World Grand Prix Championship 21 [RP/results]

by **Liventia** » Fri May 02, 2025 3:34 pm

Week 15: Practice

Conditions:      	Dry
Lap Record:      	00:01:37.968
Session Length:		75 minutes
Nation:         	LEN
Circuit:        	Talbott Autodrome

Drivers have 75 minutes to complete as many laps of the track as they like

POS # ▍DRIVER                                               	FASTEST LAP	GAP TO LEADER
 1 88 ▍Ted Pressley                                         	00:01:45.961	00:00:00.000
 2 85 ▍Olivia Stone                                         	00:01:45.992	00:00:00.032
 3 77 ▍iBen Toralmintii                                     	00:01:46.077	00:00:00.117
 4 89 ▍Abdoulaye Goita                                      	00:01:46.088	00:00:00.127
 5 82 ▍Kinu Luminna                                         	00:01:46.190	00:00:00.229
 6 12 ▍Ron Sommer                                           	00:01:46.227	00:00:00.267
 7 17 ▍Janne Laukkanen                                      	00:01:46.254	00:00:00.294
 8 55 ▍Gil Langdon                                          	00:01:46.289	00:00:00.328
 9  3 ▍Sakiteno Kuyara                                      	00:01:46.360	00:00:00.399
10 95 ▍Hanna Berezowska                                     	00:01:46.360	00:00:00.399
11 27 ▍Dario Nülkeschlager                                  	00:01:46.400	00:00:00.439
12 23 ▍Cocoabo #23                                          	00:01:46.419	00:00:00.458
13 51 ▍R.L. Cruisin                                         	00:01:46.504	00:00:00.543
14  1 ▍Brendan Faloe                                        	00:01:46.546	00:00:00.585
15 63 ▍Nepö Kinder                                          	00:01:46.553	00:00:00.592
16 66 ▍Vincent Von Visp                                     	00:01:46.560	00:00:00.600
17 22 ▍Nini Johnsilvaturr                                   	00:01:46.574	00:00:00.613
18 96 ▍William Archer                                       	00:01:46.576	00:00:00.616
19 33 ▍Sam Blaatschapen                                     	00:01:46.702	00:00:00.742
20 14 ▍Skiia Vialiv                                         	00:01:46.718	00:00:00.758
21 37 ▍Laura Haukanna                                       	00:01:46.754	00:00:00.793
22 13 ▍Pierre-Louis Archer                                  	00:01:46.889	00:00:00.928
23 94 ▍Ryker Lane                                           	00:01:47.033	00:00:01.072
24  9 ▍Batu Tüvshinbayar                                    	00:01:47.289	00:00:01.328
25 18 ▍Giancarlo Rahel                                      	00:01:47.635	00:00:01.674
26 11 ▍Jjuko Okafor                                         	00:01:48.304	00:00:02.344
27 84 ▍Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling                          	00:01:48.371	00:00:02.410
28 74 ▍Adonis Fitzpatrick                                   	00:01:48.626	00:00:02.666
29 91 ▍Naveen Kalkar                                        	00:01:49.231	00:00:03.270

Week 15: Qualifying

Conditions:      	Dry
Lap Record:      	00:01:37.968
Qualifying Type:	Two-Tier
Nation:         	LEN
Circuit:        	Talbott Autodrome

POS # ▍DRIVER                                               	FASTEST LAP	GAP TO LEADER	FASTEST LAP	GAP TO LEADER
 1 12 ▍Ron Sommer                                           	00:01:41.383	00:00:00.004	00:01:38.722	00:00:00.000
 2 66 ▍Vincent Von Visp                                     	00:01:41.379	00:00:00.000	00:01:38.731	00:00:00.009
 3 77 ▍iBen Toralmintii                                     	00:01:41.406	00:00:00.027	00:01:38.734	00:00:00.013
 4 55 ▍Gil Langdon                                          	00:01:41.398	00:00:00.019	00:01:38.735	00:00:00.013
 5 17 ▍Janne Laukkanen                                      	00:01:41.421	00:00:00.042	00:01:38.749	00:00:00.027
 6 23 ▍Cocoabo #23                                          	00:01:41.390	00:00:00.010	00:01:38.756	00:00:00.035
 7 51 ▍R.L. Cruisin                                         	00:01:41.392	00:00:00.013	00:01:38.773	00:00:00.051
 8 88 ▍Ted Pressley                                         	00:01:41.438	00:00:00.059	00:01:38.773	00:00:00.051
 9  3 ▍Sakiteno Kuyara                                      	00:01:41.440	00:00:00.061	00:01:39.563	00:00:00.841
10  9 ▍Batu Tüvshinbayar                                    	00:01:41.438	00:00:00.059	00:01:40.482	00:00:01.761
11 14 ▍Skiia Vialiv                                         	00:01:41.451	00:00:00.072		
12  1 ▍Brendan Faloe                                        	00:01:41.453	00:00:00.074		
13 84 ▍Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling                          	00:01:41.457	00:00:00.078		
14 13 ▍Pierre-Louis Archer                                  	00:01:41.460	00:00:00.081		
15 89 ▍Abdoulaye Goita                                      	00:01:41.462	00:00:00.082		
16 94 ▍Ryker Lane                                           	00:01:41.485	00:00:00.106		
17 37 ▍Laura Haukanna                                       	00:01:41.491	00:00:00.112		
18 33 ▍Sam Blaatschapen                                     	00:01:41.524	00:00:00.145		
19 18 ▍Giancarlo Rahel                                      	00:01:41.527	00:00:00.148		
20 96 ▍William Archer                                       	00:01:41.538	00:00:00.159		
21 22 ▍Nini Johnsilvaturr                                   	00:01:41.592	00:00:00.213		
22 63 ▍Nepö Kinder                                          	00:01:41.704	00:00:00.325		
23 27 ▍Dario Nülkeschlager                                  	00:01:41.746	00:00:00.367		
24 85 ▍Olivia Stone                                         	00:01:41.767	00:00:00.387		
25 82 ▍Kinu Luminna                                         	00:01:41.790	00:00:00.411		
26 74 ▍Adonis Fitzpatrick                                   	00:01:41.809	00:00:00.430		
27 11 ▍Jjuko Okafor                                         	00:01:41.939	00:00:00.560		
28 95 ▍Hanna Berezowska                                     	00:01:42.095	00:00:00.715		
29 91 ▍Naveen Kalkar                                        	00:01:42.585	00:00:01.206		DNQ

by **Turori** » Sat May 03, 2025 10:24 pm

Cruisin, Toralmintii targeting new Career Milestones in Liventia

Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia, Talbott Autodrome, Talbott, Liventia :: For nearly 11 Consecutive Seasons of World Grand Prix Championship action, iBen Toralmintii and R.L. Cruisin have been competitors. Never teammates. Never truly rivals. Just competitors. Their paths have crossed and oh so nearly intersected upon Cruisin's brief return to Race Eelandii VTGP during World Grand Prix Championship Season 18, but ultimately on the surface their careers have been as separate as two drivers who made their debut in the very same race could be 10+ seasons down the road.

As Toralmintii and Cruisin chase different career milestones at the Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia, V&T Racer honors both drivers with a throwback banner to the very first seasons of the modern era where WGPC drivers were allowed to choose their own car numbers instead of being assigned based on the prior seasons standings, and the origins of Race Eelandii as a WGPC Motorworks team with Toralmintii behind the wheel. As the original driver for the famed Vilita and Turori Motorsports team, R.L. Cruisin was a hot prospect for the future of the WGPC when they made their debut in World Grand Prix Championship Season 11. The VTM team was especially strong but as the season went on the team favored fellow rookie driver Stang Crax who brought extra sponsorship to the team to ensure they had the best equipment available to them. Crax would secure the World Drivers Championship leaving Cruisin, with a lone victory on the season, to watch from the sidelines placing 4th in the overall standings.

That would be Cruisin's best standings finish to date, although the veteran is now assured at least a Top 3 finish in the standings this season to set a new career best performance. As for iBen Toralmintii, a second retirement from the World Grand Prix Championship looms. Of course, while Cruisin and Toralmintii's paths rarely crossed they certainly impacted each other. When Vilita and Turori Motorsports made the decision to rebuild after a struggle to maintain pace during WGPC Season 12 they moved down to the Super Formula Championships organized by Hodori Motorsports. Unwilling to leave the upper echelon of Open Wheel motorsports, Cruisin made the decision to leave VTM opening up the seat in the Super Formula Championship for iBen Toralmintii, who skipped WGPC Season 13 to focus on the Super Formula Series.

The gamble paid off for Toralmintii, the new face of VTM who would lead the team back to the World Grand Prix Championships for Season 14. Just as they had done in Super Formula, the team would show dominating pace. However, much like what happened to Cruisin just a few seasons prior, iBen Toralmintii missed out on the Drivers Championship - losing to their rookie teammate Terho Talvela. As Cruisin made a name for themselves by over-driving mid pack and one-shot wonder cars to unexpected victories, Toralmintii spent much of their career in the close Shadow of Talvela - though out performing their teammate in the Win Column, never besting them in the standings where it counted.

The similarities in the careers of Cruisin and Toralmintii are certainly there to make connections even if they rarely overlapped. There is, however, one career milestone that Cruisin and Toralmintii share jointly and it makes the Talbott Autodrome a fitting location for them to individually chase the next chapters of their Motorsports careers on Sunday. It was Round 2 of the 11th World Grand Prix Championship. At that time, just 8 drivers would score points in the race and both Cruisin and Toralmintii had missed out on the points in their debut event one week prior. At the Grand Prix of Liventia, however, both R.L. Cruisin and iBen Toralmintii finished in the Top 8, each earning their first ever points in the World Grand Prix Championship at the Talbott Autodrome during WGPC Season 11.

From there both Cruisin and Toralmintii have had different levels of success at the track which has been the primary home of the modern-era Grand Prix of Liventia with only a brief rotation of the event to Neverend. Sunday will be the fourth time in eight Grands Prix that iBen Toralmintii will start the Grand Prix of Liventia from the Top 3 positions but the Turorian has never won a race at the Talbott Autodrome. With every single one of Toralmintii's prior World Grand Prix Championship victories coming at different tracks, Toralmintii will have one final chance to add the Talbott Autodrome to that list.

For R.L. Cruisin the story is quite different. Cruisin's previous Grand Prix triumphs have come at a far more limited set of tracks - and one of those is the Talbott Autodrome where Cruisin has twice been victories, first in World Grand Prix Championship Season 14 then again during WGPC Season 19. At the start of WGPC Season 21, R.L. Cruisin had set a personal goal of winning either the Grand Prix of Turori presented by twii.tur or the Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia, targeting the unique achievement of having three career Grand Prix victories at a single track. Cruisin will have a chance to do so on Sunday and will like their odds starting from the lucky 7th position. The only previous time that Cruisin qualified 7th this season was at the Crossbay Circuit where the veteran put Piers Ivchenko atop the podium for the very first time.

Of course the situation has very much changed for Cruisin who, for the very first time in their career, enters the final race of the season as the Championship Leader and knowing that they could still secure the World Grand Prix Drivers Championship without needing to win the race itself. Cruisin will start the Grand Prix of Liventia one spot ahead of their primary championship rival, Ælund Grand Prix's Ted Pressley, and as long as Cruisin can keep the the #88 behind them on track it could be a historic day for the driver with the most career starts in the World Grand Prix Championship.

R.L Cruisin at the Talbott Autodrome:

WGPC11:  Qual:  8 || Race:  5 - First Points
WGPC12:  Qual:  9 || Race: DNF
WGPC14:  Qual:  5 || Race:  1
WGPC17:  Qual: 21 || Race: DNF
WGPC18:  Qual:  8 || Race: 12
WGPC19:  Qual:  2 || Race:  1
WGPC20:  Qual:  4 || Race:  4
WGPC21:  Qual:  7 || Race: ??

iBen Toralmintii at the Talbott Autodrome:

WGPC11:  Qual: 11 || Race:  8 - First Points
WGPC12:  Qual: 14 || Race: 18
WGPC14:  Qual:  1 || Race:  3
WGPC17:  Qual:  2 || Race: 11
WGPC18:  Qual:  2 || Race:  5
WGPC19:  Qual: 12 || Race: 13
WGPC20:  Qual: 26 || Race: 24
WGPC21:  Qual:  3 || Race: ??

R.L. Cruisin is one of three drivers who enter the Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia with a mathematical chance of being crowned World Drivers Championship but is the only one of the three that will be solely focused on their own points battle with Ted Pressley and Ryker Lane in the midst of a hotly contested battle for the Constructors title. Cruisin and Ted Pressley turned nearly identical lap times in the final round of qualifying with Cruisin given the slight edge by the timing system. Pressley's team Ælund Grand Prix may have a bigger picture in mind, looking to return to the top of the Constructors standings after a dismal showing as Tropicorp Colourworks during WGPC Season 20. The team will run a special livery for the Championship deciding race at the Talbott Autodrome including a collection of every color imaginable, perhaps an ominous connection to the teams Colourworks "legacy". It is rumored that the team will even place a message on the car for its livery designer requesting that they "be better' in the future. For inspiration it is possible for the Ælund Grand Prix designers to take a page from their own book the way that Race Eelandii will be doing, preparing iBen Toralmintii's #77 in a tribute livery throwing back to their time as part of the most successful driving partnership of all time at Tropicorp Racing Ælund.

With some of the most experienced names in the World Grand Prix fighting for championships on the final day and taking the series back from the Rookie Wave that dominated the standings one season ago, there will still be plenty to follow in a tight battle for the Toys '4' All Rookie of the Season. Viska Racing rookie Ron Sommer earned pole position and will look to get their second race win of the season and the Rookie of the Season honor that would go with it. With rookie drivers in three of the top 4 starting positions the Rookie battle could be decided on the podium and will likely come down to the two Katzeburgian drivers Sommer and Gil Langdon of KISMO Racing.

If a rookie should come away with the win at the Talbott Autodrome it would be the first for a Rookie Driver at the track since Abdoulaye Goita during World Grand Prix Championship Season 18. Other than R.L. Cruisin, Goita is the only previous Grand Prix of Liventia winner competing in WGPC Season 21 and Goita will be looking for a repeat performance to help secure the Constructors title for Ælund Grand Prix. While local legend Matthew Portland has the most career podium finishes with 3 and is the only driver with multiple pole positions earned at the track, there is perhaps no question that Cruisin has the most impressive modern era record at the Talbott Autodrome.

Excluding a difficult World Grand Prix Championship Season 17 campaign with a woefully under prepared Mirrors Grand Prix team, Cruisin's record at the Talbott Autodrome includes qualifying inside the Top 9 on seven different occasions with Four Top 5 finishes and, of course, the two Grand Prix victories to lead all drivers in the modern era in Talbott. Even after the layout changes at the track prior to WGPC Season 20, Cruisin picked up right where they had left off over-performing their car to a 4th place finish. After two consecutive seasons driving for the Liventia-based Carvenlo team, their second stint with the team, it may feel unnatural for Cruisin on Sunday to walk the Grid and not climb behind the wheel of a Carvenlo chassis. When it was announced at the end of WGPC Season 20 that the Carvenlo Motoring Group would be pulling out of the grid due to financial losses, it seemed as if Cruisin's unbroken Grand Prix starts record was in jeopardy - or worse, the veteran driver might be forced into an early retirement. Now Cruisin has found new life with Piers Ivchenko and will look to the comfort of the track that they have achieved their greatest success to produce one more top performance for the record books.

