taking a risk by getting close to the Societe Credit Recuecienne just days after the local authorities could have discovered them. But the Zimmer people who were camping out in a different part of the city wanted to take another look at the SCR building and its security arrangements, but since anyone from that group would undoubtedly look like a crew casing the place for a potential heist, someone else had to do it. Arya Nukova had volunteered, reasoning that she could use her acting skills to charm her way in and around the SCR and get the required intel without arousing too much suspicion. But with the stakes being as high as they were, neither Kumilyova nor Klimov were willing to risk Arya going out there alone, so Ravil was told that he had to go with Arya for this final intelligence gathering operation before the main mission. Arya had been adamant with going as a ditzy tourist, and after some disagreements, Ravil had finally agreed to be Arya’s character’s hapless husband (or fiance; that was something they still hadn’t hashed out yet).

“Hey babe, come over here!” Arya called out. “I wanna get you in my pictures!” She spoke in perfect and unaccented English, a far cry from the heavy Pridnestrovian accent that she had used while speaking with the Recuecian douanier just a few days ago. She spun around as she walked, taking pictures of the old quarter with her smartphone and the occasional selfie; typical ditzy tourist behavior. Ravil and Arya’s target, the Societe Credit Recuecienne, was up ahead. It was an old and squat building that blended in with its brick and mortar surroundings, which was probably why Ravil had almost missed it had it not been for the small number of uniformed guards standing around the place. Well, that and the fact that his nose was buried deep in his phrasebook practicing the words that he was supposed to say once Company Alfa carried out its mission. Thankfully he had Arya for company, as while she looked like she was turning around taking in as much of the old quarter of Recuecn City, she was actually walking a path straight for the SCR. Arya was always such a damned good actor, Ravil thought. Had the Ixanians not tried to invade Pridnestrovia again, there was a high probability that one Arya Nukova would have become a famous movie star instead of someone working in the shadows of the great geopolitical game.

“Come on, Ray! It’s almost like you don’t want anyone to know that you’re actually in Recuecn with me!” Arya called out again, referring to Ravil by his code name for this operation. While Pridnestrovia could still be implicated in this operation courtesy of the use of Gavanavia to transfer personnel and supplies to Recuecn, everyone had agreed to use English code names in order to muddy the waters further. Ravil himself thought that the English code names were stupid; if they were caught, everything already pointed to Pridnestrovia sanctioning this operation. English names wouldn’t mean a damn thing. Pridnestrovians had always loved adding needless complications to even the most straightforward of things, and not even Ravil’s comrades at Company Alfa had been immune to this particular quirk.

“All right, babe, I’m coming,” Ravil responded, and he put down the phrasebook and walked right up to Arya’s side while she took the picture. The Societe Credit Recuecienne building was in the background, as were the two entrances and the four guards standing next to these entrances. Arya had practically turned gathering intel via pictures into something of an art form with how much information she could squeeze into only a handful of pictures even if she was usually in the foreground of them all.

Arya started scrolling through the photos, and Ravil leaned in closer to take a look for himself. That was the opportunity they needed to finally talk properly about the events of the last few days. “I really think that we’re cutting it too close now,” Arya whispered to Ravil in Pridnestrovian. “That visit last Sunday has me concerned. These douaniers might be on to us.”

“And I already told you that you shouldn’t be concerned,” Ravil replied. “Not yet anyway. The douaniers are after Vincent Von Visp, not us. They’re only going after Gavanavia because of the links between them, Von Visp, and UrGa.”

“And did Nikolayevich really have to drop that crate full of our tools?” Nukova asked. “I know that we were operating on very short notice, but did he really have to drop it while the douanier was still there?”

“Come on now,” Yanenko muttered. “Nikolayevich is a klutz. Asking him not to drop anything is like asking a bird not to fly, or a fish not to swim. He just can’t do it.”

“I’m serious about the window though,” Arya added. “We really should make a move sooner rather than later. I hope Rina and Slava are aware of the risks we’re all taking right now.”

“Trust me, Arya, they’re both aware,” Ravil said. “Speaking of which, we’re on for this weekend. We just got the go signal before you and I left. We should start moving the tools to the tower tomorrow or tonight.”

“Finally,” Nukova sighed. “About damn time. What about the Zimmer boys then? What are we still doing out here if we’ve got the go signal?”

“Just humor them, Arya,” Yanenko shrugged. “We have our job and they have theirs.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Nukova saw an armored car approaching the SCR, specifically the side entrance that appeared to have been carved into the building itself. Nukova pointed at the armored car, and just like that, the two Pridnestrovian Spetsnaz operators were back in their roles of a tourist couple. Nukova handed her phone to Yanenko and said, “Make sure you get the guards, the armored car, and the gate in the shots,” and then she walked over to the SCR building and repeated what she had said in English, minus the parts about getting specific objects in the shot. Ravil took the pictures as he was told even as Arya posed in front of the Societe Credit Recuecienne. Or at least that was what they were doing until one of the guards approached the two of them and said something in French. The guard seemed angry and was pointing at Ravil. “What did he say?” Yanenko asked in English.

“He says no pictures allowed,” Arya translated with a shrug. “We can’t take pictures of the building for security reasons.”

“Tell him we’re just tourists,” Yanenko. “We’re not doing anything bad.”

Nukova translated what Yanenko had just said, but now it appeared that the guard was focused on him personally. The guard now looked like he was saying something to Yanenko personally, and the other man didn’t know how to respond. “What did he say?” he asked Arya.

Nukova raised her eyebrows. “He’s asking if you are Abdoulaye Goita,” she told him.

“Who the fuck is that? I don’t know who that is,” Ravil replied with an emphatic shake of his head. Arya translated his words back to the guard, who looked equal parts disappointed and still suspicious. Nukova said a few more words in French before nodding her head and walking away from the bank and towards Yanenko. “What else did you say to him?” he asked her.

“He told me to get rid of the pictures,” Nukova said. “Or at least I shouldn’t post any of them.”

“But you’re not going to post these pictures, right?” Ravil said, though he phrased it more like a question.

“Of course not,” Arya shook her head. “But he doesn’t need to know that.”

“I think we should go now,” Yanenko said. “We’ve had more than enough fun.”

“Agreed,” Nukova nodded. “We’ll need to get our tools onsite tonight or tomorrow if we’re on for the weekend appointment.”

[Turori]

WGPC 21 Statistics & Data Zone

Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph, Circuit d'Arès, Île Saint-Joseph :: It is often easy to look at a set of data, statistics or standings and come to the simplest possible conclusion based on them, but often there is more context required to take such data for anything other than exactly what it says. Consider the Supplier Performance Standings. Season after season, the standings are often dominated by two names: Tropicorp Racing Supply and Phoenician-In Motion. Other suppliers may come and go but since being introduced in WGPC Season 17, none have managed to penetrate the barrier put up by the biggest suppliers in the World Grand Prix Championship.

It would seem pretty cut and dry. Because Tropicorp Racing Supply and Phoenician/In-Motion are the top performing suppliers each season, the equivalency suggests that Tropicorp Racing Supply and Phoenician/In-Motion have the best Tyres. In the end, that may simply be true - but could there be more to consider?

Joining the WGPC Supplier fold this season is Solymok. An experienced name in the Tyre business having some moderate success in the NSSCRA and whom previous competed in the World Grand Prix Championship during Seasons 17 and 18. After a surge heading into the mid-season break had the brand knocking on the door of 3rd in the standings, Solymok struggled in Aji No Moto and quickly lost touch. For context, however, each of the four drivers Solymok is supporting on the grid this season is competing in their first ever World Grand Prix Championship season. With a pair of rookies drafted into Urotovsky-Gatutin and two more at KISMO, the entire Solymok lineup consists of rookie drivers with no prior WGPC experience. So it may also be possible that Solymok's occasional struggles may not be due to the quality of the tyre product they are offering on a weekly basis, but may also be heavily influenced by the inexperience of their current driver cadre - as emphasized when UrGa pay driver Vincent Von Visp, second overall in the Rookie of the Season standings, failed to qualify for the Aji No Moto feature less than twenty-four hours after taking victory in the sprint.

In contrast, Supplier giants Tropicorp Racing Supply and Phoenician-In Motion have a combined two rookie drivers between them - one each and thats it. The two biggest suppliers on the grid have, combined, half the number of rookie drivers in the field than Solymok does on their own. The fact that Solymok rookies have combined for a total of 79 points so far this season is fairly impressive considering Rookie Drivers for Brimstone, the supplier that is currently leading the World Grand Prix Drivers Standings, have not scored a single point since the season opening Abovian Grand Prix.

At the Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph it was perhaps no surprise that the list of ranked rookies did not change - 10 came in with points and 10 would leave with points. There was just one rookie who made real moves on the day and that was Nini Johnsilvaturr. The former video-game trained driver who failed to score any points in the first half of the season is slowly beginning to mount their charge. After breaking into the points for the first time in Aji No Moto, Johnsilvaturr now has points in back to back weekends. As the only Rookie driver using Tropicorp Racing Supply Tyres, Johnsilvaturr has the pressure of living up to the #1 in Tyres motto but has now scaled up from 8th to 5th in the rookie standings and is currently the only Rookie Driver with any momentum heading down the stretch, with some of the drivers ahead of them having failed to score points since the Aji No Moto Sprint.

Pos # ▍DRV Name                                          Team [Engine]                          Pts

 1 12 ▍SOM Ron Sommer                                    Viska [Viska RG Motors]                  39
 2 66 ▍VVV Vincent Von Visp                              Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]       26
 3 63 ▍KIN Nepö Kinder                                   Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]       25 (+2 pts)
 4 55 ▍LNG Gil Langdon                                   KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]         24
 5 22 ▍JOH Nini Johnsilvaturr                            Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]   11 (+8 pts)
 6 95 ▍BZW Hanna Berezowska                              HiTEN.gpt [Franklin WGP-X2]              8
 7 58 ▍KAM Shuhei Kamado                                 KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]         4
 - 30 ▍MAR Otto Markul                                   WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]        4
 9 91 ▍KAL Naveen Kalkar                                 WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]        2
10 21 ▍HAZ Nik Hazrin Lutfi                              Piers Ivchenko [UrGa Zh-S-1000]          1

-- 13 ▍Pierre-Louis Archer   
-- 16 ▍Azalia Kawakai                        
-- 18 ▍Giancarlo Rahel
-- 10 ▍Ankei Souzare

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:: Through the first Seven Rounds of the 21st season of the World Grand Prix Championship, Six different drivers have qualified on pole position for a Grand Prix Feature. 2 Additional Drivers, iBen Toralmintii and Vincent von Visp, have started on pole position but did so by virtue of assignment based upon their position in the standings and not by turning the fastest lap in an officially recognized qualifying session, and don't thus get regarded as having won pole position for the basis of this metric.

WGPC Season 21 - Pole Positions:

 1 -     Janne Laukkanen     2
 2 -     Laura Haukanna      1
   -     Dario Nülkeschläger 1
   - (R) Gil Langdon         1
   -     Skiia Vialiv        1
   -     Ted Pressley        1

Of the six different drivers to earn a pole position so far this season only one, Laura Haukanna of Viska Racing, has ever previously won a WGPC Pole Position having done so back at the Nimban Grand Prix back in WGPC Season 19. Each of the other five unique Pole Winners from this season have had the additional distinction of having claimed the pole position for the very first time in their career. This feat is made all the more impressive in the fact that just one of the Six different pole winning drivers is actually a rookie while the rest have just had to show patience and composure to break through for their first career Grand Prix Pole. Nexus Racing's Abovian driver Janne Laukkanen - who was the only driver to win multiple races during WGPC Season 20, currently sits as the only driver to have earned multiple pole positions during WGPC Season 21.

Laukkanen was the only driver to take advantage of home advantage this season, taking their first career WGPC Pole Position at the Season opening Abovian Grand Prix. Laukkanen's second pole position also came with a flavor of home cooking as they piloted the #17 Chase Cutter for Nexus Racing to the pole position in the Nimban Grand Prix but couldn't back it up with a race victory there. Along with Laukkanen, there have been three further instances of a driver winning a Grand Prix from Pole Position so far in WGPC Season 21. Dario Nülkeschläger accomplished the feat at the Grand Prix of Turori, much to the disappointment of long time iBen Toralmintii fans hoping to see the Turorian driver finally claim victory at their home track. Vincent von Visp, though not earning Pole Position on speed for the Ajian Grand Prix Sprint Race, still won from Pole Position in Aji No Moto. Most recently, Ted Pressley of Ælund Grand Prix picked up their first career Pole Position at the Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph and would keep the field at bay on the notoriously hard to overtake Circuit d'Arès claiming their second Grand Prix victory of the season. With four Grand Prix or Sprint winners coming from Pole Position across 9 points races so far this season, a Modern-era World Grand Prix Championship record has been matched. Durign a 14 Race WGPC Season 16, there were also 4 Winners from Pole Position. Over a three race stretch, Sigur Bjarnason, Terho Talvela and Jessica Franssen all won from Pole Position with Jang Xiaopeng collecting the fourth instance later in the season. It was not the first occurrence of three-consecutive victories from Pole Position, the Dynamic Trio of Terho Talvela, Igne Spupuo and iBen Toralmintii also accomplished it over a three race stretch during the historic World Grand Prix Championship Season 14 - though those were the only instances of victory from Pole Position that season.