History: Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia @ Talbott Autdrome

WGPC 8: 1. Matthew Portland   (LIV) | 2. James Evans        | 3. Lee Rogers              || Pole: Matthew Portland

WGPC 9: 1. Sauli Nieminen     (SIB) | 2. Lee Rogers         | 3. André Luís Caconde      || Pole: Matthew Portland

WGPC10: 1. Joe Allon          (C&M) | 2. Arie de Winter     | 3. Matthew Portland        || Pole: Joe Allon

Modern Era:

WGPC11: 1. Jai Kardaeri       (STB) | 2. Marie Pitkanen     | 3. Matthew Portland        || Pole: Marie Pitkanen

WGPC12: 1. Roger Bunn         (AUD) | 2. Jai Kardaeri       | 3. Sotil Morua             || Pole: Jai Kardaeri

WGPC14: 1. R.L. Cruisin       (V&T) | 2. Oliver Bliss       | 3. iBen Toralmintii        || Pole: iBen Toralmintii

WGPC17: 1. Alex Dimitrianov   (MTJ) | 2. Ryan Harris-Jones  | 3. Carsten O'Rourke        || Pole: Alex Dimitrianov

WGPC18: 1. Abdoulaye Goita    (RCN) | 2. Niklas Schonbaum   | 3. Terho Talvela           || Pole: Niklas Schonbaum

WGPC19: 1. R.L. Cruisin       (V&T) | 2. William Archer     | 3. Kinu Luminaa            || Pole: William Archer

Current Track Layout:

WGPC20: 1. Anneliese Devereux (LIS) | 2. Adonis Fitzpatrick | 3. Adriana Kowalski Lilian || Pole: Darian Vilau

WGPC21: 1. ?                        | 2. ?                  | 3. ?                       || Pole: Ron Sommer

» HMG Grand Prix's Axel Mausefalle wins the @OGP at the Rocks, their first Support Series Victory

» Fhulghamous Peninsula driver Evangelos "Gelo" Kalyftakis claims @OGP Drivers Championship

» #19 Mokalrisa (TUR) and #42 Klossovsky (DOU) battle for WGPC consideration at Race Eelandii

@OGP at the Rocks, Vilaye Mountain Challenge Course, Rockii Coast :: Before the Paddock opened in Liventia there was another racing series concluding its season as the twii.tur Support Series wrapped up its 12 race campaign with a finale at the Vilaye Mountain Challenge Course. Like in the World Grand Prix Championship, there were three drivers who entered the final race with a chance to come away with the Drivers Championship. The high-banked high-speed Vilaye Mountain Challenge Course was very unlike the tracks that the twii.tur Support Series had visited throughout the season and it would result in a shake up of the leader board with some new names showing speed in practice including the Krazivaran drivers Lilo Adinora and Ajarai'i Okomo.

Within the Championship battle there was a subplot brewing within Race Eelandii as Triiki Mokalrisa and Winston Klossovsky battled to be the top performing Eelandii driver on the season. While all drivers are going to be competitive no matter what, there seemed the possibility that there could be a little extra reason to want to be the top performing Race Eelandii driver in the twii.tur Support Series - not just because the logo of the series sponsor adorned the side of the Race Eelandii chassis. With iBen Toralmintii expected to retire from the World Grand Prix Championship at the end of the season and the team having been unable to secure the signing of a new official Reserve Driver other than the veteran Team Principle Juracai Klianiota, there remained the distinct possibility that if Race Eelandii VTGP decided to stay in house to select their new driver for WGPC Season 22, they could look as far as the twii.tur Support Series - if not to determine directly who to slot into the #77 seat then at least to identify a driver to accelerate into the World Grand Prix 2 for further assessment before a final decision.

Of course, the possibilities weren't limited only to the two Race Eelandii @OGP drivers: Winston Klossovsky of Doubeia and Turorian Triiki Mokalrisa. There were also the Tropicorp affiliated drivers, Indori Volcanasaur and Igne Spupuo who through the Tropicorp Customer Relationship could be available, as well as deeper prospects from the Race Eelandii Driver Development program including K.D. Fintnhii who had made select appearances for one of the Motorworks teams throughout the Support Series Season.

With so much seemingly riding on their performances, Triiki Mokalrisa and Winston Klossovsky were very fast in Qualifying, with Mokalrisa taking pole position for the first time in their career, edging out teammate Klossovsky by 0.09 seconds as the Doubeian was looking for their third Pole Position of the season. Splitting the two Race Eelandii drivers on the grid would be HMG Grand Prix's Axel Mausefalle. When the lights went out and the race was on, the Race Eelandii drivers performed strongly until a lap 22 incident involving Tropicorp Orangeworks driver Indori Volcanasaur that brought out the Safety Car. Due to the high speeds it was hard for any car to pull too much of an advantage on the field but on the restart HMG's Axel Mausefalle managed to get a run to take the lead and pull a gap as the field jockeyed for position behind them. Mausefalle would go on to take the victory, the first of their @OGP Career while Two-Time Esportivan Karting Champion Evangelos Kalyftakis would do enough to claim the series title proving that the Oonaftco backed driver was talented enough to wheel the bigger cars as well and setting themselves on a track to be hot commodity when the World Grand Prix 2 signing season begins.

Among the Race Eelandii drivers, Winston Klossovsky would win the battle on track to finish in the runner-up position edging out Tomii'i Lopinka and Adriana Ela Kowalski Lillian. However, Turori's Triiki Mokalrisa would win the war, finishing in 6th position and accruing just enough points to stay ahead of Klossovsky in the standings. After 12 races of competition, Turori's Triiki Mokalrisa would finish 6th overall in the Drivers standings with 87 points while Doubeia's Winston Klossovsky would be just 3 points behind in 8th position on 84 points helping Race Eelandii to 4th place in the Constructors Standings - a successful season for the team but one that perhaps leaves some remaining questions as to whether Mokalrisa or Klossovsky would be ready to make the leap the next time a World Grand Prix Championship seat is available in Eelandii.

twii.tur Support Series ✓

@OGP
Thats all from the @Vilaye Mountain Challenge Course. Congrats to our newest Support Series Drivers Champion @Gelo_Kalyftakis72 and their Indusse based Fiarti Racing team taking the title despite missing the seasons first event. Will "Gelo" join the ranks of the last @OGP champion Nepö Kinder with a fast track to the WGPC or will it be back to Esportivan Karting dominance for Kalyftakis?

#WGPC21 :: #SupportSeries :: #Championship

R.L. Cruisin ✓

@Cruisin
The @PiersIvchenko team have done a full review of the issues we had in Esmerel and we should be good to go for the Finale! I can't think of a better place to be competing for my first World Drivers Championship than the Talbott Autodrome. Hopefully we can put on a great show Sunday. Should be exciting for the fans after Ted and I ran nearly identical qualifying laps. Hope we can keep that not yellow car behind us in the race!

#WGPC : #PiersIvchenko : #Liventia

V&T RACER Online ✓

@VTRacer
After the Veterans stole the show in Esmerel, its the rookies looking to take center stage in Liventia with Ron Sommer on Pole Position and two other rookies in the Top 4 spots. The veteran trying to spoil the party will be @iBen77 who is running a special livery for 'iBen's Final Ride'. Toralmintii will look to be the first driver to win a race from the 3rd starting position this season and break the curse of 3rd place starters this season that has claimed many drivers including R.L. Cruisin just last week.

#WGPC :: #TalbottAutodrome :: #Media

by **Trans-Dniesters** » Sun May 04, 2025 1:18 am

"Come on, you fucking bastard, why aren't you answering?" Yakov Leonidovich Yurievsky muttered to himself as the line kept ringing. Ever since Vasily Gatutin had interrupted Yurievsky's conversation with Ivan Radchenko, Yakov had been trying in vain to get back in touch with the secretive and reclusive owner and commander of the Zimmer Private Military Corporation. Radchenko was usually quick to answer Yurievsky's calls, but he had warned the older Pridnestrovian oligarch that he would be dropping off the grid on the weekend of the Liventian Grand Prix. Yurievsky had hoped to get some very important answers out of Radchenko following the news of the two heists in Recuecn City, mostly because things had happened there which could throw a spanner in the works regarding the relationship that he had been cultivating with one Vincent Von Visp. But thanks to Gatutin interrupting Yakov's call to Radchenko, specifically to tell him that none other than Vincent himself wanted to talk, Yakov Yurievsky didn't have the answers that he wanted to give to Vincent. And now Yakov was hoping that he could still somehow get those answers before Vincent found him, although if Ivan Radchenko had truly dropped off the grid, there was now simply no chance of Yakov getting the answers that he wanted.

As Yakov tried to call Ivan Radchenko again for what felt like the hundredth time, he suddenly felt that he wasn't alone in his office once again. This time though, he could sense that it wasn't Vasily Gatutin or Vincent Von Visp or any other UrGa crewmember. The hairs on the back of Yakov's neck stood up, and he put his phone in his left hand to allow his right hand to reach for the Makarov pistol tucked into the shoulder holster underneath his suit.

"If I really wanted to kill you, Yakov Leonidovich, then you would already be dead," a voice said from behind Yurievsky. The older man turned around and saw to his surprise and shock that the man who had spoken was Valentin Georgiyevich Mironchenko, Ivan Radchenko's deputy in Zimmer.

"What the hell are you doing here, Mironchenko?" Yakov asked angrily even as his hand let go of his pistol. He looked around to make sure that there was no one else in the vicinity and then he locked his office and lowered the blinds over the windows. "Shouldn't you be with your boss right now?"

"The composer realized that he wouldn't be able to communicate with you at this point so he sent me here to Liventia as an insurance policy," Mironchenko replied. He then reached into his coat, took out a small metallic device and pressed it. Though nothing seemed to change, any listening devices mounted inside Yurievsky's office, if they existed, would now be recording nothing but static. "Now that that's out of the way," Mironchenko continued, "I'm here to give you the answers you want. The boss man knew that you had some questions after what happened in Recuecn, so feel free to ask them now."

"Why in the world did the VDV take Vincent as a fucking hostage?" Yakov asked, going straight to the point. "In fact, that's actually two questions. First, what the fuck was Vincent doing at la Tour Visp in the first place? You told me that you had timed everything so that Vincent wouldn't be anywhere near there when both operations commenced!"

"I think you should actually ask that question to your Recuecian friend," Mironchenko shrugged. "Everything was going according to plan, both on our side and that of the VDV. It was your boy who decided to go back to his hometown to make sure everything went according to whatever plan you told him was going to happen."

"The plan was that the VDV and your boys would steal his money and his gold so that the customs agents in his country would finally get off his back!" Yakov shouted. "Vincent was not supposed to be there so his investigators wouldn't think that he arranged the whole damn thing! Now the bastard has so much heat on him, I can feel some of it on myself too. And Vincent probably also thinks that this was all a setup to frame him! I can't have him thinking that! I still need the bastard!"

"So far, everything looks like it's Vincent's fault," Mironchenko shrugged again, seemingly suggesting that it was not his problem. "Or maybe it's actually your fault, Yakov. You probably should have told him not to come to Recuecn City two Fridays ago."

"Who do you think I am, Vincent's father?" Yakov retorted. “I'm not going to tell him what he can and can't do! The man probably won't listen to me anyway. The relationship I'm trying to cultivate with him isn't supposed to work that way! Fine then!” Yakov said, throwing his hands up in frustration. “He can go wherever he wants whenever he wants. How the fuck did Vincent end up becoming a hostage of the VDV then? Why did they take him of all people?!”

"I think once again you're asking the right question to the wrong person," Mironchenko shrugged again. "You should really be asking the VDV that. Although I highly doubt that you have General Kutuzov's number in your contacts list. Or the number of Admiral Domovich's daughter, for that matter."

"Fine!" Yakov exclaimed again. "Forget about the VDV and why they took Vincent hostage! Where's the money?"

"The gold has been distributed to five different locations," Mironchenko replied. "Finance Minister Tokarev thanks you for your service. I also hear that President Fedorenko could finally give you the Order of Saint Bogdan First Class in recognition for your role in making sure that your precious bot farms will never run out of funding so you can continue your campaign to get electric vehicles banned in that Happy-hopper place or whatever it's actually called just so you can sell more of your own cars."

"I don't care about the gold! I'm not concerned about the gold!" Yurievsky insisted. "I want to know about the guilders, all 400 million of them. Where is it?"

Mironchenko seemed to hesitate before replying to Yurievsky's latest query. "If you really want to know where that money is, it's in an offshore account in Copper Cuprum," he finally said. "The name on the account is Espoir Neuf-investyr. Ivan Iosifovich thought that you would ask about the guilders so he gave me the details of the account should you want to use it for yourself or give it back to your Recuecian friend."

Yurievsky's head snapped back towards Mironchenko. "What did you say the name of this account was again?" he asked.

"Espoir Neuf-investyr," Mironchenko said slowly and deliberately. "Don't forget about the reason why the network has suddenly taken an interest in your new friend over the past year, Yakov," the mercenary reminded the oligarch.

Yurievsky shook his head. "You don't have to keep reminding me, Valentin. I remember all too well. Just give me the details. I'll do with it as I please."

"Your call," Mironchenko muttered. "Also, Ivan Iosifovich wanted me to show you this." Mironchenko took out his own phone and scrolled through the gallery until he found what he wanted to see, and then he showed the picture to Yurievsky. "What is this supposed to be?" Yakov asked.

"It's the man that your friend Vincent wanted us to take care of," Mironchenko explained. Yakov leaned closer to the phone and squinted his eyes, but despite that it was still difficult to make out any distinguishing features thanks to the black blindfold over the man's eyes and a copy of the Tiraspolskaya Pravda newspaper dated from two days ago under his chin.

"Is that Nicholas Courbet?" Yakov asked. "Why is he still alive? Is he still alive?"

"He was when I took this photo," Mironchenko nodded. "Battered and beaten, yes, but still alive."

"Didn't Vincent say that he wanted Courbet dead?"

"Zimmer isn't in the business of assassinations," Mironchenko replied. "That's something for the KGB or GRU Spetsnaz. Yes, we do kill people, but that’s on the battlefield more often than not. Targeted assassinations aren't our specialty. Besides, Mr. Courbet here could still end up dead if he should be unlucky. Well, more unlucky than he already is."

"Where the fuck is he then?"

"Somewhere where he cannot say anything that could land your Recuecian friend in hot water," Mironchenko said with a wink. "Although the information in Mr. Courbet's head is probably the least of Vincent Von Visp's concerns right now." Zimmer PMC's second in command then sent the photo of Nicholas Courbet in Zimmer custody to Yakov before deleting the evidence on his own phone. "Vincent might still want to know what happened to this poor fellow, so be sure to give him that if he asks," Mironchenko said.

For the first time in what had to be a long time, Yakov Yurievsky didn't look like he knew what he was going to do next. There were so many things for him to keep track of that he didn't know where to start. Because of that, he decided to go back to the thing that he had wanted to do before the sudden arrival of Valentin Mironchenko. "Where is your boss?" he asked Mironchenko. "Ivan Iosifovich, where is he?"

"He's taking care of business, business which requires the utmost concentration on his part," Mironchenko replied. "Ivan Iosifovich cannot afford any sort of distractions right now, so don't expect him to answer any of your calls anytime soon."

"Der'mo!" Yurievsky blurted out. "Is that all?"

"Unless you have anything more to ask of me that I can actually answer then that should be my job here in Liventia done," Mironchenko replied. He reached into his pocket once again and turned off the jamming device, and then he told Yurievsky, "The composer should be finished with his latest symphony within three days. If you wish to have another composition made, you won't be able to make the request until then." Mironchenko then left Yurievsky's office, and he went down to the first floor and called out to a man reading a magazine upside down while wearing sunglasses indoors. "Arkan, let's go," Mironchenko said, and Rakhmatullo Nurmagomedov threw the magazine back onto the table and followed the Zimmer PMC second-in-command out of Urotovsky-Gatutin Motorsports' mobile headquarters in the Talbott Autodrome.

As Mironchenko and Arkan walked away from UrGa's mobile HQ, a crowd of men in suits were making their way towards it. One of the suited men bumped into Mironchenko, forcing the latter to react. "Watch where you're going!" Mironchenko said loudly, but either the man didn't hear him or chose to ignore him. "Svoloch," Valentin muttered, and then he and Arkan walked away, not knowing that they had just bumped into Benetto Conti and the task force of the Ministère des Douanes et Impôts who were in Liventia to arrest Vincent Von Visp. For their part, Benetto Conti and the douaniers were apparently unaware that they had just bumped into two of the men responsible for one of the deadliest bank robberies in Recuecian history.

by **Tumbra** » Sun May 04, 2025 2:48 am

Liventia

"Do you think the hotel staff know? Like..."

"Shut the fuck up and kiss me."

Ted complied, and did as Janne Laukkanen requested, keeping the Tumbran driver quiet momentarily. Ted knew that Janne had all the knowledge at his disposal at how to wrap the Tumbran around his little finger; and even though he knew, he still let himself get ensnared in the Abovian's boyish charms, get lost in his eyes, and so on. It was something he really just couldn't get enough of; and he was now fairly certain that at some point Janne had essentially confirmed for him what he'd suspected about himself for a long time, but had never been brave enough to discuss with himself.

Or maybe it was always on him for not being able to talk to women more.

Their lips parted, Janne looking back up at him; eyes looking at him. This was a look that Janne reserved for when the two of them were alone, in hotel rooms, or saunas, or what-not; Ted had long come to associate "the look" with their private sessions, and he reacted accordingly. Janne chuckled slightly as he felt it.

"How'd you want it?" he asked, Abovian accent still there, but seductive nonetheless.

Ted grunted his response, and Janne obliged; about twenty minutes later they lay in each other's arms again.

"Finally managed to shake that qualifying slump off, huh?" Ted broke the silence of the afterglow. Janne looked back up at him, somehow surprised that the first thing on Ted's mind post-coitus was somehow his job, and not the stunningly handsome Abovian man lying in his arms. But he replied anyway.

"Yeah. And you're right next to Cruisin. Shame you set the time about a minute after he did." The two sat there, somewhat awkwardly, Ted internally cursing himself for ruining the vibe. Janne looked at him, somewhat bemusedly. "If you get past him on the Sunday I'm not giving up my space for you, you know."

"I know," Ted shot back, laughing. "I got that in Aji no Moto. But as long as we don't come together —"

"— Like we just did?"

"Pfft. Then we'll be fine. I don't think I've got much of a chance, anyway," Ted said, yawning and stretching. "I need to outscore him by ten points, and that means I need to finish at least fourth and hope he doesn't score."

"You've done that before," Janne teased, running a finger down his chest.

"Yeah, and I was about to before I slapped the wall in Hapilopper. Or smashed into you in Aji no Moto. Or that goddamn gearbox gave up on me in Turori," Ted said, somewhat bitterly. "But I don't blame you, Janne," he was quick to add. "I'd rather have you."

"Careful what you wish for."

Ted sighed as he leaned his head back on the headboard. "I'll be happy enough with you. Losing Dad made me realise a few things, you know."

"How have you been coping with that, anyway?" Janne asked, perking up at Ted finally talking more about himself. It usually took a ton of needling for the usually emotionally-repressed Ted to unravel — Janne half figured it was because of that oh-so-common phenomenon known as parental trauma — and racing drivers, having usually been thrust into their careers when they were children, were bound to suffer from it in spades.

"Y'know. Therapy. And stuff. Talking to my mom more. She's doing well, coping well, seems almost happy that he's not suffering anymore."

"Uh huh. But that's your mom. Not you. I want to hear about how you're coping." Janne replied punchily, jabbing a pointed finger into his chest with every emphasis.

"Me? I don't know, Janne, that's...complicated. Therapy's been doing less about talking about my feelings and more about how to manage them in the first place," he said. "But the therapist has been nice."

"Nice," Janne repeated, letting the word roll off his tongue. "Nice. So that's how you describe your therapist. And how would you describe me?"

"Handsome. A lover. A rival."

"That's it?" He looked somewhat disappointed. "And here I thought your dad dying would've helped you come to terms with some of your priorities in life. What, am I not good enough for Mr. Team Owner?"

"You know I'd give you a seat if there was one open and you asked," Ted chuckled. "Anything to avoid actually driving for the team that I own."

"Not in that sense, dumbass, though I appreciate it. I'm talking about your new priorities. Like winning a world championship —"

"— About, like, a 20% chance it happens, realistically —"

"— or signing a new contract, which is really taking longer than it should — I would've locked you down after the win in France —"

"— They said they'll get to it when the time comes —"

"— or telling your boyfriend what you think about him." Janne pouted as he finished verbally sparring with Ted. "Sometimes it feels like I'm the least important thing in your life."

"That's nonsense, and you know it, Janne. I care, of course I do. You know it, and I do —"

"And I'd appreciate if you told me that more often, you know. When we argued back at your place, I hoped you'd finally get it, you know? That you'd realise what I want, and what you want, even if you won't say it —"

"I love you, Janne Laukkanen," Ted said, exhaling and ignoring all the other thoughts in his brain at that moment. "And not because you want me to say it. I was going to get to it, after Dad died, but then everything — you know. The title fight, the bomb scare in Hapilopper —"

"What, like a checklist?" Janne grinned, pleased at finally hearing the words. "Say it again, but like you actually mean it this time. Go on. It can't be that hard if that's actually what you feel."

Ted exhaled and closed his eyes again. Why was it so hard? But after thinking about it — for way too long, he realised — he opened his eyes, and was at peace with it. There was no fear of rejection; nothing of the sort. All he had to do was say those five words. And out of his mouth they tumbled, if clumsily; but genuinely, this time.

"Janne Laukkanen, I love you."

by **Recuecn** » Sun May 04, 2025 5:12 am

By the time Abdoulaye’s head hit the wall (of “Oh Crap There’s A Wall” fame), his car had mostly screeched to a stop, scattering sparks as it slid across the pavement on its side. The front wing and tire had hit the barrier, flipping the car so it scraped along the wall like a grater, immediately tearing away the roll hoop and most of the nose. As the car shredded, Abdoulaye’s head was left unprotected, although by that point the car’s momentum had been mostly dispersed into the pieces of flying debris.

It was still the worst concussion he’d had since he started racing. He didn’t know at the time, but it would be the worst accident of his career.

As always, in the wake of the crash, there was a huge outpouring of support. His father and brother both flew to the hospital in Hapilopper City to be with him. Ælund, as always, had his back. Ted (of Tednne fame) had amassed quite the following of fans, and many of them made thoughtful posts on social media wishing their star’s poor teammate well.

And as always, the part that meant the most to Abdoulaye was his family’s presence. “Let me buy you both tickets to Esmerel,” he told Moussa and Malick. “Stay with me another week.”

It was hard to say no. Even if the circumstances around the impromptu family reunion were unpleasant, taking a week off to follow the World Grand Prix Championship around sounded fun. Abdoulaye got two special guest passes and Agreka kindly showed Moussa and Malick around the Ælund paddock at Forest Cross. She gave them a tour and the inside scoop, while Abdoulaye focused on resting and recovery. He was still having headaches and occasional dizziness. With Edvin, Terho, and the team doctor, Abdoulaye was honest about his symptoms, but in front of his dad and brother, he put up a brave face.

Miraculously, he was ready to drive again the next Friday for qualifying in Esmerel. Even more miraculously, he put up a decent qualifying time, and did even better in practice. But on Sunday, his performance was clearly not what it had been before the injury; he dropped four places and finished, frustratingly, just outside the points.

“So how are you feeling now?” Moussa asked Abdoulaye. It was late Sunday evening. Malick had gone to bed early, and Moussa and Abdoulaye knew they ought to do the same—all three of them were to fly out early the next morning, Malick and Moussa back to Reçueçn, and Abdoulaye to Lintulahti to prepare for the season finale. But life in the WGPC meant it was so rare for the father and son to spend time together, and they were loath to cut it short by turning in so soon.

Abdoulaye found he couldn’t keep up the charade any longer. “Not great,” he admitted. “Much better than a few days ago, but I’m not getting better as quickly as I’d like, and I think the G-forces during the race made my head ache again. Or perhaps it’s just been a long day. I’m very tired.” He sighed, and lingered in a blink, letting his eyelids hang closed for a moment before forcing them open again.

“Ala is with the patient,” Moussa said.

Abdoulaye smiled, realizing his battered brain had initially misunderstood Moussa’s quote. ‘Patient’ had a double-meaning, and Moussa, in his typical fatalistic way, meant to say that Abdoulaye could do little but wait out his suffering. But Abdoulaye, for a brief moment, thought Moussa was referring to him as an invalid, and offering a comforting reminder of God’s presence.

“It’s strange,” Abdoulaye said. “I feel some of the effects of the concussion still—just the headaches, mostly, and they’re not too bad anymore. But the symptom everyone warns me about is memory loss… and I remember everything better than ever.”

Moussa gazed at his son. “What do you remember?”

“I remember Mama now. Your stories brought her back to me. The entire journey across the desert and over the sea—all of it returned. I didn’t know I had blocked out so much.”

“They say painful childhood memories are often repressed.”

Abdoulaye swallowed grimly. “I don’t feel any pain. It makes me feel so guilty I wish I could cry about it sometimes. The other day when I cooked Poulet Yassa for you, tears came to my eyes when I chopped the onions, and I pretended to myself that I was crying over Mama. But I hardly knew her. Even with my memories returned, she feels like someone out of a story.”

“Abdoulaye, you don’t have to feel guilty for not being sad. You can’t control that.”

Abdoulaye’s eyes were glistening now, and suddenly there was a lump in his throat, solid and jabbing him. If his mother’s loss couldn’t move him to tears, the first sign of tenderness from his father was enough. Abdoulaye’s voice cracked and he struggled to speak. “But I want to be sad about it!” he protested. “I lost so much that night. It isn’t right that I shouldn’t be emotional about it just because I don’t know what was taken from me!” He wiped at his eyes and nose with the back of his hand. “And I feel bad for… for you. You loved her the most, and you suffered the most, and I haven’t known what to say to you—how to be there for you.”

Moussa was silent. As a storyteller, he was a man of eloquent words, but he had never been taught to use his skill as a channel for his own emotion. Instead, he reached out to Abdoulaye and pressed his hand in his. That wasn’t enough. He pulled him into a deep hug.

“I still have so many questions,” said Abdoulaye. “Did you ever have time to process? Did you ever see her again? How did you survive, with two young boys in a foreign country?”

“No one ever found her body,” Moussa said. “As far as the Italians were concerned, she didn’t exist—they never saw her, only a child that was crying for his mother. There was no paperwork, no death certificate, no search. I thought I had lost you too. When we landed and I saw you sitting in the back of the ambulance, it was the greatest joy and the greatest pain I had ever felt, both at once. I had thought you were dead, and now my son was returned to me. But I knew that if Fanta was still alive, she would have been with you.”

Moussa’s voice was still steady, but Abdoulaye, pulling back from the hug to see his father’s face, could see his eyes were shining. He pulled him back into the embrace.

“I thank Ala every day that He saved me and my boys from the water,” Moussa said. “When I fell from the boat, I thought certainly I was going to drown, along with my whole family. But Ala delivered me, and he brought us safely to Reçueçn and made my dreams come true.”

Abdoulaye couldn’t accept that. “How can you say that when you lost so much? How can you live your life in the little silver lining of such a dark cloud of pain?”

Moussa would never lose his stoicism.

“Je t’aime, mon fils. Et ça suffit.”

It sounded pretty, but it rang hollow to Abdoulaye. He lay awake long that night, thinking about the pain his father bore that he would never share. And still, Abdoulaye couldn’t bring himself to cry.

works? · by **Abanhfleft** » Sun May 04, 2025 8:07 am

“Guys, I think I’m losing power,” Adonis Fitzpatrick told his race engineer on the seventh lap of the Esmerelian Grand Prix. Like most of his appearances for HMG Grand Prix, Donny had had a middling time during the weekend, qualifying in P14 and overall not looking very likely that he was going to find his way back up into the points. At least his teammate Skiia Vialiv looked like she was finally picking up some momentum after some initial struggles with her new team, and she had just picked up a load of valuable points back in Hapilopper City. Donny Fitzpatrick felt like he was going in the complete opposite direction. After having picked up most of HMG’s points at the start of the season, he was now the one struggling to put his car into the points, and he was not giving himself an easier job by turning in poor qualifying sessions. Donny couldn’t really put a finger on any one reason why he was now beginning to struggle. One day, it looked like Adonis could actually give HMG an outside chance of potentially fighting for the championship, and the next day HMG had fallen far behind the actual title contenders.

“Sorry, Donny, it looks like it’s a terminal failure,” Donny’s race engineer replied. “See if you can roll into the pits. If not, find a safe place to park and turn off the engine.”

“I’m literally in the back straight! There’s no way I can get back to the pits,” Adonis complained.

“Find a marshal’s spot and park there,” his engineer advised. “Mode safe zero, mode safe zero.”

How quickly things could change in the WGPC, Donny thought to himself. The last time that he had been at the Forest Cross International Raceway, he had been looking at a chance to potentially win the drivers’ championship. Of course, that day it had been his teammate (who also happened to be Skiia Vialiv) who would end up finishing in second place in the standings behind the eventual champion Brendan Faloe while Adonis could only muster up a P15. This time around, not only was Donny nowhere near the title fight, but he was also bowing out of the race itself in just the seventh lap courtesy of an engine failure. That had never happened to the Fleftic driver throughout his entire tenure with Urotovsky-Gatutin, and the experience was an eye-opening one for Donny in the sense that it seemed as if none of the other teams cared as much for reliability as UrGa did.

As Donny rode on the back of a marshal’s motorcycle to bring him back to the paddock, the first fingers of fear began to creep into Donny’s mind. This was his first season competing in a motorsports series not under the UrGa banner, and that time away had made Adonis realize that maybe he was not actually a good driver without their equipment in his hands. Donny had tried out for a couple of teams, and he had not performed well at all in any of those tests. Thankfully, HMG had given him a call, but that was only when most of the other seats had been filled, and there was a suspicion in the back of Donny’s mind that the only reason HMG went for him was because they had already picked up his former UrGa teammate Skiia. Donny was beginning to feel more and more like HMG had selected their current lineup just for the memes of taking the combination that had won UrGa the constructors’ title last season and that they didn’t really have any plans beyond cashing in on said memes. Then again, it could always be worse. He could be back in UrGa having to deal with Vincent Von Visp, the fucking madman. Maybe it was better driving for a “meme” team instead of having to actually fight for his own life thanks to the actions of his teammate. In any case, Donny knew that he would have to clean up his act sooner rather than later if he wanted to make it back into WGPC next season without having to rely on a seat in UrGa that may or may not be there.

And even though Adonis knew that there were a myriad of reasons why his form had suddenly decided to take a nosedive, for one reason or another his mind almost always seemed to land on only one possible explanation: Batu Tüvshinbayar. It had to be mere coincidence that Donny started missing races as soon as Batu got a seat with the Motorworks team, but for some reason his mind just wouldn’t let go of the possibility that there might be or must be a connection between Batu’s return and Adonis failing to qualify despite having been on a good streak previously. There were many other reasons not connected to one particular Mongolian at all as to why Adonis Fitzpatrick lost all of the momentum that he was seemingly building up, reasons and theories that made much more sense than one man messing it all up by his mere presence. Donny’s mind had suggested a simple solution to figure out if Batu was actually responsible for all of the Fleftic’s WGPC troubles or if everything was just a very unfortunate (for Donny anyway) coincidence: talk to Batu. It was a simple solution, but for some reason Adonis just couldn’t find the time and the opportunity to talk to Batu, or even just the chance to invite Batu for a talk. The two of them had been in somewhat semi-regular communication with each other courtesy of texts, but texts just felt so cold and impersonal for something like this, at least in Donny’s opinion. And at the same time, Donny himself felt like he was doing all that he could to avoid the issue for as long as possible.

But now time itself was running out. There was only one week of the WGPC season left, and after that any chances for both Donny and Batu to meet face to face again would be difficult at best. If Adonis really wanted to figure out what he felt for the Mongolian, the two of them would have to meet face to face. And, almost as if the universe was listening in on his thoughts, another text message from none other than the man himself arrived in Donny’s phone. Batu wished Donny well after the latter’s unfortunate DNF, and then he thanked Donny for having Batu’s back even though the two of them hadn’t had much time to talk because of everything that was happening around them before wishing that the two of them could fight it out on track one last time. Donny appreciated everything that Batu was telling him, but he also realized that he had not been an equal partner to this relationship recently. He was only taking and taking while Batu was giving everything to him, maybe even his own heart. It was time for Adonis to give something back, even if it was just words.

Hey Batu, thanks for all of the texts. Sorry if I haven’t been able to reply to every single one but I’ve been busy with a lot of things. I think you understand.

Anyway, I think it’s time that we actually talked face to face. Texts are a bit too clumsy for me right now. After the Liventian GP, let’s talk. Somewhere behind the paddock. Just you and me. I have something to say to you in person that a text just can’t deliver.

I hope you’ll be there, but if you don’t come then I understand. But I’ll be waiting. The night after the Liventian GP, I’ll be at the back of the paddock, and I hope you’ll be there too.