With no drivers winning from Pole Position during WGPC Season 20, the most recent instance of winners from pole position came during World Grand Prix Championship Season 19 where William Archer won the Pole and the Race for the last two events of thee season in dominating fashion while Kinu Luminna did the same earlier in the season at the Aurun Grand Prix for a total of 3 winners from Pole Position. WIth just 3 race weekends left in World Grand Prix Championship Season 21, only one Active Driver is still within striking distance of catching Terho Talvela for the Modern Era record of 9 career Pole Positions: R.L. Cruisin. the current WGPC Drivers Championship Points Leader has 7 career Pole Positions and while they don't have any yet this season, two in the last three races would be enough to equal Tavela's all-time count. iBen Toralmintii, Ryker Lane and William Archer each have 4 and could, with a stroke of luck and marked increase in performance, catch Cruisin on 7 Poles to have joint-most pole positions among Active Drivers.

WGPC Modern Era - Career Pole Positions (Active Drivers):

 1 - Terho Talvela          9
 2 - Matthew Portland       8
 3 - R.L. Crusin            7
 4 - Jessica Franssen       6
 5 - Alexander Lund         5
   - Bruno Borghi           5
   - Jean Mercer-Daly       5
   - Dom Falepeau           5
 9 - André Luís Caconde     4
   - iBen Toralmintii       4
   - Jai Kardaeri           4
   - Joe Allon              4
   - Sara Luna              4
   - Ryker Lane             4
   - William Archer         4
16 - Adam Richardson        3
   - Alex Dimitrianov       3
   - Mick Schramm           3
   - Moisés Delgado         3
   - Ryan Lilley            3
   - Stang Crax             3
22 - Igne Spupuo            2
   - Brendan Faloe          2
   - Laura Haukanna         2
   - Janne Laukkanen        2
   - 12 Inactive Drivers    2

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Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph, Circuit d'Arès, Île Saint-Joseph :: Just one week after seeing the most unpredictable Grand Prix of the season in Aji No Moto, where two drivers alone improved a total of 40 positions over grid between them and on average the field saw a 10 place movement from their starting position, the most of any grand Prix so far this season, the World Grand Prix Championship descended on the notoriously hard to pass Circuit d'Arès and were ultimately treated to exactly what was advertised as the Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Joseph had the second lowest amount of total movement from Grid Position this season, behind only the Doubeian Grand Prix on the tight corners of the Queensland Street Circuit. That race was notable as not a single driver would see a double-digit change in their finishing position when compared with their starting position. Things in Île Saint-Joseph weren't quite that tight although there was just one driver, Janne Laukannen, who managed to advance their position by 10 places while two drivers, Dario Nülkeschlager and outside-pole sitter Skiia Vialiv would fall 10 or more places from their position in the starting grid.

Perhaps the most notable development with regards to Position over Grid from the Circuit d'Arès was that while they only dropped a single position from their starting spot, it would mark the first time all season long that Ron Sommer would finish a Grand Prix in a lower position than they had started it. As a result, there are now no drivers left who have improved their position in every race this season - either amongst those that have competed in every race so far or even those drivers that have DNQ's on their record, or joined in the middle of the season. Sommer still has the most impressive numbers on the grid at +6.6 Positions Over Grid on average over 9 race events though Indussean newcomer Naveen Kalkar temporarily sits atop the standings due to having just two races to average out their miraculous World Grand Prix Championship debut Grand Prix performance in Aji No Moto.

There is, however, still one driver who has failed to improve their position over grid in any race this season - and that is Adonis Fitzpatrick. The HMG Grand Prix driver had flown steadily under the radar in the first half of the season as the singular most consistent driver on the grid. In 4 race appearances during the first half of the season, 'Donny' finished the race either exactly in the position they started, or, within a single spot of their starting position.

With Fitzpatrick having completely grenaded their title as the most consistent driver on the circuit in the second half, lets take a look at the contenders to take over that title at this point in the season. Altogether there remain 6 drivers who could potentially argue their consistency is worth a mention in this category. On paper one of those might seem to be Pryfos Bilar's Sam Blaatschapen. With a total of -2 Positions over Grid on the season, it would seem a mark of consistency. However in their 6 races so far this season, the Diarcesian has improved as many as 6 positions over grid and lost as many as 7 with very little consistency in between. Likewise, Piers Ivchenko rookie driver Nik Hazrin Lutfi is the only active driver with an exactly neutral 0.0 Positions over Grid average on the season. However, Lutfi has only finished in the same position as they started once and has otherwise related on giant swings of compensation to get them back level at this point in the campaign, having a 23 position difference between their most positions gained in a race and their most lost in a race this season.

So which drivers have the tightest gap in that metric? Even Adonis Fitzpatrick is still competitive, with their best performance on the season having been finishing in the exact spot they started (+0) and the worst being a loss of 12 spots in Aji No Moto for a maximum difference of 12 positions. Good enough for 5th overall in the metric where the minimum difference between the Best and Worst POG score is considered.

Three drivers are tied with a maximum PoG differential of 11 positions. Hanna Berezowska could possibly argue to be one of the most consistent drivers of the season if not for their audacious +7 Positions Over Grid performance in Patriotlandia. If not for that result, Berezowska would have a Maximum PoG differential of just 6. Tied with Berezowska with a PoG Differential of 11 are Gil Langdon - who has competed in every race so far this season, and Giancarlo Rahel who has competed in just five events thus far.

But no driver still competing in World Grand Prix Championship Season 21 currently has a more narrow PoG differential then one of the most experienced drivers in the field, iBen Toralmintii. The Turorian has been the model of consistency throughout the season, their lone blip on the season came in the season opening Abovian Grand Prix where they lost 6 positions from their place on the starting grid. Even with that blip, Toralmintii still bests all drivers with a PoG differential of 10. In six events so far this season, iBen Toralmintii has finished within two positions of their starting position, a mark matched only by Hanna Berezowska. Unlike Berezowska, however, Toralmintii has also twice finished in exactly the position they started the race in.

Of course, with this expected to be Toralmintii's last season in World Grand Prix Championship competition, the Turorian driver was likely hoping to win more than just the honor of having the Maximum PoG Differential in their farewell campaign. As the winningest driver in the modern World Grand Prix era, Toralmintii has another unique distinction that is already assured to continue regardless of what happens over the final three races. Throughout all of iBen Toralmintii's 11 Grand Prix victories, every single one of them have come at different circuit, in a different nation. With WGPC Season 21 having three races remaining in Hapilopper, Esmerel and Liventia, three countries and circuits that iBen Toralmintii has never previously won at, that streak is all but certain to be one that Toralmintii takes with them into Retirement.