Adonis pressed SEND and then took a deep breath. The ball may look like it was now in Batu’s court, but Donny knew that it was actually still in his. And while he didn’t know yet what he was actually going to say to the Mongolian once the two of them met face to face once again, Adonis wanted to believe that the words would come to him at the moment.

He had to believe that they would.

by **Former Citizens of the Nimbus System** » Sun May 04, 2025 11:10 am

Talbott Autodrome, Talbott, Liventia
Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia; Pre-Race

“You will be fine,” Vertilan Thompsonas tells his spouse, hands clasped to her shoulders. “I plan to enjoy this, thoroughly, no matter what else.”

“The race or my fumbling over the next few minutes?” Gertrude asks, wryness in her voice.

“Yes,” he answers with a grin, and the two burst into laughter. He smiles, stepping back. “Go now, Gertrude. I will be here when you return.”

Gertrude answers with a deep breath, a nod of confidence and thanks, and a mouthed ‘Love you’. Then she strides away and out, into the orderly chaos of Nexus Racing’s garage on the brink of a race. The air thrums, set to vibrating with anticipatory nerves…

She takes a folded workbench in hand without missing a step; unfolds it as she walks; plants it down firmly and ascends. More Timothy’s mien than her own but it will serve. Virgil takes note first, raising his arms into a juddering clap, and from there attention is on her, waves of cheering crashing upon her. Gertrude laughs again but it isn’t pride that surges through her – only that sense of tremendous, gravitic responsibility.

A few seconds later, there is quiet.

And she speaks.

She does the best she can. Not so lofty as any of Timothy’s speeches, filled with metaphors of flame and light. Close focus placed instead on the team’s work, naming each project and effort that they have expended their energies upon this season, to further cheers and back-clapping from those in the room. Emphasis on how much hope she has in all of their work in all of its imperfection, and in Ryker and Janne to carry it through in their challenge to Ælund. A quotation from Mardolf the Orange, which provokes the inevitable laughter, as capstone.

The cheers return and, when people move on, the thrumming is just a touch more concordant than before.

She hopes that her words will be enough. There is far more, of course – so many brilliant minds and long hours have brought her team here, and many minds and hours set against them. Nonetheless, she has seen the power of a speech at the moment of reckoning too many times to dismiss it, binding will and hope to its substance to bolster and lighten the Spark and set those minds to shared purpose.

Perhaps they will be enough – or perhaps someone else’s will. No doubt similar encouragements will be making their way through the garages up and down the pit lane.

(Even if she’s pretty sure that a full speech before a race at the start or end of a season is most often a Nexus Racing thing.)

Even then – perhaps, even if those words are not enough today, they may be for another yet to come.

Gertrude closes her eyes.

First Builders, may our vision and our efforts please you. Urge us on.

And goes to her place on Nexus Racing’s internal pit wall, readying herself for whatever is to come.

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by **Katzeburg** » Sun May 04, 2025 11:22 am

Archie Langdon, logging magnate, dead at 62

Archie Langdon, a trailblazing business developer who made billions of barins overseeing the expansion and growth of Katzeburg’s logging industry, has died at the age of 62.

A native of Axmund in north-east Katzeburg, Langdon worked his way up from nothing, being born to a lower-class family of serfs in 40BK. Taking a job on a logging camp at the age of 10 running water between worker camps, Langdon would quickly get an understanding of the ins and outs of the industry and gain an understanding of where processes could be quickly transformed. Working his way up from waterboy to logging camp manager, his empire would start with the purchase of the South Axmund Logging Camp at the age of 27, using funds saved up since he began work. Ruling over the camp with an iron-fist according to those who worked under him, Langdon would guide the camp to record highs of profitability and productivity within two years of taking over ownership of the camp.

He would follow this with the purchase of the West Axmund Logging Camp and the Penntop Logging Sanctuary, kickstarting the growth of Langdon Logging which, by the time of the Katzeburgian Revolution 11 years later, would be one of the largest companies in the country. Langdon would extend this reach beyond logging, most infamously in the very short lived attempt to open a theme park in the Campbellnia National Park, which drew significant ire for the proposed destruction of numerous lands inhabited by pouches of the increasingly rare Blue Cats. He would spend much of his later years working to scrub this negative perception from his general image through environmental activism and charitable support - hosting regular dinners in Axmund to raise funds for local charities.

In the last year of his life, he was also focusing in on expanding the Langdon Logging group beyond Katzeburg, with a sponsorship of Esportivan racing team Kissan Motorsports thought to be part of a brand building exercise with a view of branching out into the rest of the region. At the time of his death, his net worth was estimated to be more than six billion barins, making him one of the richest men in Katzeburg. Langdon is survived by his wife Jennifer Langdon and son Gil Langdon, who currently races for Kissan Motorsports in the World Grand Prix Championship. However, this relationship with his son seemingly has been disputed by the official obituary shared by Langdon Logging, which reads as follows.

“It is with great sorrow that we announce the passing of Archie Langdon, a respected businessman and head of one of Katzeburg’s largest companies, at the age of 62.

“Born in Axmund in 40BK, Archie grew Langdon Logging from humble beginnings into one of the largest producers of lumber in Esportiva, acting as a trusted advisor, friend, and supporter to all those he crossed paths with.

“Outside of his business, Archie was a man of humble integrity and charitable giving, with his annual charity dinners the high point of Axmund culture - drawing in international interest raising funds for a number of causes dear to his heart.

“He is survived by his loving wife of 25 years Jennifer Langdon, who will ensure that the legacy of this larger than life man will remain in the fabric of the communities he valued so dearly. A memorial service will be held at the homeground of Axmund City football club, Maplewood Park, and further details will be shared shortly.

“Archie’s spirit will live on - not just in the hearts of those left behind, but the trees and lands he loved so very much.”

by **Tropicorp** » Sun May 04, 2025 12:23 pm

. Drivers Standings:  18 pts (19th)
       Average Qual:  13.6   (10th)
     Average Finish:  15.6   (20th)
Positions Over Grid:  -1.5   (21st)

After a slow start to the WGPC 21 Campaign, things were quickly improving for Cocoabo #23 and the Race Eelandii team with three consecutive Tpo 10 finishes in Turori and Patriotlandia. Then the mid-season break hit and it seemed to set them back a peg. Now, however, things were slowly going back in the right direction on track - with the exception of a hard beak to Oh Crap There's a Wall meet up in Hapilopper City, Fast Cocoabo had put together a string of points finishes. While they hadn't earned many points in the process, they had still at least earned points. Now, with one race left in the World Grand Prix Championship Seaosn, Cocoabo #23 is in 19th position on 18 points, the lowest of eight Tropicorp Racing Supply backed drivers on the World Grand Prix grid - though they are just two points behind fellow Tropicorper Skiia Vialiv.

Heading into the Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia, Cocoabo #23 is now 25 points behind teammate iBen Toralmintii meaning the only way for Fast Cocoabo to be the top performing Race Eelandii driver on the season would be to take home the checkered flag at the Talbott Autodrome. In reality, it seemed that Toralmintii will have accomplished at least one of their goals for the season in finishing ahead of the 'bird' in the standings.

Thankfully, despite having lost their hard card credentials at the Hapilopper City Grand Prix Circuit, Cocoabo #23 didn't have any issues accessing the paddock at the Forest Cross International Raceway. Any time the Cocoabo went through a security control point they had other members of the Cocoabo Enrichment and Enhancement Project staff with them who had valid Hard Card paddock passes that were associated with Cocoabo #23, leaving nothing to the imagination at the check point. With just one race left in the World Grand Prix Championship season, the small group of team members that was aware of the situation with Fast Cocoabo's hot pass felt that the risk - gain equation was better off not deailng with it at this point. They had tried to buy it back off eelBay but were too slow. If they could just get the Cocoabo through the entry in Liventia, they would be home free. Cocoabo #23 could stay in the team hauler inside the secure zone at the track and be set for the weekend, no further issues.

At the conclusion of qualifying for the Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia, things were looking well for Cocoabo #23. After being 3rd fastest in the first round of qualifying the Cocoabo improved their lap in the decisive second round of qualifying though would have to settle for 6th place overall. Still, it was the Cocoabo's second best qualifying run of the season, only bested at the Grand Prix of Turori where Fast Cocoabo started the Grand Prix in second place.

As Cocoabo #23 got out of the car and was ushered back into the Paddock area, Tropicorp backed @OGP and WGP2 driver Indori Volcanasaur was there as a guest of the Tropicorp Customer team and overheard one of the CEEP handlers mentioning something about Fast Cocoabo's lost badge. Volcanasaur felt they should probably say something to the CEEP trainers. They didn't much care for Vincent Von Visp to begin with. Then when he overheard the fact that it wasn't going to be an issue for the Cocoabo at this point, Volcanasaur decided to let it go and went back to talking with the Tropicorp Representatives who were no doubt looking to push Volcanasaur's name forward as a future World Grand Prix Championship driver within the Tropiverse of teams. For Fast Cocoabo, it was one more night sleeping in the trailer, one more Grand Prix race then a summer retreat with familiar faces both Cocoabo and Trainers alike back at Cocoabo Park for the offseason.

. Drivers Standings:  20 pts (18th)
       Average Qual:  13.8   (11th)
     Average Finish:  14.2   (17th)
Positions Over Grid:  -1.8   (24th)

Two straight points finishes. Three in the last four races and four in the last six. While it certainly wasn't the season that Skiia Vialiv had imagined after finishing Runner-Up in the World Grand Prix Driver's standings one season ago, it certainly was getting much better and far less frustrating for Vialiv when compared to the start of her relationship with HMG Grand Prix which saw two retirements and no points earned in five races to kick off the World Grand Prix Championship 21 Season.

Going into the final weekend of the season, Skiia Vialiv was looking to get an assessment on the teams future from team principal Jöhan Turbringer but the Team Leader had been noticeably absent. Instead, Skiia found comfort in the re-assurances from Adrian Kinder that the team was busy working on their entry for World Grand Prix Championship Season 22 and that assuming all went well, the Tropicorper would be offered a contract extension to remain with the team next season. While Vialiv would have loved to have all the paperwork done before heading to Liventia it seemed there was more going on behind the scenes at HMG Grand Prix then one might have expected. With one of the teams higher-ups having a former Champion driver now competing in the World Grand Prix Championships there would always be rumors as to whether one of the local drivers would ever have a seat at HMG Grand Prix. Skiia always knew it was a possibility but she just hoped that if it did happen, it wasn't her seat that got axed.

Considering the points table and trailing Adonis Fitzpatrick by four points, Skiia had taken note of the steep reduction in performance of her teammate. After a strong start to the season, Donny had only finished inside the points once in the second half of the season - a 10th place finish in the Grand Prix d'Île Saint-Josep. She had been wondering if there was perhaps anything off the track that was distracting Donny but hadn't felt comfortable bringing it up yet. After watching Donny set the second slowest times in the Free Practice Session and then barely qualify for the Grand Prix itself in 26th position, Skiia finally decided to approach her teammate and see if there was anything She could do to help. With the two drivers lingering in the paddock area, she noticed Fitzpatrick staring intently at his phone. She wasn't sure if it was a good time to interrupt, but she figured what the hell and did it anyway, making a remark about how Adonis had decided to fix their Positions Over Grid differential once and for all by qualifying deep in the back of the starting lineup at the Talbott Autodrome.

Adonis did seem distracted and didn't seem to entirely catch what Skiia had said. She thought of making the joke again, but decided against it and instead approached her teammate in a more direct fashion, asking why Donny felt the #74 car wasn't up to speed and what she could possibly do to help the situation before it was too late.

SKIIA VIALIV ✓

@Skiia
It's been a tough season but hoping to close it out with one more run into the points. Was super bummed to not make it to round two of qualifying. It was soooo close but we'll be starting in 11th place and hopefully we can pick off at least one spot to finish the season on a solid points run and then who knows, head into the offseason and come back and try it all again in WGPC 22.

#WGPC21 :: #TalbottAutodrome :: #ForzaHMG

TROPICORP RACING SUPPLY ✓

@TropicorpRS
Shut out of the front row in Grand Prix of Liventia qualifying, it will be @iBen77 flying the flag for @Tropicorp from the 3rd starting spot. It has been a bit of an lucky starting spot so far this season with no winners coming from the third starting position... yet. So Long as a Tropicorp supplied team finishes inside the Top 7 then it will be enough to secure the Supplier Performance Title for WGPC 21

#WGPC :: #Supplier

by **Aboveland** » Sun May 04, 2025 12:23 pm

Grand Prix of Liventia
Talbott Autodrome
Talbott, Liventia

"Thank you, Gertrude. On to Ælund now with you, Edvin."

He grins as the heads in the crowd, and the Nimban to his right, turn to face him. The cameras rise in the media pen; the spotlights glisten and refract in his glasses. He nods chirpily as he raises the microphone to his mouth, right eyelid twitching slightly. "Afternoon."

The presenter's question resonates across the conference hall. "So, carrying on with the same theme: how do you see Ælund's chances for the title this weekend?"

His teeth glimmer through his widening smile, but he quickly subdues himself. "I think we're in a good position. It's been a very cat-and-mouse season between Nexus and us." He sneaks a glance over at Gertrude Thompsonas, who nods with her eyes slotted shut and eyebrows high. The title fight going down to the wire had a different flavor than if it were to have been against the tatters of their old rivals Badai Angin, or against the puffy-chested Hapiloppians, but he wouldn't have his sparring partners be anybody other than the Nimbans. "We've had some troubles, for sure, but I think in general we've been able to stay consistent and strong throughout the season. Ted comes in very confident and determined to try to take the drivers', and with Abs..." He lingers as his tongue molds his words, the sight of the battered Reçuecian still fresh in his mind. "We've been working hard to get him back fighting fit for one last push."

He nods to sign off on his response before the second question hits from among the darkness beyond the stage. "Mr. Pekkanen: the Hodoran government has found you guilty of appeasing the corrupt Vilitan criminals of Tropicorp, but almost a year on you and your satellite company still willingly turn a blind eye to the theft of Hodoran intellectual property." The voice seethes; every punctuation hisses bitterly, and every word spews a vitriolous discharge. Edvin feels his eyelid twitch as a tear pools on the edge of his eye and his brows sharpen. "What are you afraid of, Mr. Pekkanen, that you don't condemn the actions of the Vilitans? Or are you simply a vassal to their criminal enterprise?"

The mood in the conference room quickly turns somber; there's a distinctly charged silence before he brings the microphone back up to his mouth. A sigh sputters in the speakers before he speaks. "Well," he begins, the corners of his mouth undoing the frown they've fallen into. "First off, what a question! Certainly a thrilling narrative you've created; it keeps us on our toes, for sure!" He smirks softly, but his eyebrows are still incisive. He couldn't let the Hodoran press bring down another season ender. "I think — look, when one has a look at the teams and suppliers this season, some things don't make a lot of sense." He tries glancing at the audience, as if he's putting on a performance. "I've read the Blue Flag Report — big fan, I swear — based on it, one would think that Ælund was still running the full Tropicorp suite. But, you know, there's two other teams running the full package!"

His smirk gradually turns into a grin. In the crowd, the sheer that reflects off of his glasses briefly illuminates a very cross journalist's face. "After what we've gone through last season, and after deciding to take our own route this year — self made engine, brand new lineup — it's quite clear that we're moving forward from our past structure." His glasses ride up on his knuckles as he scratches his nose, and collects the tear on his twitchy eyelid as he brings his hand back down. "And I think that the real issue here is clear to see. Ælund has beat Hodoran endeavors in absolutely everything we've tried. We've dominated them in WGPC; we've smashed them in WSRC; hell, we even destroyed them at their own game in their domestics!" There's a tightness in his chest that relaxes; he hadn't realized it was there until it waned. "So, it's fair — I too would be frustrated like WrenchBitch if I'd been waiting for ten years — and counting! — to see my favorites win anything at all." He shrugs and sighs, relaxing back into the couch. Gertrude, sat beside him, only has her mouth curled into a timid grin. "Maybe Hodoran motorsport needs a new wind; we can help if they'd like. I'll be the first to invite them to Be Better!"

There's a buzzing pause before the final journalist prepares their question. It sprouts among rumbling murmurs, shifting chairs, and squeaky footsteps. "Edvin," the voice begins, "It's expected that the Liventian Grand Prix will be iBen Toralmintii's final WGPC race. What would be your parting message to the Turorian?"