Movin' on Up! 1 :: KAL +8.5 2 :: SOM +6.6 3 :: LAU +4.1 4 :: VVV +3.1 5 :: JOH +3.0 6 :: LAN +2.8 7 :: LMN +2.7 8 :: KAM +2.0 9 :: NÜL +1.9 10 :: RAH +1.6 11 :: FAE +0.3 12 :: TII +0.2 13 :: HAU +0.1 14 :: HAZ 0.0 15 :: BZW -0.1

It's a Long, Way, Down! 16 :: BLA -0.3 17 :: CRU -0.4 18 :: GTA -0.6 19 :: LNG -0.7 20 :: C23 -1.3 21 :: KIN -1.3 22 :: AKS -2.0 23 :: MAR -2.0 24 :: TUV -2.0 25 :: STO -2.0 26 :: ARC -2.3 27 :: PRE -3.3 28 :: PLA -3.8 29 :: VIA -4.1 30 :: FTZ -4.3 31 :: DEV -4.3 32 :: ANG -4.6

PaKaMo Sports ✓

@PaKaMoSports

With Adonis Fitzpatrick having bungled the title of most consistent driver in the WGPC, we've taken our Positions Over Grid data and extracted a new metric: The PoG Differential! The Lower the number the more consistent a driver has been even on the best - or worst of days. Lets just focus in here on the Top 5 in this metric to see how their performance has evolved over the course of the season:



#WGPC :: #PaKaMo :: #PoGDiff

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twii.tur Support Series ✓

@OGP

The twii.tur Support Series @OGP Motorworks team sponsored by Toys '4' All has an open seat available for the upcoming event at the Hapilopper City Grand Prix Course. Interested drivers should submit their CV soonest to the @OGP and @Toys4All team.

#WGPC21 :: #SupportSeries :: #FreeRide

[Abanhfleft]

OOC: Permission was obtained from Hapilopper via Discord for the events about to be depicted in this RP.

Additional context can be found here, here, here, and here.

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The man drove through the streets, occasionally looking down at his phone to make sure that he was headed in the right direction, and to make sure that he was going to get there on time. Time wasn’t necessarily of the essence, but he had been told in no uncertain terms that he had to be at his destination right on the dot. The man himself had no problems getting to where he needed to be; it was the car he was driving that he was worried about.

His directions had been very specific: he was to acquire a Preston Electrochief, by any means necessary, and then after it had been modified for the coming mission, he was to drive it to the residence of one Warren Jones and “deliver the message.” The driver of the Electrochief didn’t know a lot about what had been going on in Hapilopper to warrant something like this, but he did know that whatever it was, it had pissed off powerful people in Pridnestrovia to the point that they were willing to authorize such a dangerous mission. But the man wasn’t stupid; he did his own digging into Warren Jones to make sure that what the Zimmer Private Military Company had in store for him was well deserved.

From what the man had seen of Warren Jones, the man was just a regular politician. The biggest thing that Jones had done in his political career, as far as the man was concerned, was to take the stage in Hapilopper’s parliament and embark on a marathon speech (what they called a filibuster in these parts) and spoke for more than 24 hours. Thanks to Jones’s filibuster, the Hapiloppian parliament had been unable to do the business that it wanted, and apparently the most important item on their agenda had been to override the veto that President Brett Booth had used to stop a bill banning electric vehicles in Hapilopper. The people of Hapilopper really didn’t like electric vehicles, or at least that was what people had been saying on social media. The man knew better to believe what people said on social media as it might not be an actual person making the post. In any case, Warren Jones’s filibuster ran on beyond Parliament’s working hours, and the deadline to override the presidential veto on electric vehicles went by without anyone being able to do a damn thing about it.

Upon learning of this, the man finally understood why Warren Jones had been specifically targeted, but he still thought that the message he was supposed to deliver to Jones was just a bit too much. But Jones’s filibuster meant that electric vehicles wouldn’t be banned, and now the car companies that had said that they would pull out of the Hapiloppian market were going to stay. Pridnestrovian car companies had been poised to take advantage of this new market opportunity, but Brett Booth and Warren Jones’s actions had resulted in the market opportunity not materializing in the first place. And the man knew that Pridnestrovian oligarchs did not appreciate anyone cutting into their bottom line. Still, blowing up a car right in front of a sitting congressman’s house sounded extreme for the man, but it also sounded exactly like something an offended oligarch would do, or more accurately something an oligarch would order to be done.

The choice of a Preston Electrochief as the car bomb to send a direct and unambiguous message to Warren Jones now made sense to the man. Not only was it an electric vehicle that was prone to high-profile failure, but Preston Autos had also testified in front of Hapilopper’s parliament about how an electric vehicle ban in Hapilopper made no sense. Zimmer PMC and their oligarch buddies looked to kill two or even three birds with one stone: scare Jones and Booth into rethinking their stance on electric vehicles, prove that the Hapiloppian people were right in wanting these cars off of their streets, and make fools of Preston Autos for claiming that electric vehicles, specifically theirs, were safe when they were clearly not. Pridnestrovian oligarchs really did not like it when someone, anyone, did anything that would affect their bottom line.

The man finally arrived at the address listed as the residence of Warren Jones. If it wasn’t for the number of guards roving the property though then the man might have actually missed it because it looked just like all of the other mansions on the street. The man passed by the Jones residence before looping back and finding a parking spot some distance away from the property, far enough away that the coming explosion would do nothing but shatter windows and put fear in people’s hearts. The point of the coming attack was to scare, not kill. The oligarchs themselves had no compunctions when it came to getting rid of those who stood in their way, but today apparently was not going to be one of those days.

The man applied the parking brake on his rental Electrochief and took a deep breath. There were still so many ways that this could go wrong. The mechanic in the garage in which the Electrochief had been “modified” for this particular mission had assured the driver that there was no chance of a premature detonation, at least not before the activation sequence had been put in. The mechanic had replaced one of the batteries in the car with one in which an undisclosed amount of explosives had been added. Apparently, this was a technique adapted from when Ha’Yarok, in cooperation with the Sultanate of Oontaz, had smuggled booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies to the Army of Islamic Salvation and, before the terrorist organization could carry out an attack, blew up said pagers and walkie-talkies, resulting in dozens of casualties for the AIS. The driver had been assured that nothing was going to happen until he activated the timing mechanism, but the driver would be lying if he said that he didn’t have doubts in the back of his head about the safety of the whole operation.

The driver took another deep breath and let it out slowly before he eventually turned on the radio on the car. He then set all of the knobs on the car all the way to the right before turning the radio to a frequency that was not used by any radio station in Hapilopper. The bomb hidden inside the car’s batteries was now active, and the driver now had sixty seconds to get out and leave, or at least that was how much time the driver was told that he had to evacuate before he became part of the explosion. That wasn’t part of the plan, so the driver quickly got out of the Electrochief and walked away from the scene. He looked around to make sure that no one was going to walk past the now-active car bomb in keeping with the other directive that no one should be killed (despite a car bombing usually being committed to cause maximum casualties), and once he was sure that the coast was clear, he began mentally counting down from thirty to zero.

---

Over in Hapilopper City, there was another man with a similar mission to the one that had just dropped off a car bomb near Warren Jones’s house. This man’s mission had some differences; his target was the residence of the president of Hapilopper, Brett Booth, and the car that he was supposed to use to scare the president into finally banning electric vehicles was the problematic Major E-celsior, an electric vehicle with multiple catastrophic failures that had been the catalyst for the EV ban that Booth ended up vetoing in the first place. Booth clearly did not believe that the problems of the E-celsior were bad enough to warrant the complete ban of any electric vehicles on the streets of Hapilopper. The people of Hapilopper wanted the ban to pass, and in vetoing the bill it appeared that Booth had not listened to the will of his people. And by vetoing the EV ban bill, Brett Booth had prevented Pridnestrovian carmakers from taking advantage of what should have been a massive gap in the market left behind by both Chadwick and Ddraig, who had threatened to leave Hapilopper if the EV ban passed. The oligarchs who had put so much money into forcing their way into Hapilopper’s automobile market had been blue-balled by Booth’s veto, and now they wanted to send a message to the man that they would not be frozen out of a source of income that they had been eyeing for a long time.

The directive for as little actual casualties as possible still remained for the car bomb destined for Booth’s residence, but given the nature of the target that would be a much harder task to accomplish than blowing up a car near Warren Jones’s house. For one, Booth had much heavier security around him given that he was president of Hapilopper. Another potential obstacle was the fact that Hapilopper City had a lot more people in it than where Jones was living, so the potential for casualties was much higher than in the other operation. But the operation had a contingency planned for this, and thankfully the E-celsior had the reputation that could make the contingency work.

The second bomber found a place to park that was as far away from people as he could see, but it was also still within viewing distance of the house of the Hapiloppian president. He applied the brake, and then he turned on the radio and turned the dials all the way to the right and then tuned the radio to an unused frequency to activate the bomb hidden in the car’s battery cells. As soon as he was done activating the bomb, the second bomber bolted out of the E-celsior and began screaming at the top of his lungs. “Everyone get out of here!” he shouted. “Go away! Stay away! I think my car’s about to blow! Get out of here!”

At first, everyone else looked at him like he was crazy, and from a certain point of view, he was. Who would actually try to conduct a bombing campaign against Hapilopper for vetoing a ban on electric vehicles? Apparently, there were oligarchs in Pridnestrovia with connections to their government who had missed out on potentially hundreds of millions of dollars because EVs weren’t banned, and they were crazy enough to let the politicians responsible know about their displeasure, even if the oligarchs themselves would never claim responsibility. In any case, the people ignored the second bomber at first, but then smoke began pouring out of the E-celsior, and now the people began taking his warnings more seriously. The area immediately surrounding the smoking E-celsior had been cleared of people within seconds, and when the car blew, the most damage appeared to shattered windows in some nearby buildings. At almost the same time that the E-celsior blew up near the presidential residence, the car designated to scare off Warren Jones also exploded, putting his security detail on the highest alert possible almost as soon as the dust had settled.

Within seconds of the two cars blowing up, both Brett Booth and Warren Jones’ inboxes were flooded with messages blaming their actions in preventing the passing of the EV ban bill for what had just happened. Some of these messages were legitimate and from actual Hapiloppians, but most were the product of the same botfarms that had been sowing dissent and discord in both Hapilopper and TJUN-ia over the EV ban issue over the last few months. And from the comfort of his second-level suite above the Urotovsky-Gatutin pit garage, Yakov Leonidovich Yurievsky observed the bombings that he had ordered and hoped that this time around, Brett Booth and Warren Jones would understand the lesson that he was trying to teach them. If they didn’t then the next time Yakov made his displeasure known courtesy of his friend Ivan Radchenko and Zimmer PMC, neither Booth nor Jones might be lucky to get away unscathed.

---

OPEN SOURCE NEWS NETWORK

@OSINTNews

BREAKING: There has been an explosion near the presidential residence in Hapilopper City. Preliminary reports indicate an electric vehicle catching fire and then blowing up. Currently no reports of deaths or injuries.


#Breaking : #News : #OSINT : #Hapilopper

OPEN SOURCE NEWS NETWORK

@OSINTNews

UPDATE: Another explosion next to residence of Congressman Warren Jones. Still no reports of casualties but growing belief in Hapilopper that explosions may be linked to one another.


#Breaking : #News : #OSINT : #Hapilopper : #Explosion

OPEN SOURCE NEWS NETWORK

@OSINTNews

Similar scenes of electric vehicles suffering catastrophic failures had led to attempts to ban EVs in Hapilopper earlier this year. President Brett Booth vetoed bill & Warren Jones’ marathon filibuster prevented Parliament from voting on issue.


#Breaking : #News : #OSINT : #Hapilopper : #Explosion : #EVBan

[Aboveland]

Janne whistles through the sides of his front teeth, which absently bite his lower lip. He's putting all his weight on one leg, his opposite hand loosely holding a hand towel around his waist, his other arm dangling pointlessly to his side. His gaze is lost on the shiny locker room floor; the sound of the rattling extractor from the adjacent room and the buzz of the electric resistance of the sauna marinate with his state of... nothing.

Blissful nothing, for the first time in a while.

When the control screen beeps, he reaches out and lets himself in the sauna. The oppressive dry air instantly washes over him, the faint hairs on his chest prickling at the sudden change in temperature as he submerges himself into the darkness, only sliced by the faint, artificial glow of the furnace. He yawns, and feels the searing heat seep into the crinkles that form at the edges of his bloodshot eyes. It's already unreasonably late, and he's only worse off for having forgone his cushy hotel bed in favor of a recovery sauna after such a grueling grand prix. Even his g-suit and all the Imagination in the world couldn't save his shoulders from bruising, his ass from cramping, and his feet from throbbing even hours after the ordeal.

He sighs heavily and shifts on the bench, repurposing his towel as a cusion spreading himself across the wooden planks and bringing his hands behind his head as he closes his eyes and smacks his lips. The heat caresses his jaw as he cocks his head up, and he arches his back slightly to unstick his slick skin from the probable pine wood surface and let the burn pierce along his spine. He's not a huge fan of dry saunas — he'd rather get steamed than broiled — but in Île Saint-Joseph, of all places, he'll have to make do. It's a miracle the hotel had a sauna at all.