Somehow, the question hits him even harder than the previous one. The pit in his stomach sinks to the seat of his pants, and a simmering heat washes over him with the sting of melancholy. He'd just spent his press conference segment fawning over his team and his lineup, and he's on the verge of another title thanks to all the decisions that have led up to this point. Is it the gnawing pain of guilt that he's feeling?

"iBen," he begins, but he's gambling on picking up the tiles to build his response as he goes. "I'm going to say — I think he should take this well, I'm sure he knows it too, but I think even he has surprised himself with how long he's been around!" He lingers in between phrases, his head falling back and his eyes meeting the studio lighting overhead, sparkling on the rim of his glasses. "I have nothing but gratitude and admiration for iBen. He might be the most resilient person I know. If tomorrow is his last dance, he'll..." He pouts, measuring the weight of his words on his tongue. "He'll go as one of the sport's greatest of all time, for sure — but we'll also lose, in Ælund, one of the pillars of our success. The Ælund we all know today — even though we've gone our separate ways — without iBen, it wouldn't exist."

"Have you spoken with him personally?"

Edvin grunts quietly. "No. I haven't. And I really, really should."

Liventia

Janne moans softly. His eyelids part in sequence, ripping through their cruddy sealant keeping them pinned together and against the edge of his nose. On the pillow, under the corner of his mouth, ajar, there's a gross, dense wet patch. Judging by the Abovian twilight blue that slips through the cracks in the curtains, it must be the crack of the crack of dawn; the alarm clock off the edge of the mattress is obscured by the edge of his pillow, and he’s not willing to strain his neck to confirm his hypothesis.

It’s not like he can easily wriggle himself out of bed too easily, either: there’s a meaty, toned Tumbran forearm slung over his chest and under his right arm, palm resting outspread across his bare chest, with his own hand intertwined in its fingers. He feels a periodic breeze rolling down his spine in tandem with his own rhythm, the stick of skin on his back, and his legs are tangled and attached to another fuzzy pair of them like velcro straps.

Alas, he’s busting for a piss.

He’s bound to wake Ted whichever way he shifts and wiggles, but it’s a necessary evil. He takes the hand under his clavicle and pushes it slowly towards the back of his hips, while rolling his pelvis to fall onto his stomach and peel his legs out of the bedspread. He hears absent ruffling and a pleady whine at the nape of his neck, but it ends with a lip-smacking sigh as his feet fall to the carpeted floor. Mission accomplished.

As his eyes adjust to the darkness on his way to and inside the bathroom, the midnight grogginess starts to diffuse, even though he rests his head on his hands as he sits and shuts his eyes in the darkness. It’s too quiet to wash his hands but not to flush, and he’s already too tired to linger outside of the warmth he’s left behind on the queen-size bed for much longer, so he rapidly wraps up his business and steps lightly but quickly back to the foot of the mattress.

And there, he stops. Submerged in the pitch-blackness of the room, he’s hyperaware of every single one of his nerve endings. The chill of the ventilation that swirls over the bed and cuts through the fair hairs across his chest; the pliant roughness of the carpet meshing between his toes and scrunching against the pads of his calloused soles and heels; the monotone hum of the minifridge, and the squelching sounds of his and Ted’s phone chargers; the throb of his neck, the base of his jaw, the space under his left pec, and the artery in his groin that pulse together vigorously.

If he focuses on the figure sprawled across the bed in front of him, hidden by the bedspread from the very lower edge of his hip down to his feet, he can feel everything that he can, too: the plushness of the pillow against his left cheek, the cuddle of the hotel sheets along his ribs; and if he thinks about his pulse, Janne feels his own thundering stronger. It’s such an all-consuming feeling that, even in his hardly conscious trance, he forces himself to backtrack the sequence from the moment he woke up to right now to make sure he’s not dreaming about possessing Ted. He even brings his fingers to his opposite wrist to pinch at the thin skin — he’s very much awake, and the tremble at the base of his hand confirms that he’s alive, too.

Stepping lightly on the carpet, he takes himself to right beside his empty spot and sits delicately on the mattress. Ted huffs in his deep sleep; Janne brings his closest hand to face. He traces down from where his eyebrows meet down to the tip of his nose; caresses his cheek down to line the curve of his bottom lip; holds the edge of his chin between his thumb and index fingers, feeling how his stubble scrapes across the crevices of his thumbprint. A knot forms in his throat and a rising, rushing gush deafens him; suddenly, there’s a dampness that pools in the hinge of his arm, that streams down his red-hot cheeks and around the dip at the seams of his lips.

It’s just three stupid silly words. Three stupid silly pointless words that tumbled out of the mouth of the man before him. Three stupid, silly, monumental words, which he’d plead for for so long, which he’d thought he’d never hear, which he knew were just a meaningless materialization of something already very real. And to think that if he’d kept to his word, if he’d shut himself off instead of succumbing — like he always did — to the latest in invitations from the stupidly seductive, impossibly skilled, and love-filled Tumbran, he might have never lived to hear him say it.

And yet, he did, and he had, and now, all was well.

He glanced over at the alarm clock, now well in his field of view, before turning his back towards the backboard, thrusting his legs down into the pocket under the bedspread to latch them together with Ted’s, and pulling his right arm back under his own and up against his chest, clutching his hand like a Teddy bear and pressing it firmly against his heart. He probably had a couple more hours until the alarm.

Ted’s voice — and those five words, and the gleam in his eyes as he said them — sung him to sleep as it played in his head.

by **Hodori Motorsports** » Sun May 04, 2025 12:36 pm

bfr.himeblog.net
The Blue Flag Report

Circle: Blue Flag Report
Post by WrenchBitch

WrenchWitch

It’s me. As threatened back before the Patriotlandia Grand Prix, here’s one of the things I was planning: A review of shitty engineering and egregiously unsafe designs in the WGPC. The birdbrain has had some input on the presentation and has weighed in on certain failures, mostly the Nimban ones.

Sections are going to be presented as follows:
Offending Party/Offended Party (or parties)/Offense(s)/Outcome(s).

With the exception of one incident, we’re only covering things that due to unwise choices made in the design and fabrication processes that led to a potential life-altering injury or fatal incident or resulted in loss of life or limb. This means we are excluding incidents where any damage done was financial, to material property with no risk to human life, or reputational damage, like how Ælund permanently killed off any chance of getting back into the GT-A’s good graces by deliberately reaffirming their ties with a group they knew to be intellectual property thieves, or how Vilitan deliberate misadministration drove the WGPO’s reputation in Hodori into the ground, or how Tropicorp’s very deliberate decision despite their claims otherwise to steal a Yemigama HPI design with the full backing of the Vilitan government permanently ended any and all diplomatic ties between Vilita and Hodori.

While we will primarily be covering WGPC incidents, we have a dishonorable mention from the NSSCRA.

For incident outcomes, Potential means an incident has yet to occur, but the unsafe situation either continues to exist or someone took a good, hard look and acted to resolve the issue. These will almost always be the former. Avoided incidents are when, though nobody actively attempted to create an unsafe situation, one was creating unwittingly by poor design choices or negligently by lack of oversight but either someone acted to prevent the situation from deteriorating or the affected party avoided harm. Attempted means the offending party knowingly acted to cause an incident, but either the target escaped the incident unharmed or someone intervened to prevent the incident. Actual incidents are when someone was dismembered and/or killed as a result of the offense.

Linco McPahan/Roger Bunn and Linco McPahan/McPahan’s WGPC12 car/Actual: McPahan perishes in the blast; Attempted: Bunn narrowly avoids danger
You, Your Petard, and How to Hoist Yourself With It: A Step-by-Step Illustrated Guide
OR
Linco McPahan lincoed a McPahan so hard that Linco mcpahaned

WGPC12. For one team, the season is so eventful and tumultuous that the constructor in question and the man in charge is the etymological root of not one but two Hodoran neologisms.
Or I guess three, if you take the two and combine them.

To “Linco” is to “fail spectacularly”.
To “McPahan” is to “suffer a catastrophic, explosive failure.” “Explosive” here is generally meant in the figurative sense.
To “Linco McPahan” is to “suffer a spectacular, catastrophic failure of unprecedented magnitude.”

Enough of this digression.

WGPC cars are not supposed to explode like this, so when it happened, the two most common recurring jokes around the time were mainly “McPhahans Just Do That” or “Audioslavia’s largest munitions company has attempted to build a WGPC car”.

Certain details surrounding the incident are still unclear, but the general consensus on what caused the explosion is the use of a sealant to hold the entire car together, and said sealant will violently and eagerly react exothermically with water. This is due to extensive use of elemental rubidium, a member of a class of metals that is so reactive with water its cousins sodium and potassium must be stored fully submerged in mineral oil to prevent them from reacting with the water vapour in atmospheric air.

Which does raise the question: Water is literally everywhere, even in the air we breathe. So why did it only react after the race? And what is even the use case and environment for Rubidove?

Nexus Racing/Jean Mercer-Daly, Janne Laukkanen and Ryker Lane/Imagikenetic Barriers/Actual: Jean Mercer-Daly loses an arm and a leg in a crash; Potential: Laukkanen and Lane have so far escaped harm
Force Field-based Unsafety Systems: The Pinnacle of Fail-Deadly Engineering

This one and the next had some input from the Birdbrain.

WGPC16, Grand Prix of Audioslavia. Lap 51, Jean Mercer-Daly’s crash.

The official statement from Nexus Racing regarding the incident is that the car was remotely disabled by a hostile actor. “Hacked”, in short.

The hacker used their unauthorised access to disable:

The power steering
The traction control, which no serious driver would ever want on a racing machine, and which is rightfully banned by any top-level series that wants to be seen as such
The internal tyre warming system, because apparently Nimbans don’t understand friction or warming blankets
Manual manipulation of the wheel and pedals, apparently, because I’m reviewing the telemetery leading up to the crash and there doesn’t appear to have been any effort by Mercer-Daly to slow the car either by lifting off the throttle or applying the brake or attempting to vector the car so it distributs the impact force in a safer manner.
The imagikinetic barriers, which for a multitude of reasons are utterly useless as a safety system.

This last item is what we’re focusing on, because it’s the most inexcusable violation of safety engineering here. And it’s one the techbros at Nexus Racing insist of perpetuating. The item before is also an egregious violation, but not the primary issue here.

Safety systems that are triggered by a loss of power or cause a piece of equipment to shut down when the safety system is faulted are “Fail-Safe”. Examples are the GT-A approved fire suppression systems as used in domestic Hodoran motorsport, tether-activated airbag motorcycle vests, or the dead-man’s switch on most industrial equipment like forklifts where the equipment will stop if the pedal is not properly held down by the operator.

Safety systems that stop functioning when losing power or faulting or being deliberately disabled, or do nothing to bring operating equipment to a stop, or which intervene to actively make the situation even more unsafe, are “Fail-Deadly”. Examples are the Imagikinetic Barrier system or battery-powered airbag biking helmets or motorcycle vests.

Imaigkinetic Barriers are a type of force field, which are firmly in the category of Fail-Deadly. Often seen in sci-fi stories, force fields take many guises. Probably the most common is the energy shield. The single most recurring scenario with energy shields is them losing power at inopportune moments, either deliberately to reroute power or as a result of constant bombardment by hostile vessels. There’s also the situation where energy shields need more power but the reactor doesn’t have the output to meet demand. Whatever the issue, the system requiring active power and perfect operating conditions to keep everyone from meeting a violent end stops working.

The single worst aspect of Mercer-Daly’s crash?

Everything on the Chase Cutter was functioning normally as designed.

Remotely turning off the driver assistance features? Other than power steering, everything else that was deactivated was all crap that only talentless frauds like Janne Laukkannen and Ryker Lane would use.

Remotely disabling the controls and force-field safety system? All according to designed specification.

Jean Mercer-Daly’s incident is why, under Hodoran law, the Imagikinetic Barrier system cannot be advertised as a safety system, and why it and similar systems are specifically banned by the GT-A. The aforementioned airbag helmet ended up being collateral damage.

Jean Mercer-Daly survived the crash, but would lose his left arm and leg due to the joke of a survival cell contained within the Chase Cutter. He would later receive prosthetics that would allow him to continue racing, albeit ones that are permanently grafter to his body which doesn’t seem that good an idea but that’s a biomedical question I don’t have the credentials to answer.

Nimban engineers to this day continue to foist their worthless crap on their drivers. Crap that is worthless either because it is unneeded by a driver of WGPC caliber or because it stops working when the power goes out or it malfunctions.

Yes, When. Not If. When.

Because anyone that refuses to acknowledge the inevitability of a systems failure either is so ignorant at a scale that indicates they should not be allowed any influence on safety engineering and how it interacts with power supply engineering, or they are actively dishonest charlatans.

That the Nimbans continue to make extensive use of the Imagikinetic barrier, coupled with my own life experiences, makes me consider the latter.

Also, the birdbrain disputes the official story: she thinks it wasn’t a deliberate attack, but some Nimban kid trying to log in to their toy or whatever, accidentally mistyping, and gaining control of Mercer-Daly’s car. 87 Pigeons adds: Similar to but distinct from the situation of thevarious ByteCoin exchanges Ankei operated that got “hacked” while the man in charge was suspiciously well-off in the aftermath. Not currently proven in court yet, but the general thinking is that he rugpulled – repeatedly – and laundered the money before announcing the “hacks” through his single-use shell companies. As for proving in court, since he’s stuck in Hapilopper and given that he is so hated in Hodori that an impartial jury simply cannot be found, Hodoran officials are going to try and have him tried in Happiloper.

Either way, it doesn’t look good for the perception of Nexus Racing’s competence.

At least Linco McPahan was honest about his disregard for driver safety.

Nimban Engineers/Everyone that races at Crossbay/Imagikinetic Barriers (Again)/Potential: No drivers have suffered dismemberment or fatal injury yet
Force Field-based Unsafety Systems: The Pinnacle of Fail-Deadly Engineering, Second Edition

Still on the subject of Nimbans and their love of unnecessary, bad and fail-deadly engineering stemming from their innovating-for-the-sake-of-innovating techbro nature, we have Crossbay Circuit. Parts of it are in tunnels, which raise accessibility questions, and parts of it are over water, which raises even more questions about ease of access for emergency crews.

And for the parts over water, the Nimbans once again rely exclusively on a system relies on a constant power source and no faults to function correctly.

I’ve already gone over why I consider the Imagikinetic barriers as deserving on this list as used on their cars, so I’m not going to repeat myself here.

Through the numerous crashes that have occurred at Crossbay to date, thankfully none have resulted in notable injuries or fatalities.

Ælund Grand Prix engineers and Happiloper City Grand Prix Circuit designers/Abdoulaue Goita/Why is there even a wall *there* specifically, and why was Goita’s helmet allowed to impact it?/Actual: Goita suffers a serious head injury
Happilopians: We have a wall here. We should run a promotional campaign for when people crash into it
Also Happilopians: Yay someone crashed into the wall! You’re winner!
Also also Happilopians: The guy that crashed isn’t moving. We should prepare the campaign for the next event

They Crash You Win, and the related Olivia Stone Memorial Cup: Example #984 of many for why Happilopian entities are generally not well-regarded by members of the Hodoran motorsports community.

“Goita is fine he made it to Esmerel” You fool.

you absolute nincompoop

Concussions are no joke. Any blow to the head that causes loss of consciousness is a serious injury, one that may lurk with no external sign.

WGPC technical regulations require that the car not allow the driver’s head to strike the ground in the event it gets inverted. From Goita’s crash, I highly doubt that the AGP007 is compliant with the regulations.

And if the problem is not with the car, then the issue lies with the design of the wall.

Either way, Goita now requires routine checkups to ensure no lasting effects from the injury.

Ankei Souzare/Hanna Berezowska/what the fuck even was that/Attempted: Ankei Souzare gets removed from his own team by virtue of being too injured to race
“At a certain point safety is just pure waste” says man who does not understand why safety regulations exist

As if I needed another reason to hate that fuckwit. Some of my contacts at TACH GPC were able to secure and send be some of the blocks that were supposed to be part of a new second car. They told me it was supposed to be “3D-printed carbon fibre”. I did some analysis of the material, even sent a few samples to other labs I know to see what they can find out, and also the birdbrain since she’s more knowledgeable about 3D printing and filaments than I am. There’s no question that it was 3D-printed, or that it contained carbon.

For our findings regarding the material:

Oh dear

The problem with the material was the lack of carbon fibres, so the general agreement we came to was that the filament used was simply one that had graphite mixed in with it. The more innocent explanation for why someone would call it “3D-printed carbon fibre” is how due to the manufacturing process the extruded filament makes what appear only visually to be fibres.

But we’re dealing with that fuckwit. He is known to just straight up lie for the sake of making his broken shit and scams look like legitimate, functional products and services. 87 Pigeons adds: Like with his HiTENCoin shit before trans lesbian catgirl hackers took his site down again, where he likely falsely claimed a partnership with Visp Financiers among other global financial institutions, so I imagine Reçueçn’s MDI and other international counterparts might’ve gotten a call from Hodori’s DFCI about the matter, even if only to make sure that these claims are false as is typical for Ankei Souzare. So the operating assumption is that he was like usual lying out his ass again.

And worse, the filament used is known to result in a very malleable polymer after curing.

It continues to get worse.

The blocks were supposed to be glued together to make up the car’s bodywork and survival cell.

It should come as no surprise that the adhesive used was entirely unsuitable for the application, even if it had been applied and cured correctly. Apparently deciding to try and channel Linco McPahan, Ankei Souzare had every single join of the car glued together. But due to being on the complete opposite end of the competence spectrum from Linco McPahan, Ankei Souzare used cheap child’s glue, the type commonly seen in grade schools.

For reputable chassis constructors using the material, the direction of the carbon fibres is highly important; because the fibres’ reactions to force are dependent on their angle relative to the axis of the fibres, they need to be arranged so that they can direct and dissipate the energy of a crash or other impact in such a way as to reduce the amount of energy transferred to the driver. The fibres should also, ideally, be continuous. Failing to do so has catastrophic consequences for the driver.

So that fuckwit shows up to Happiloper with a car that’s already falling apart before it even made it into the garage, tries to foist it on Berezowska, and gets his latest insane scheme stopped by virtue of being on the receiving end of a beatdown.

Chris Holmes/Kai Qiang/The Iguana Incident/No notable major injuries
Example #1093 of many for why Happilopian entities are generally not well-regarded by members of the Hodoran motorsports community

Our NSSCRA dishonorable mention, dating from NSSCRA 8, and the only entry on this list that stems from bad behaviour rather than bad engineering. Why the fuck was Holmes allowed to continue to have a career after this stunt he pulled?

Why in the ever loving FUCK was Holmes allowed to end his career as an active driver on his own terms?!

Holmes, being the unrepentant, psychopathic asshole that he is, claimed that it was all just a prank bro

Qiang got a scare from the meter-long blue reptile, but was able to resolve the incident safely despite his ensuing erratic driving. After the incident, Holmes got to enjoy an undeservedly lengthy career.

Linco McPahan/Alex Lund/The Bridge Incident/Avoided: No notable injuries

McPahan, WGPC12, life-threatening disaster. Lund’s crash into a bridge was the first of two notable incidents.

This one does not get a pithy or witty subtitle.

This type of incident hits way too close to home.

Prior to February 2009, Ikasamo Speedway saw several driver deaths, but those were of the mundane crashed-into-barriers type, with the absolute worst incident coming from the Hodoran Motorcycle Championship race in Ikasamo in 1972. “But WrenchBitch, there is no Hodoran Motorcycle Championship.” You’re right, there isn’t. There hasn’t been one after seven riders were killed in a single Sunday at Ikasamo in December 1972. There has never been another professional-level, officially-sanctioned motorcycle race in Hodori since that day.

Fast-forward over 35 years to the last weekend of February 2009. Car and track safety were iteratively improved with each championship hopeful that met their premature, avoidable demise.

The Hodoran Grand Prix Championship had just been rebranded as the All-Hodori Formula Touring Championship, and the race at Ikasamo was the penultimate round. Most teams were supplied by one of two chassis constructors: Yemigama HPI and MAK Automotive Industries. The three factory teams had their own chassis designs, but all the customer teams and privateers were using either Yemigama’s FH163T+ or FH164T or MAK’s R-162GPc, R-163GPb or R-164FT. Yemigama’s designs tended to have a more neutral handling but were generally more expensive and given the balance of circuits on the calendar at the time were generally seen as the better choice. MAK’s designs favoured tight, technical tracks of which there was no shortage of in Hodori and were usually more affordable.

But as affordable as MAK’s cars were, racing cars are still expensive, so they also sold upgrade kits to keep older cars competitive. Hence why six privateers were still using the chassis from Hodoran year 162, of which four were still in contention for the Driver’s Championship in a hotly-contested season.

Suzuna Mazaregi.
Nareka Reitoude.
Keizato Sakuo.
Uneta Toudeyaku.

These four could, with a strong finish at Ikasamo, enter the final round with a shot at the title.

None of them would make it to the scheduled end of the weekend.

In qualifying on Saturday, the first of these four would meet their end. Keizato Sakuo, a privateer operating out of his shop’s garage in Ikasamo. One of the most skilled engineers to have ever graced Hodoran motorsport, coupled with a fair amount of talent behind the wheel. Relying on the tow from another car to improve his qualifying result, he briefly left the leading car’s slipstream heading into Third Hill. His car lifted off into the air, flew over the barrier, and crashed into the trees. Sakuo was killed instantly. With Sakuo’s death, RT Sakuo would dissolve and his shop would become a Super Option full-service centre.

Suzuna Mazaregi, second daughter of Old Man Mazaregi and younger sister of Doueshi Mazaregi, driving for her father’s resurging Tarogama-based team still recovering from the expenses of the now-defunct All-Hodori Sports Prototype Championship, was the second to go airborne and crash. Her incident occurred in the second qualifying session under similar circumstances. She went off at the Backstraight Crest. She would initially survive her injuries, but would succumb to them before the start of the race on 15:00 Hodoran time, Sunday afternoon. Mazaregi Racing Project would not contest the Formula Touring Championship the next year, making their grand return when the series began to broadcast overseas known as “Formula Hodori”.

Over night, MAK would attempt to investigate the source of the issue. Though they would not fully understand the cause before the end of the Hodoran racing season, they were able to narrow the problem down to the R-162GP cars using the Spec C upgrade kit to keep the cars competitive with newer models. By the morning of the race, they issued a recommendation that the four remaining teams and their drivers using the R-162GPc withdraw. The two not listed above complied. Nareka Reitoude, driving for Dashoze-based Reitoude Motor Sport in its last year as an independent team, and Uneta Toudeyaku, the driver of Soeshu-based ST Racing Project formed with her friend’s husband Guran Souzare, were the two to take the grid.

Toudeyaku was the first of the R-162GPc users to crash on race day, moving to overtake a championship rival around 25 minutes into the race. She made her move coming over the Backstraight Crest, only to then take off and land in the trees in the same fashion as Sakuo and Mazaregi. Like Mazaregi, she would survive her initial injuries, but would ultimately pull through. She would lose both legs, her right arm, and most of the mobility in her left arm. ST Racing Project shut its doors and would later resurface as Team ten*GU; “ten” coming from Toudeyaku’s racing number of “09” and adding one, “GU” from the given names of Guran Souzare reprising his role as engineering lead and Uneta Toudeyaku moving to a more behind-the-scenes managerial position.

The race was immediately red-flagged. In the meeting to determine whether the race would resume, MAK’s representatives strongly urged their teams and the GT-A to abort the session in the interest of driver safety. These efforts proved to be in vain, though a small number of the privateers across both suppliers that agreed to cancel the race withdrew.

The race was restarted from a grid start at 16:45 Hodoran time, after spending 85 minutes under red flag. Of the thirty cars that had started the weekend, nineteen chose to continue. After 20 minutes of racing, the race was red flagged again. In full view of the north end of the main grandstand, Reitoude following third-place Hakuto Taozare in his final season had crashed heading into the Crest Chicane, in the same way as Sakuo, Mazaregi, and Toudeyaku. She would also be killed instantaneously in her crash. This one would be more dramatic than Sakuo’s as her car had an almost- full tank of fuel that was torn open by the trees, allowing the fuel inside to scatter and then upon contact with the hot engine and exhaust components ignite in a massive fireball.

Nareka Reitoude was Chiruno Reitoude’s only child. Nareka also left behind two daughters.

The race at Ikasamo would not resume again.

None of the members of the GT-A that went forward with resuming the race are still part of the organisation, most having resigned in a press conference following the race where they took responsibility for allowing the incident to occur. The GT-A Safety Commission, the only group within the broader organisation to be unanimously opposed to resuming the race, saw to it that everyone else in the GT-A responsible for green-lighting the restart was shifted to positions with little influence on the Association’s operations for the remainder of the tenures. Perhaps an act of revenge for getting overruled leading to a fourth crash and third fatality that weekend.

Top-level domestic championships would never again visit Ikasamo after that weekend.

The GT-A would mandate a new spec chassis for Hodoran open-wheel. As the only company still operating at the time, Yemigama HPI was selected to be the supplier. All teams from the next season onward would use the FH165T, until it was replaced with the FH170T.

A more thorough investigation into what had caused the R-162GP to take flight would be conducted. It was found that the floor design, coupled with the short wheelbase and long front and rear overhangs and the upgrade kit’s wing design made the car extremely pitch-sensitive. As had become known to the six teams using the car leading up to Ikasamo, in the slipstream behind another car the Spec C front wing had a tendency to become fully unloaded, leading to the R-162GPc developing understeer when following behind another and most strongly when exiting a slipstream. Crucially, this would also cause the car to gain a slight upward pitch. Combined with the dramatic undulations of Ikasamo Speedway, this was a recipe for disaster.

MAK would close its doors effective immediately after the race was canceled. The three engineers behind MAK would later resurrect their company under the name “SAKATA”, with their first new design being the R-170FT candidate for the new Formula Touring spec chassis. After Lund’s bridge incident, they would withdraw their chassis for consideration.

There was no issue with the R-170FT chassis. Lund’s crash just brought back flashbacks to that day in Ikasamo, so out of an abundance of caution SAKATA chose to again leave Yemigama HPI as the chassis supplier by default.

Back to the WGPC.

With the context of the events at Ikasamo, Lund’s crash made the Vilitan Grand Prix difficult to watch.

The massive scandal revolving around the Vilitan government’s corrupt influence on the World Cup and the smaller-scale scandal revolving around the Vilitan’s act of deliberate intellectual property theft to supply a chassis to AOGP, and the Vilitan administration’s deliberate mishandling of the WGP2 calendar causing the Hodoran round to be stripped of championship status under false pretenses made this specific race even harder to watch.

I don’t have the full details of why Lund’s car lifted off and crashed into a bridge. I would not be surprised if the car’s design was similar to what aided the R-162GPc going airborne at Ikasamo. Lund afterward claimed the title of Wrold Driver’s Champion, and kept racing in the WGPC until he retired after the 16th WGPC season.

by **Turori** » Sun May 04, 2025 12:59 pm

Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia, Talbott Autodrome, Talbott, Liventia :: As the start time grew closer at the Talbott Autodrome, cars were being pushed to the grid and crews were making their final preparations in the paddock. Another season of World Grand Prix Championship competition was about to come to a close. 3 Drivers. 3 Teams. 7 Rookies. All with a chance to come away at the end of the day with a Championship Trophy.

iBen Toralmintii wasn't in any of those groups. While they couldn't earn themselves a Championship Trophy, there was still a Trophy on the line at the top of the podium - but to get there the experienced race winner would have to navigate past two of the seasons hottest rookie drivers, Ron Sommer and Vincent Von Visp. As rumors have it in the garage area, Vincent Von Visp may be a bit distracted behind the wheel of the Urotovsky-Gatutin #66 and could be a prime candidate for an early pass. Sommer, however, has been having an outstanding rookie campaign as a bright spot for Viska Racing as teammate William Archer has unexpectedly struggled without a single podium finish. Toralmintii hadn't even been able to win twice earlier this season while starting on Pole Position, there was no reason for him to truly believe he could go up and pass two cars and hold off the rest of the field to win this one - especially with the luck that third place starters have had this season, which is none at all with Zero wins in 11 races.

Perhaps one thing iBen had in their favor, however, was the fact that Ryker Lane would be starting in 16th position. It was ultimately Lane who bypassed Toralmintii and drove on to victory in both of the previous races where Toralmintii had started from Pole Position. A repeat performance from the Nexus Racing driver would be very difficult considering the number of cars that Lane would have to pass - with three of them being rival contenders for the Driver's and Constructors Championships.

In the end, it was just another race. Toralmintii had done it 100 times before. Perhaps a few seasons removed from peak performance with Tropicorp Racing Ælund, Toralmintii was making more mistakes on the track. Or maybe the other drivers just had a little something extra in their cars that Toralmintii no longer had. On any day, anything can happen and Toralmintii wasn't about to let a bad season at Colourworks or two failed attempts to hold on to the lead from Pole Position take away from their focus on this day.

Of course, it was no normal day. It was perhaps the last time that iBen Toralmintii would line up on the grid and climb into the cockpit of the #77 car. Whether it was convenient or not, Toralmintii didn't have far to walk to get to the specially painted Race Eelandii machine. Walking to the car for the last time, a few drivers wished him good luck but the reality was that the majority of the drivers on the grid never competed against iBen Toralmintii in their prime. They never raced against VTM or Tropicorp Racing Ælund. Half the grid turned over with rookie drivers during WGPC Season 20, then half the grid again turned over this season. Most of these drivers just remembered Toralmintii as a back-marker in a colorful car. For those who didn't, Toralmintii was glad to take a moment to shake hands and say Thank You. There were in fact more crew members that Toralmintii had seen regularly in the paddock over the years that stopped to wish the veteran good luck in their Final Ride. As iBen prepared to step into the Cockpit one last time, he looked back at the 25 or so cars behind him. He couldn't really pick out the Ælund cars on the grid, he couldn't even keep track of what they were supposed to look like anymore, but he thought he saw some familiar faces. At this point, it probably wasn't worth walking back. He could always have time for more goodbyes after the race.

A few rows back, R.L. Cruisin and the Piers Ivchenko team were making their final preparations for the Championship Race. A swarm of media surrounding the veterans car was quite unusual. Virtually no one was lining up around the #51 at the start of the season. It was getting close to focus time. The pre-race ceremony was under way. There was really no way to move around the 51 car and extra crew members and security tried to maintain a protective barrier around the car. With the two championship leaders starting side by side there was only one place on the grid for any respectable reporter to have set up their shot. Representatives from media outlets throughout the multiverse were trying to carve up their square of space perfectly between the #51 and #88 cars to get their final pre-race reports in before the lights went out.

This was the day that R.L. Cruisin had waited 11 seasons for. This is why they persevered keeping their career alive with startup teams like Frontiere Racing, the Ghost of Mirrors and lately Piers Ivchenko. This was why R.L. Cruisin kept coming back. They knew they had the ability to compete for a Championship, they just needed the opportunity to prove it. Three seasons with Carvenlo and numerous outstanding runs in the Grand Prix of Liventia was all the confidence Cruisin needed to put in a good, solid run with the title on the line. The task was simple. Beat the #88 car into Turn 1 and then keep them behind the rest of the race. One Corner at a Time. No mistakes. Certainly Piers Ivchenko didn't have the experience in championship situations that the Ælund Grand Prix team did. No matter what happened in Lintulahtii last season, the core of the Ælund team still knew how to win and they certainly proved it so far this season. But so did Piers Ivchenko. The last-minute team added to the WGPC 21 Grid had competed with heart all season long and proved they belonged. Once the lights go out, however, it will all be in the hands of the veteran Cruisin, the all time leader in Grand Prix starts will need to use every tab of experience in their play book to keep the biggest, most successful team in the modern World Grand Prix era behind them, and win one for the little teams forever providing the spark a startup teams to believe they too can be successful against the World Grand Prix elite.

twii.tur Support Series @OGP at the Rocks Post Race Press Conference - Race runner-up #42 Winston Klossovsky - Race Eelandii

Q: Winston, Great job today. Two part question. First - What could you have done different to catch Axel for the win? And as a follow up, you had a great start to the season with a win at your home race in Doubeia, then you didn't have another podium finish until the season finale. Was the unfamiliarity with the travel to a new country each week difficult to adapt to or was there another reason for your mid season slump?