His eyelids flutter as the furnace cycles back on and another wave of heat washes over his body; the dim accent lighting flows across the perspiration that pools on his sternum, near his navel, around his clavicle. As he breathes, the sweat trembles and flows across his ribs and pelvis. The ebb and flow of the lather feels almost like a much-needed cleanse; he doesn't bring the thought to a forefront, but he lets the events of the Sunday decant in his head. It no longer mattered where his title bid had all but evaporated, whether it had been on Saturday or at the Widow's Peak in Aji no Moto — he'd somehow mustered up enough soul to put on the second most impressive of his recovery drives of the year — again in the rain, surrounded by the jagged, weathered brick walls and dinkily plastered hosues of the peculiar little peninsula. Ten places up on a track where it shouldn't have been possible to make up even three — and yet, empty handed he went, while his rivals soared into the blinding highs of the now so distant title fight. He's no stranger to disappointment, and the opportunity arises to open the blow-off valve and go like a man possessed with nothing to lose, but it stings like a knife through his spleen.

And Ted — what a man. His heart skips a beat as the fleeting image of the tufty haired Tumbran skitters through his mind: his beaming, timid smile glistening in the shimmer of the podium lights, framed in champagne spray and misty, wispy rain, the multicolored contingent below him chanting his and his teammate's name as if it were their first ever victory. Janne's entranced, reminiscing about the events of just a few hours ago, but his lips curl into a wry smile as they fight a quiver. How he could have been so stupid in Aji no Moto, he still couldn't believe — but by an act of divine mercy the Tumbran had received his God-given bounceback. His job would no doubt be more difficult now, but quite literally, he could not have had a better weekend to stay afloat. Perhaps for once in the history of the world, there had been justice for those who deserved it.

"Oh."

Janne frowns. If he's hearing shit, it must mean he's been turned into crispy Abovian twink jerky by a McPahan vintage sauna furnace.

"Hi."

He frowns harder; the sweat that has collected on his forehead dislodges and flows dangerously near his nostrils and back into his eyes, which sting as it seeps through his eyelids. He's definitely still alive, and his breath hitches as he opens his eyes and looks up diffusely through the film of sweat that stretches across his eyelids.

"Oh." Janne speaks then gulps hard, which the voice takes as an acknowledgement.

"What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here." Janne asks without actually leading on; his free hands twiddle with the towel under the dimples of his back, but it's too short to loop back around to his front for modesty's sake — like it was very necessary anyway.

Ted chuckles and slaps his hands against his thighs. He shifts on the bench and sighs, and a hint of the bitter, pungent taste of alcohol swarms the air. "Well someone installed a sauna at my house," he teases. "Good race today, huh?"

"Mhm," mutters Janne. Ted is sat at his feet, but he hasn't risen to look at him yet, though with the way he's giggling and palming at his ankles, it feels as if that's what he's looking for.

"Sorry for yours," he remarks, though his face flips between self-amusement and self-consciousness. Maybe Janne should apologize for last weekend; or extend his congratulations for today; or maybe reintroduce himself, with how his heart is jumping in his chest as if he were in the presence of a stranger.

"You were amazing today," Janne replies, then continues after an awkward pause as he gathers courage. "And sorry for last weekend. I was so stupid." The electric buzz of the sauna heater fills the silence.

Suddenly, he feels the pliant touch of Ted's hand grasping his ankle, and the brush of his thumb across the faint curls around it. He almost recoils with the touch. "It's all good, baby."

Janne frowns. Pet names? Since when?

"All good," Ted continues drowsily, chuckling and sighing in between. "I only — I — missed you. A little. You've been... Sooooo quiet..."

He falls towards Janne's legs, bringing his other hand to caress his calves, but Janne recoils at the touch. The pool of sweat in his clavicle trembles and flows as he sits up quickly and brings his feet back towards him, reaching for the towel slung beside him. Ted grunts as he shifts back into his place, his hands resting beside him on the bench.

As he scrambles to pull his legs together, Janne croaks dryly. "I have to go," He can't hear if Ted replies, because the drum of his pulse starts to grow in his ears again. "Been here too long." He slings his towel tightly around his waist and lingers before pushing the door open. "See you next week."

The sauna door puffs open, as the swirl of the faintly prosecco-scented sweat steam obscures him from view from the inside. A chill raptures through his body as his bare feet land on the cold bathroom tile.

[Nico Hulkenberg]

Nepö

Practice and qualifying seemed to suggest that, once again, she lacked pace compared to her teammate. Despite qualifying a brilliant seventh in Aji No Moto (a race where Vincent failed to qualify, which brought her great joy), she had tumbled down into 23rd by the end, two laps down. Thus, when she ended the first practice session in 18th with Vincent in the top ten and then went on to qualify 17th, she had already mentally sacrificed the weekend, merely trying to keep herself out of the tabloids again. She seemed to be doing pretty good at this, keeping interactions with the Reçueçian to a minimum, still giggling to herself about Bitegate. When race day came, she continued to keep a low profile, discussing strategy with her engineer and hopping into the car when it was time to go. As the formation lap started, she noticed something pink on the back of Vincent’s car, but with Sommer inbetween it was hard to make out what was written. Pulling into her grid slot, she just so happened to be directly behind her teammate, which allowed her to get a good look at his rear. No, not like that. Her eyes glanced over at the hastily-applied decal on the car’s drag reduction flap. She knew that some teams liked to throw off cars behind with distracting messages such as Preston’s ‘Get Good!’, but she hadn’t quite expected her teammate to do something similar, despite his relative odiousness.

”Oh, come on! Is that WGPO-compliant?” she pondered, before deciding against snitching on him for such a minor issue.

The lights went out, and despite being somewhat distracted by the bright pink sticker with love hearts, she seemed to get a better start than Von Visp and drew alongside with Sommer in the run-up to turn 1. Sensing an opportunity, Nepö sent it round the outside of Vincent, and found herself having already gained multiple positions by the next corner. Unlike Patriotlandia, both cars actually managed to hit their braking point without issue. Shocker. As her teammate remained embattled with the Viska behind, she just couldn’t help herself and decided to speak on the radio.

”See ya later.”

From then onwards, very little happened, only leapfrogging Cocoabo #23 during the pit cycle, passing the ailing HMGs, and gaining another position when the Pressley of Dario Nülkeschläger’s gearbox seized up and forced him to retire in the pitlane. This meant that she finished in ninth - her first points finish in a non-sprint race since her podium finish in Round 3. Thus, there could be no accusations of sabotage, at least not from her side from the garage.

”Well done Nepö, that’s P9. Solid drive. Solid weekend.”

“Yeah… not quite where I know we can be but nice to be back up here.”

“Still more points on the board, puts us a little further ahead of Viska.”

“And me?”

“One point behind Vincent, joint-tenth.”