Q: You were the champion back in the Doubinese Racing League, how did the competition in the twii.tur Support Series compare to the competition level back home?

Q: Evangelos Kalyftakis was another driver who was a lower level champion that joined the @OGP this season and they seemed to adapt very quickly, do you think their experience racing in different nations at the Esportiva Karting Championships gave them an advantage?

Q: Outside of the Demetris Dome which you were already familiar with, what was your favorite track that you got to compete on for the first time this season?

Q: Your teammate Triiki Mokalrisa was competing in their second Support Series season with Race Eelandii and finished 2 places ahead of you in the standings. Were you able to learn anything from your teammate that helped you throughout this season?

Q: It's no secret that there is likely to be a WGPC seat open at Race Eelandii VTGP next season. Has the team approached either Mokalrisi or yourself about potentially filling that seat?

Q: Three drivers who competed in the last @OGP season have already graduated to the WGPC. After one full season of Support Series action, do you think you would be ready for the jump up to the World Grand Prix Championship or would you look at other stepping stones in the short term?

Q: Would you ever see yourself wanting to drive for Doubinese team Piers Ivchenko in WGPC even though you drove for a rival team in the Doubinese Racing League?

Q: Along those lines, with Piers Ivchenko in the midst of a WGPC Championship Battle, are you rooting for them as the Doubinese team or against them as your rivals from back home?

Q: Now that the season is over, what does the offseason look like for you?

A:

Thank You, Winston.

(O.O) · by **TJUN-ia** » Sun May 04, 2025 1:00 pm

WGPC 21
Round 10 (Season Finale)
Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia
Talbott Autodrome, Talbott, Liventia

How do you feel when you know this is, in fact, the final episode of this story? When you know that whatever happens now will act as the final chapter in the book known as "WGPC 21"? For those interested in the title fight, this weekend will decide it all - R.L. Cruisin, Ted Pressley or Ryker Lane? Ælund, Nexus or Pressley Engineering? Will one team claim both crowns or will the spoils be shared on Sunday afternoon? The story of this season was coming to and end and everyone wanted to know who's name would be in lights this time?

But if you were Batu Tüvshinbayar, or a TJUN-ian watching this curtain call, the feeling was one of...desperation. Batu had made the switch to KISMO at the behest of his bosses after scoring points in the Motorworks car but so far, that decision seemed to have been a grave mistake on both parties' part. Batu had struggled to get used to the red car since the switch and he had been getting into his head more and more, seemingly sinking into the fear of being dropped after all the of the effort he had made to just make it back to the grid. But there was still one more weekend left in the season, one more opportunity to get some more points on the board for his new team...and Batu knew this might be his last chance.

The Talbott Autodrome, shaped like a sprinting Prince of the Dark if the backstretch was its feet, is the perfect track to host the finale...not only because of Liventia's role as the leader of the stewards for this season, but because it is a tricky track that knows how to bite if you are not careful. Batu and KISMO as a whole wanted to make sure his race pace was up to scratch for this pivotal race of the season, which can go to explain why Batu was 1.3 seconds off the pace of Ted Pressley in P24, a second off Gil Langdon in P8. He wanted everything to be right...because he knew he might not have the chance again.

For the finale, Qualifying operated in a two-tier system, where the Top 10 in Q1 would advance to a shootout for pole. Batu wasn't necessarily aiming for that Shootout, he was just focused on getting a good position for tomorrow, but once he realised just how good the car was feeling on that day, priorities started to change. Things were certainly tight out there, with everyone in the damn field separated by only 7 tenths of a second in what has to be the closest Qualifying in WGPC history...but in the midst of that melee, both KISMOs made it in. Ron Sommer grabbed pole and Langdon would end up in 4th but while Batu couldn't put together a clean lap, he didn't really care that much. P10 in the finale was a very good position to be in...but he was here before, and he knew he had to make this one count tomorrow.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. That simple word flew around in his mind post-debrief, not only because of the race but also of what was to come afterwards, in the evening.

Abanhfleft wrote:
Hey Batu, thanks for all of the texts. Sorry if I haven’t been able to reply to every single one but I’ve been busy with a lot of things. I think you understand.

Anyway, I think it’s time that we actually talked face to face. Texts are a bit too clumsy for me right now. After the Liventian GP, let’s talk. Somewhere behind the paddock. Just you and me. I have something to say to you in person that a text just can’t deliver.

I hope you’ll be there, but if you don’t come then I understand. But I’ll be waiting. The night after the Liventian GP, I’ll be at the back of the paddock, and I hope you’ll be there too.
.

Donny wanted to talk, face-to-face, in a private setting. For the first time in a long while, Adonis Fitzpatrick (who will start from P26 tomorrow) wants to meet up and have a chat, something that involved saying something that "a text just can't deliver". There were several theories in Batu's mind as to what Donny could possibly be on about, but he knew he couldn't ponder them in the race itself. No matter what was ahead, he would be there...because it would be foolish not to be, at this point.

So the plan was simple. Batu will step into that car, hope to score points in his final race of a long season, get out, get changed, and meet up with Donny in the paddock that night.
No matter what, everything seemed to be riding on tomorrow...and Batu knew he had to be ready to fight.

by **Liventia** » Sun May 04, 2025 1:00 pm

For the final time this season…

CUTOFF

for the Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia at Talbott Autodrome

by **Liventia** » Sun May 04, 2025 1:17 pm

Week 15: Race

Conditions:      	Dry
Laps:              	50
Nation:         	LEN
Circuit:        	Talbott Autodrome
Event:                	Liventia Airways Grand Prix of Liventia
Safety Car on Laps:	31, 32
Cars on Grid:        	28

Start               	POS  # ▍DRV Name                                         Team                                     	Time        	Pts	Fastest Lap	
 1 ▍SOM            	  1 77 ▍TII iBen Toralmintii                             Race Eelandii VTGP                           	01:34:21.842	25		
 2 ▍VVV            	  2 88 ▍PRE Ted Pressley                                 Ælund Grand Prix                             	00:00:27.908	18		
 3 ▍TII            	  3 55 ▍LNG Gil Langdon                                  KISMO                                        	00:01:21.495	14		
 4 ▍LNG            	  4 17 ▍LAU Janne Laukkanen                              Nexus Racing                                 	00:01:40.525	11		
 5 ▍LAU            	  5 12 ▍SOM Ron Sommer                                   Viska                                        	Laps Down: 1	8		
 6 ▍C23            	  6 66 ▍VVV Vincent Von Visp                             Urotovsky-Gatutin                            	Laps Down: 1	6 + 1	1:42.615	
 7 ▍CRU            	  7 51 ▍CRU R.L. Cruisin                                 Piers Ivchenko                               	Laps Down: 1	4		
 8 ▍PRE            	  8  3 ▍KUY Sakiteno Kuyara                              TACH GPC                                     	Laps Down: 1	3		
 9 ▍KUY            	  9  1 ▍FAE Brendan Faloe                                Cygnus                                       	Laps Down: 1	2		
10 ▍TUV            	 10  9 ▍TUV Batu Tüvshinbayar                            KISMO                                        	Laps Down: 1	1		
11 ▍VIA            	 11 22 ▍JOH Nini Johnsilvaturr                           Pressley Racing                              	Laps Down: 1			
12 ▍FAE            	 12 27 ▍NÜL Dario Nülkeschlager                          Pressley Racing                              	Laps Down: 1			
13 ▍ANG            	 13 96 ▍ARC William Archer                               Viska                                        	Laps Down: 1			
14 ▍PLA            	 14 89 ▍GTA Abdoulaye Goita                              Ælund Grand Prix                             	Laps Down: 1			
15 ▍GTA            	 15 37 ▍HAU Laura Haukanna                               Pryfors Bilar                                	Laps Down: 1			
16 ▍LAN            	 16 13 ▍PLA Pierre-Louis Archer                          WGPC Motorworks                              	Laps Down: 1			
17 ▍HAU            	 17 85 ▍STO Olivia Stone                                 Cygnus                                       	Laps Down: 1			
18 ▍BLA            	 18 14 ▍VIA Skiia Vialiv                                 HMG Grand Prix                               	Laps Down: 1			
19 ▍RAH            	 19 63 ▍KIN Nepö Kinder                                  Urotovsky-Gatutin                            	Laps Down: 2			
20 ▍ARC            	 20 18 ▍RAH Giancarlo Rahel                              WGPC Motorworks                              	Laps Down: 2			
21 ▍JOH            	 21 94 ▍LAN Ryker Lane                                   Nexus Racing                                 	Laps Down: 2			
22 ▍KIN            	 22 95 ▍BZW Hanna Berezowska                             TACH GPC                                     	Laps Down: 2			
23 ▍NÜL            	 23 11 ▍OKF Jjuko Okafor                                 Piers Ivchenko                               	Laps Down: 2			
24 ▍STO            	 24 82 ▍LMN Kinu Luminna                                 Preston Autos                                	Laps Down: 2			
25 ▍LMN            	DNF 84 ▍ANG Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling                  Preston Autos                                	Ret. lap 30			
26 ▍FTZ            	DNF 33 ▍BLA Sam Blaatschapen                             Pryfors Bilar                                	Ret. lap 29			
27 ▍OKF            	DNF 23 ▍C23 Cocoabo #23                                  Race Eelandii VTGP                           	Ret. lap 18			
28 ▍BZW            	DNF 74 ▍FTZ Adonis Fitzpatrick                           HMG Grand Prix                               	Ret. lap 16

Drivers' standings

Pos # ▍DRV Name                                          Team [Engine]                                                                                Tyres                                        Pts
 1 88 ▍PRE Ted Pressley                                  Ælund Grand Prix [Ælund CMYK-T20V8H]                                                         Tropicorp Racing Supply                      108
 2 51 ▍CRU R.L. Cruisin                                  Piers Ivchenko [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                              Brimstone                                    104
 3 94 ▍LAN Ryker Lane                                    Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         76
 4 77 ▍TII iBen Toralmintii                              Race Eelandii VTGP [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                    Tropicorp Racing Supply                      68
 5 17 ▍LAU Janne Laukkanen                               Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         68
 6 27 ▍NÜL Dario Nülkeschlager                           Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                       Tropicorp Racing Supply                      64
 7 55 ▍LNG Gil Langdon                                   KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      63
 8 89 ▍GTA Abdoulaye Goita                               Ælund Grand Prix [Ælund CMYK-T20V8H]                                                         Tropicorp Racing Supply                      61
 9 12 ▍SOM Ron Sommer                                    Viska [Viska RG Motors]                                                                      Phoenician-In Motion                         53
10 37 ▍HAU Laura Haukanna                                Pryfors Bilar [Pryfors Bilar]                                                                Phoenician-In Motion                         44
11 22 ▍JOH Nini Johnsilvaturr                            Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                       Tropicorp Racing Supply                      43
12 66 ▍VVV Vincent Von Visp                              Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                           Solymok                                      33
13 84 ▍ANG Angela Stella Tan Fang Ling                   Preston Autos [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                    Brimstone                                    26
14 63 ▍KIN Nepö Kinder                                   Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                           Solymok                                      25
15 74 ▍FTZ Adonis Fitzpatrick                            HMG Grand Prix [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                   Tropicorp Racing Supply                      24
16  1 ▍FAE Brendan Faloe                                 Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    23
17 82 ▍LMN Kinu Luminna                                  Preston Autos [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                    Brimstone                                    22
18 14 ▍VIA Skiia Vialiv                                  HMG Grand Prix [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                   Tropicorp Racing Supply                      20
19 23 ▍C23 Cocoabo #23                                   Race Eelandii VTGP [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                    Tropicorp Racing Supply                      18
20 96 ▍ARC William Archer                                Viska [Viska RG Motors]                                                                      Phoenician-In Motion                         11
21 95 ▍BZW Hanna Berezowska                              TACH GPC [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                                   Brimstone                                    8
22 13 ▍PLA Pierre-Louis Archer                           WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              8
23  3 ▍KUY Sakiteno Kuyara                               TACH GPC [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                                   Brimstone                                    7
24 85 ▍STO Olivia Stone                                  Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    6
25 91 ▍KAL Naveen Kalkar                                 WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              6
26 58 ▍KAM Shuhei Kamado                                 KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      4
27 30 ▍MAR Otto Markul                                   WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              4
28  9 ▍BAT Batu Tüvshinbayar                             KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      4
29 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                      169
  2 NIM ▍Nexus Racing [Nexus Racing Paragon Warp]                                                     Phoenician-In Motion                         144
  3 TMB ▍Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                       Tropicorp Racing Supply                      107
  4 DOU ▍Piers Ivchenko [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                              Brimstone                                    105
  5 V&T ▍Race Eelandii VTGP [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]                                                    Tropicorp Racing Supply                      86
  6 ANM ▍KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]                                                             Solymok                                      68
  7 AUR ▍Viska [Viska RG Motors]                                                                      Phoenician-In Motion                         64
  8 PDN ▍Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]                                                           Solymok                                      58
  9 HVZ ▍Preston Autos [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                    Brimstone                                    48
 10 DCS ▍Pryfors Bilar [Pryfors Bilar]                                                                Phoenician-In Motion                         44
 11 HÜL ▍HMG Grand Prix [Preston Autos Skychief V6]                                                   Tropicorp Racing Supply                      44
 12 ESM ▍Cygnus [Sturmburgher PD02/25]                                                                Brimstone                                    29
 13 WGP ▍WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                            Blue Sulphurate                              21
 14 HDR ▍TACH GPC [Franklin WGP-X2]                                                                   Brimstone                                    15
 15 LIS ▍Eminent [Sidus 616W-1]                                                                       Blue Sulphurate                              0

by **Valentine Z** » Sun May 04, 2025 1:27 pm

Part 18 – The Uncertainty.

1st Cpt. Angela Stella Trista Josephine Natalie Rv. E. Tps. “The Eternal Explorer” Bethany Alyssa Valeska Payton. Mikayla Gosling Josie Rowan Serenity Chelsea Lynette Hannah Tan Fang Ling met up with Kinu Luminna, the two of them starting up a pep talk with one another. “Say, Angela… are you a little nervous about this?” Kinu started to ask, with Angela giving a nod in return, “Yeap, for sure. We… we could have done a bit better for that second last race. The Esmerelian Grand Prix. I’m sure you did your best and I am not saying this against you. It’s just- ahh, I could have done better.” In truth, Angela does not need to explain herself too much, for Kinu knows. He is relatively new to her in terms of a professional relationship, but he too has taken a little bit of the time to learn more about her. That is, how Angela was trying her best with Cygnus and failing at it, and then not getting the offer when she tried to apply for them (not that it was Cygnus’ fault; it was a tough sell to re-offer someone who only contributed a point to the team), and then come Preston Autos – while she (along with Kinu) has obtained quite a comeback, the fact that they are still far behind both in terms of the drivers’ standings and the team standing. As always, Preston Autos have reassured them of this time and time again, like that first time whereby she got her first largest upset in terms of points. “I suppose it’s a little bit about the art of letting go, in a way,” Angela started off with a soft nod, “I mean, I am not saying to give up, oh definitely not! More of, well, sometimes you need to ease a little bit on the accelerator. Like how we are not going to win simply by pressing down on the accelerator all the way. We have to give and take, ease it off a little bit here and there, and then that is how we win. Or at least get more of the points.”

“Everyone will have to start somewhere, I reckon. I’m sure you know of it too, so for myself? I started off in my teens at local karting championships. It was… quite a tough gauntlet, I will say. You have the combination of yourself being new to the thrill and difficulties of racing… and you’re also a 14 year old,” Kinu paused for a while as he chuckled, with Angela joining him a little bit. He then continued on, “You had blunders, you have doubts, both from a team that you were in and from yourself, and you wonder if all of it was worth it. Then, you took it in, take it slow, and think it through for a moment. You start gaining places, you start winning. You started developing harder and harder, training and all. I’m sure you have had some examples like that too, right?” Angela nodded once again, herself also having went through something similar to that. “When I was like around 8 or 9 years old, I decided that I would like and want to be an astronaut. Of course, it didn’t come easy as well, and there were quite a lot of difficulties – both in terms of the academics and the physical fitness of it all. There were uncertainties, on top of the, well, I grew up when Valentine Z was still recovering of sorts, so, the Valentian Space Agency was not taking up too much shape back then. Sure, it was something we would love to do, but people’s well-being was rightfully prioritized.”