“Game on, then.”

Once back in the UrGa motorhome for the debrief, she exchanged a cursory glance with her teammate, who didn’t seem too pleased with his own race. Smirking, she looked up once more and posed a question.

”How’s the hand?”

HMG

Scenes of jubilation from qualifying had once more turned to scenes of desolation, as the HMGs plummeted down from their top positions into the lower end of the top 20. In the garage, heads were down, shoulders were slumped, and the entire team dynamic was a mess. Something had to change. Over on the pit wall, Team Principal Jöhan Turbringer and Head of Driver Development Adrian Kinder sat on their stools, heads in hands, as the team’s race engineers reassured their drivers. Once they had packed up for the weekend, the team’s personnel, drivers and all, flew back to the HMG Entwicklungszentrum for yet another crisis meeting.

Boardroom 3
HMG Entwicklungszentrum

Boardroom 3 had very quickly become the ‘Room of Bad News’ over the course of HMG’s debut WGPC season, with it being booked out every time something went wrong - which, naturally, happened often. Refreshments and name placards were laid out on the table for those who could attend, with the TV on the wall ready to allow those who couldn’t to follow on and add their thoughts through Fyööm, Hülkenberg’s very own business video-calling service. The two most senior men in the team were the first to arrive, pouring themselves a coffee (black, of course) and grabbing a Tunnock’s Teacake (those exist in the multiverse, deal with it) each, before sitting down in their comfy spinny chairs.

“You know, Jöhan, we have so many of these crisis meetings that it would be nice to have a normal meeting for once. I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to go into one of these without being ready to rattle off problems like lottery numbers.”

“Maybe one day, Adrian. For now, we need to discuss the problem, and what we’re going to do about it.”

“Hah! You say it as if the chucklefucks in engineering will have any idea what to do.”

“Considering we hired a lot of names from defunct projects like McPahan, I’d hope so.”

“Maybe your conclusion from this meeting should be to hire more names from teams lost to time. Perhaps Eminent? Oh wait, no you fucking wouldn’t.”

“Well…”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“With the team at rock bottom, we ought to consider all options.”

“Jöhan, we are beyond rock bottom. In fact, we are fucking subterranean. We’re ninth in the standings, probably stumbling down into tenth at this rate, and we cannot get a fucking tune out of this car over a race distance. It’s getting more and more likely that neither driver will stick around with us at this rate, and we’ll be left scrambling around in the proverbial bargain bin for two idiots to trundle around in our stupendously slow shitbox. Do you honestly think hiring more idiots would magically do the trick?”[/i]

Some more employees had began filtering into the room midway through Adrian’s rant, somewhat setting the tone for the meeting. Once everyone had sat down or joined digitally, Jöhan began to speak.

”Ladies and gents, I think we all know why we’re here. Our car isn’t working, our results remain poor, and it’s pretty evident to me that nobody is happy. We’ve tried multiple times across the season to change the direction of development, only to find that it just keeps going downhill. Now, I’ve heard in my ear from our wonderful technical director that we should focus more on next season’s car rather than trying to make this… ahem, I’ll put it in his words… ‘heap of shite’ work. From what I gather, this feeling is pretty strong amongst you all?”

Heads across the room nodded, with the exception of Skiia Vialiv.

”Do you feel differently, Skiia?”

“I personally think the direction of development has somewhat suited me, to be honest. Two consecutive front rows aren’t a fluke, but unfortunately neither are two collapses from said front rows. Certainly there are issues with the tyre wear, but on one-lap pace the car is solid. I mean, look at Donny, he got fastest lap!”

“We have certainly noticed that, yes, thank you Skiia. In fact, it was our last meeting that sparked that, after you had went so long without a point. As a team we didn’t feel it was fair for only one of our drivers to be scoring regularly in the car - if it scored at all - so some tweaks were made in your direction. I feel that this has worked to the benefit of both you and Adonis, and it stands us in good stead for next season. The problem is that fundamentally the H01.1 has been horrible over a race distance, can’t keep the Tropicorps fresh despite your best efforts, and thus becomes pitifully slow at points. In fact, we’re rather fortunate they changed the qualifying rules with Eminent’s exit, so now we’re half as likely to have one of you not making it to the grand prix.”

Adrian interjected.

”Four DNQs as a team is embarrassing. We’re the only team to have had this many outwith Motorworks, HiTEN, and Eminent, but all of those teams have rather valid excuses - one’s giving chances to inexperienced talent, one employs a blithering idiot, and one calamitously folded midway through the year. As a team of our calibre, we should be expecting better, but better is not coming. We’re fortunate to have scored points in most races, but too often something goes to shit and we’re left to pick up the pieces. We all want to see the car up there, perhaps none moreso than the drivers themselves, but we have to face the facts. As a team, we were very fortunate to have the lineup we do. Skiia and Adonis are two of the most talented drivers on the grid, frankly two drivers I personally deemed out of our league. The fact we were able to get them into our cars shows the attractiveness of our outfit, our facilities, and our potential. But by not delivering on any of this, it would not surprise me if Tweedledum and Tweedledee over here are already considering offers from other teams for next season. No hard feelings, just facts. So, if we’re going to refocus development, without the assurance of our lineup remaining as is, we ought to pivot to making a smoother, more drivable car than one designed to be hassled round a racetrack.”

Heads nodded once more. Jöhan flipped through the pages of his notebook before landing on the agenda for next race.

”Now, we’re coming up to Hapilopper for the next grand prix, which just so happens to be the home race for our engine manu-“

Adrian interjected again.

”Another point, if I may. We know that Preston don’t plan to continue engine development for next season, so if we’re going to make a choice on the powertrain department, we have to make it now. We have a perfectly good powertrain in our grand touring cars, which I think could be refitted for the HMG H01.2. Of course, this would be a big step for the team, becoming a works outfit, but I think it would be most profitable to start an experimental engine program now, rather than later.”

”We will touch on that later.” said Jöhan through gritted teeth. ”Hapilopper. Strategy.”

“Jöhan, we cannot dilly-dally on this. This isn’t something you ‘touch on later’, this is something you sort out NOW before we’re forcing these two to trundle round in a fucking wheelbarrow.”

Adrian stood from his chair, slamming his hands on the table.

“I am the team principal, I make the decisions round here, I am the one speaking!”

“Oh yes, all those good decisions which sees us at the top of the standings. Oh wait, we’re NINTH!”

“And it would be so much worse if I had kept letting you fuck around like you wanted to, eh?”

“How much worse can you get than where we are? Preston will probably be ahead soon, boosted by being at home, at a circuit they know well. Maybe KISMO nip by too, I don’t know. The big decisions have to come now, and if you’re not up to it, maybe someone else will be.”

Jöhan glared at Adrian, his face growing ever-redder. He grabbed his coffee and flung it against the white wall, creating an avante-garde art piece on the once-plain surface.

“This meeting is suspended.”

Jöhan stormed out of Boardroom 3, hastily followed by Adrian. The head strategist ran over to the door and peered out of it, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

”Oh, this is gonna be good.”

[Doubeia]

Sharktail DMed me saying that he isn't able to RP for the rest of the season, and that he was okay with swapping Lutfi out for the remaining races. We're still discussing a possible IC way to explain the driver swap. I've contacted Liv and Ban prior to this RP.

Everything felt so different ever since that dinner with Oliveira.

Kokomiya didn't think that her rejection would be a problem. Even if it didn't lead to something disastrous, the absence of Oliveira from her life thence was gaping. There were no more Secret Santas at her office door, and there were no more tea sessions with him. Her office felt slightly lonelier without Oliveira coming to check in on her once in a while.

Well, she could always get used to that.

Kokomiya couldn't look at Oliveira the same way again, nor could she treat him like she did before. She was still perfectly capable of communicating with him professionally and normally, but gone were the times where she was touchier with him. She was so close with him because she felt close and comfortable with him, but she just couldn't continue doing that to him knowing he reciprocated far stronger feelings. She didn't want to fuel his emotions further.

The few moments they would walk past each other in the corridor, they both would avoid each other's eye contact. It felt so childish and petty. It was as if they were exes that had broken up... but that wasn't far from reality, wasn't it? When Oliveira confessed, their relationship had made an irreversible turn, and their once close friendship had become distant.

It was most unfortunate, wasn't it? Kokomiya sometimes wished that he hadn't confessed to her then. She enjoyed their dynamic, she really did, but there was no way they could go back to how they were. Still, if he hadn't confessed to her at that moment, who's to say he wouldn't do so later? It was just delaying the inevitable, and who knows how much stronger his pent-up feelings for her would become?

In any case, Kokomiya had already started to move on from the crumbling friendship, but the every once-in-a-while that she would think of him, she couldn't help but feel a tinge of wistfulness stab her heart. She had other friends, yes, but Oliveira was one of her closer friends. The ray of sunshine was one of the only people who could melt her cold exterior, but now that his sunshine was hidden behind the clouds of rejection, she felt that bit of warmth escaping her body.

Kokomiya didn't want to dwell on Oliveira too much, but she couldn't stop thinking about him. It was as if she wanted him, and that was the last thing she wanted.

---

"Well, this is concerning," Kokomiya mused to herself.

When Piers Ivchenko got a last-minute berth in the WGPC, making sure that her drivers could make it to the end of the season was not on Kokomiya's mind, but only a few days before the Hapilopper race, a spanner had hit the works. Kokomiya was "filing some paperwork" when she received an unexpected piece of news.

Lutfi wouldn't be able to finish the rest of the season. Kokomiya hadn't received the news from Lutfi himself; it had come from one of his confidantes. She didn't know the exact reason why he was out, but the messenger of the news was trustworthy enough for her to take their word for it. As concerning as it was to have a driver drop out completely out of the blue, Kokomiya and Piers Ivchenko had an even more pressing issue: who would replace him? The Hapilopper race was just around the corner, and the free agent market was pretty scarce. Most drivers who didn't secure the seat had either found opportunities elsewhere or pretty much disappear off the grid. Then, there were the Eminent drivers who became seatless after their team was unceremoniously dropped for the season, but Kokomiya didn't know if they had any intentions of completing the season. Piers Ivchenko was essentially running against time and scarcity. It was a double whammy.

However, Kokomiya did know one driver who was indeed looking for a seat then: the Banijan Jjuko Okafor. She hadn't received wind of him — or Banija for that matter — at all until quite recently, but the little information she had of him was interesting: he showed pace and promise in the Banijan racing scene, his father was a famous footballer, and he seemed to have the money to fund a WGPC seat. Well, Kokomiya would be surprised if the son of a famous athlete didn't in fact have a significant financial backing. She had only heard of him because someone had told her that he attended a private test for one of the WGPC teams. That he seemed promising enough to be awarded with a private test caught the attention of Kokomiya a little, but she didn't think about him much until, well, just now.

It was easy for Kokomiya to look up more information on Okafor, perhaps because his father was well-known multiversally. Looking through his past was interesting, to say the least. He had a great relationship with his father, and his venture into motorsports was quite recent: he started around a year back. Before that, though, he seemed to have had a rocky and criminal past. That Okafor even had a criminal past turned Kokomiya slightly off of him, but she was willing to look past his offences if it meant she could enter Hapilopper with two drivers instead of one.

Kokomiya kept scrolling and searching. Okafor's racing records were frankly impressive, and he seemed like he was passionate and ready to take on the WGPC. At first, Kokomiya was hesitant on considering him. All he had was some city-level credentials, and his experience was lacking compared to other potential choices. However, from the few videos she watched of his racing, his racecraft was surprisingly clean and smooth for someone who started racing a year ago. Also, he was the son of a famous footballer. Surely that by itself should attract quite a few sponsors, shouldn't it? Kokomiya was starting to salivate at the thought of even more money...

The decision all boiled down to Kokomiya, sitting at her office table. Usually, she would have called for a board meeting specifically for this, but she was running out of time. Facilitating a driver change so close to a race wouldn't be a quick process. Well, if any questions were asked, she'd just answer them after the race. "Why so sudden?" Well, it wasn't her fault she only knew about Lutfi's situation so late. "Why him and not someone more experienced?" She could just argue that Piers Ivchenko did the same for Lutfi, and he turned out to be decent.

After scouring the internet a while, she managed to get the contact details of Okafor's agent, and she quickly copy-pasted an email to him before she sped off for the airport.

To: Umar Adewale, Jjuko Okafor's Agent
From: naganomiya.kokomiya@doubmail.com <Team Principal, Piers Ivchenko>
Subj: Seat offer for Okafor

Dear Mr Adewale

I am Naganomiya Kokomiya, the team principal of the Piers Ivchenko team in the WGPC. On behalf of Piers Ivchenko, we would like to offer Jjuko Okafor the second driver seat for the remainder of the season in lieu of internal circumstances. His contract will last from the Hapiloppian Grand Prix to the end of the season. I have been impressed with the talent he has shown in Aissa, and I would like to extend this opportunity to him so that he can gain monumental experience driving in the WGPC. I recognise that the Hapiloppian Grand Prix is just around the corner, and I understand if Okafor may not make it in time for the weekend.

Should Okafor accept the offer, I would like to meet him in person at Hapilopper City to sign a formal contract and to discuss contract terms.

We hope to hear a response from you soon.

Signed,
Naganomiya Kokomiya
Piers Ivchenko Team Principal