“Soon, we got the funding to get going, and of course – the technology that we would need to research from the start once again. While we have the technology that is enough to send satellites to space, and to maybeeee have a manned space flight to the Moon, everything else we would have to start slowly and surely. The ships that started as feeble and was unable to go to the Moon let alone to Mars? Then yes, we have developed and went further and further into space.” Angela paused for a moment, “I do get the point, of course, and like I said, I appreciate you talking about these with me, on top of having someone who listens to me – other than the Valentians, who also are sweethearts, to be clear. Point is – yeah, these developments and experience start small, but I was just wondering if I would need to change and adapt a little bit faster or something, you know what I mean? It’s one thing for the Valentians and myself to develop our space agency slowly and surely, because we have time. Here? We only have a matter of 14 races or so, give or take. Kinu, I would like to ask – was I being too careful out in the race tracks?”

It was quite a difficult question for him. It was both a rhetorical question, and not. His understanding is that Angela can handle the cars that have been given to her. He (along with Preston Autos) have seen how she has handled the cars and the simulation with such finesse and expertise. However, there is also the fact that she was too careful. “In all honesty? I would say yes to that question, Angela. In terms of getting the qualification spots, and then overtaking out there – I think it could be done a bit more now and then.” Angela smiled, “I appreciate that, thank you. We all have something we need to work on, and I just feel that often times, we need someone else to confirm that, someone beside us. So, let’s do our best, and… maybe regardless of what is going to happen in the final race, we will see each other again soon, yeah?” Kinu nodded, “I would love that. All the best to you as well, Angela. You have been a great team member as well. I know it’s only been recently that we have talked, but I still have had a lot of fun. Thank you for looking out for me as well.” Angela reached out, offering her hand as the two then shook.

[My thanks to Auruna for giving me a bit more liberty with Kinu for this RP, and for the subsequent one. Sorry about that – this was supposed to be done before the cutoff, but I was a bit late. Might be writing another one.]

by **Turori** » Sun May 04, 2025 2:06 pm

WGPC 21 Statistics & Data Zone: FINAL

WGPC Season 21 - Average Finishing Position: 
1 - Janne Laukkanen   [ 7.3]
2 - Vincent Von Visp  [ 8.8]
3 - iBen Toralmintii  [ 9.7]
4 - R.L. Cruisin      [10.0]
5 - Ron Sommer        [10.5]
6 - Ted Pressley      [10.6]

WGPC Season 21 - Rookie Points: 

Pos # ▍DRV Name                                          Team [Engine]                          Pts  (Change)

 1 55 ▍LNG Gil Langdon                                   KISMO [Kissan Motors KS.APEX-01]         63 (+14)
 2 12 ▍SOM Ron Sommer                                    Viska [Viska RG Motors]                  53 (+8)
 3 22 ▍JOH Nini Johnsilvaturr                            Pressley Racing [Tropicorp TRE-2T24V8]   43  --
 4 66 ▍VVV Vincent Von Visp                              Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]       33 (+7)
 5 63 ▍KIN Nepö Kinder                                   Urotovsky-Gatutin [UrGa Zh-S-1000]       25  --
 6 95 ▍BZW Hanna Berezowska                              TACH GPC  [Franklin WGP-X2]              8   --
-- 13 ▍Pierre-Louis Archer                               WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]        8   --
 8  3 ▍BZW Sakiteno Kuyara                               TACH GPC  [Franklin WGP-X2]              7  (+3)
 9 91 ▍KAL Naveen Kalkar                                 WGPC Motorworks [Franklin WGP-X2]        6   --
10 58 ▍KAM Shuhei Kamado                                                                          4   --
-- 30 ▍MAR Otto Markul                                                                            4   --
12 21 ▍HAZ Nik Hazrin Lutfi                                                                       1   --

-- 16 ▍Azalia Kawakai                        
-- 18 ▍Giancarlo Rahel
-- 10 ▍Ankei Souzare

WGPC Season 21 - Most Pole Positions: 

.1 -     Janne Laukkanen     2
   - (R) Gil Langdon         2
 2 -     Laura Haukanna      1
   -     Dario Nülkeschläger 1
   -     Skiia Vialiv        1
   -     Ted Pressley        1
   -     iBen Toralmintii    1
   -     Ron Sommer          1

WGPC 21: Positions Over Grid (Average +/- per race completed)

.1 :: LAU +4.6
 2 :: SOM +3.7
 3 :: JOH +3.5
 4 :: VVV +3.0
 5 :: NÜL +2.8
 6 :: KAM +2.0
 7 :: LMN +2.0
 8 :: RAH +1.6
 9 :: FAE +1.5
 10 :: BZW +0.9
 11 :: LAN +0.5
 12 :: TII +0.3
 13 :: HAU +0.3
 14 :: HAZ 0.0
 
 15 :: ARC -0.3
 16 :: PLA -0.4
 17 :: BLA -0.7
 18 :: STO -0.8
 19 :: LNG -0.8
 20 :: TUV -1.4
 21 :: CRU -1.7
 22 :: MAR -2.0
 23 :: AKS -2.0
 24 :: KIN -2.2
 25 :: VIA -2.3
 26 :: GTA -2.8
 27 :: PRE -2.9
 28 :: C23 -3.1
 29 :: DEV -4.3
 30 :: ANG -4.4
 31 :: FTZ -4.6
 
** :: KAL +11.3

(Will update this post with any further stats or context to follow, but wanted folks to have the data as quick as i could tee it up for post season discussions

)

by **Recuecn** » Thu May 08, 2025 6:35 am

Everything was going wrong for Vincent Von Visp. The Reçuecian government was doing its best to freeze his assets, but that wasn’t even the worst of his concerns, since a lot of his assets had been spirited away anyway, during the heists two weeks ago. Many of Vincent’s personal staff had gone missing as rumors started to spread that he might be unable to pay them. Untrue rumors, Vincent reassured himself. The cost of keeping his pilots, chauffeurs, and other household employees paid was insignificant next to the amounts he was worried about now.

However, the problems were beginning to compound themselves. Visp Financier had lost so much of its reserves that it had almost collapsed. Capital Saône, his family’s banking conglomerate, had bailed him out, but along the way they’d strong-armed him out of his own company’s driver’s seat. He was losing his empire.

His family found other ways, too, to make themselves a nuisance, even beyond their cutthroat business heartlessness. They hounded him with phone calls and questions, none of which he had answers to. Vincent had instructed Valérie to come up with excuses, but rather than giving up, his relatives only redoubled their efforts. Vincent was glad he was abroad; the only thing stopping them from turning up at his door was the secrecy he kept surrounding his location.

But hiding from his family was easy, compared to hiding from the government. Vincent had been unable to return to Reçueçn, and ever since Valérie had told him that the Ministère des Douanes et Impôts might file an extradition request, he’d been forced to play the fugitive abroad, too.

That was the worst of all. In Esmerel, to sneak past the WGPO security cordon unidentified, Vincent had been forced to disguise himself as a bird. It was indescribably humiliating. He’d managed, fortunately, to steal Cocoabo #23’s trackpass, so once wearing a bird costume hoodie Vincent had been able to access the circuit. But pretending to be an animal was quite literally dehumanizing. Vincent’s rage grew. Whoever had pulled the heist was responsible for this—it was thanks to their framing him that in public, he was now forced to communicate with Valérie by squawking.

Vincent had so many questions for Yakov, but in his Cocoabo disguise, there was never an opportunity to speak with him. Vincent was lucky to sneak into his car for practice, qualifying, and race day at Forest Cross, but beyond that, he felt forced to lay low as long as possible.

Only one person outside the UrGa garage (and Valérie) had recognized him—Indori Volcanasaur. Vincent was forced to turn to his old WGP2 nemesis for help. He hoped Indori could forget about their old rivalry, which had always been deeply spiteful.

The good news was that Indori seemed helpful, although Valérie advised Vincent not to trust him too much. But the Tropicorp driver helped Vincent blend in as a Cocoabo and gave him warnings about the whereabouts of the real Cocoabo #23 to help avoid an awkward encounter. Vincent thanked Indori profusely and promised to repay him, although of course he had no intention of keeping his word.

With Indori’s help, Vincent successfully made it through race-weekend in Esmerel without being caught. Next week was the finale of the WGP championship. Vincent decided he had to be there, no matter the risk. He wouldn’t back down from a challenge, and intended to see the season through. When the last checkered flag waved, then he could figure out how he was going to solve his problems. Maybe with the championship over, he’d be able to meet with Yakov and figure out what had happened.

Vincent decided to fly straight to Liventia. He couldn’t return to Reçueçn, as he usually did, and he couldn’t go back to the team headquarters during the week as most WGPC drivers did—he knew the ministry had begun its investigation in Pridnestrovia and didn’t feel it was safe there. It was frustrating, however, to spend another week without a chance to speak with Yakov. (Vincent had finally learned not to make careless telephone calls that might give away his movements). As Vincent’s private jet made its way from Vertress to Talbott, he discussed his thoughts on the old man with Valérie.

“It’s hard for me to believe he could have betrayed me,” he said. “I'm not too naive to think he wouldn't stab someone in the back if it helped him, but he had more to gain from working with me. I know he's a businessman like me and wouldn't throw that kind of opportunity away.”

“Then why do you keep speaking of his ‘betrayal’?” asked Valérie.

“I don’t know what other explanation there is for what happened,” Vincent said. “I’m sure there must be one. But look at the facts as I have them. First: I needed Courbet out of the way so there would be no witnesses to challenge the insurance claims I need to file to get the ministry off my back. Yurievsky knew that was essential to me, and he agreed to help me. Second: someone did show up to la Tour Visp to deal with Courbet. They hauled him off hostage and I assume he’s dead, but I don’t know that for sure, and although I assumed at the time that those were Yurievsky’s people, I don’t know that for sure either.”

“And third?”

“Third, the same people who took Courbet also took four million guilders from my bank vault. So, either they are Yurievsky’s henchmen and he’s turned on me and robbed me—” Vincent ground his teeth—”or they’re not Yurievsky’s people, in which case he’s still failed me, because he didn’t deal with Courbet as he promised he would.”

“But Courbet is still gone. And other than him, you were the only hostage taken. Surely that can’t be coincidental?”

“I tend to agree with you,” said Vincent. “Which points me toward the conclusion that my own boss just stole four million guilders from me.”

“What about the heist at the SCR?” asked Valérie. “The gold was worth far more than the cash at la Tour Visp.”

“Yes, that’s one of two more things that seems far too unlikely to be a coincidence. It seems apparent that the robbery at Visp Financier was also a distraction to allow the gold at the SCR to be stolen. So if they were working together, then Yurievsky has taken billions from us.”

“Unless, of course, these weren’t his men.”

“In which case, why did they take Courbet? And also, why did the douaniers show up at the exact moment I was leaving the bank with the robbers? Now the whole government thinks I orchestrated the heist! Not only has Capital Saône lost billions in assets, I’m being framed for it! Surely someone tipped off the douaniers so they would get there just at that moment.”

Valérie spoke carefully, trying to offer a voice of reason without upsetting Vincent, whose rage was visibly growing. “Or,” she said, “they came because they had a warrant for you and knew you’d just returned from Hapilopper. Maybe it really was just unlucky. Maybe these robbers are totally unaffiliated with the Pridnestrovians, and they just happened to take Courbet hostage because he was the guard on duty.”

Vincent harrumphed.

“Or maybe,” Valérie said, “the two heists are unrelated, Yurievsky is only responsible for taking the four hundred million in cash, and he’s planning to give it back to you as soon as he has a chance.”

“He’s had over a week!” yelled Vincent.

“But you’ve been hiding the whole time,” Valérie pointed out.

“I don’t know,” said Vincent. “All I know is this—I still have some resources… and I still have you, and you’re a powerful weapon in your own right. I’m not down for the count yet. Whenever I find out who’s responsible for this…” Vincent growled like a bloodthirsty wolf. “I’m going to make them wish they’d never been born.”

The jet touched down in Talbott, and Vincent and Valérie went through customs as they normally would, without any disguises or stolen documents. Vincent said he felt safer here in Liventia—with the heist more than a week past now, the adrenaline of the gunfight and car chase was fading into a memory. It was beginning to feel as though things were finally blowing over. Valérie found Vincent a private vacation rental under a fake name so he could avoid the Autodrome, in case the authorities were looking for him there, but when Friday rolled around, he still made it to the circuit for practice and qualifying. Ilarion Osipov, the race engineer Vincent had tried unsuccessfully to be rid of, was still there, and his surprised disappointment at Vincent turning up again was obvious. Clearly he’d been hoping that after a couple weekends of Vincent being mostly an absent fugitive, he’d have gone away into hiding for good by now.

Practice was uneventful. Vincent finished midpack, and Nepö finished just before him. Vincent tried not to let that bug him. But qualifying was spectacular. Vincent set the fastest lap in the first heat, and in the second, put up a time only a hundredth of a second slower than Ron Sommer’s, meaning he’d be starting in the front row of the grid.

“This is my chance,” he told Valérie Saturday evening. “If I can win the final race of the season, in front of the eyes of the multiverse, I can finally prove that these feckless ‘heroes’ they call racing drivers are all frauds. And hopefully I can clear my own name, too.”

Vincent was full of hope and excitement as he lined up in P2 after the formation lap the next morning. His eyes were glued to the lights as they came on one at a time—he was locked in, ready to give the race his all. As the lights went out and the grid roared away, he was focused on his start. He got off the line well. He caught every detail.

The only thing he didn’t see was a certain Tropicorp AOGP driver at the Race Eelandii paddock, having an energetic discussion with the race officials and pointing at Vincent’s scarlet #66 car.

As for the race—it was thrilling. Hailed immediately as one of the greatest WGPC races of all time, the WGPC 21 Grand Prix of Liventia was exciting and climactic. Both titles were to be decided over the course of the race, with Ted Pressley, who’d been behind in the standings, winning the driver’s championship by the narrowest of margins. If he’d finished a single position further back, there would have been a tie between him and R.L. Cruisin.

The biggest story of the race, however, was Toralmintii. Everyone knew he was on the verge of retirement. One of the WGPC’s oldest and most experienced veterans, the former champion had made an abysmal title defense last year, and was on the hunt for vindication. At the Autodrome, he found it in spades. iBen put forth a dominating performance, setting a blistering pace that left most of the grid in the dust. When he eventually took the checkered flag, the fans were on their feet, cheering and celebrating Toralmintii’s last blaze of glory. It was one final glimpse of what the sport’s winningest driver could do.

Vincent’s own race was humble compared to the excitement of the big names, and he would have been angry at dropping positions, but along the way he set the fastest lap, and decided he was happy with that. If an all-time great like Toralmintii was going to win the race, the least Vincent could do was one-up his lap-time.

Vincent, like almost every other car on the circuit, was a lap behind the leaders when iBen won. He was still trying to fight off Cruisin, who was trying to get past both him and Ron Sommer, the way the four race leaders had. But as Vincent came out of turn nineteen onto the final straight, he saw something strange ahead of him. A car was pulling out of the pit lane, but it was not a race car.

It looked like a safety car, but instead of orange and green, its lights flashed red and blue. In large letters on its side was the word ‘POLICE’. Vincent soared across the finish line and past the checkered flag, but he was entirely distracted. The police car tried to block his way. Vincent started to drive past it, but as he did, he looked up and saw a race marshal waving a black flag.

“What is happening?” Vincent asked on the radio.

No one at UrGa seemed to know either. “You finished P6 Vincent, great race. Come back to the pits and we’ll figure out what this is all about.”

The cop followed him, as he wound his way around the circuit, or tried to. The police car couldn’t keep up with a WGPC car, and Vincent watched it disappear in his rearview mirror. Its lights were still flashing, and the siren was on now, like it was trying to pull him over on the highway.

When he made it back to the paddock, Vincent didn’t have to wait for the police to catch up to him. A second police car was waiting for him there. Vincent was still climbing out of his cockpit, steering wheel in hand, as a pair of officers walked up to him. He could see red badges on their shoulders with a gold bar and three stars—the flag of Liventia.

“Vincent Von Visp,” said one officer, “As an officer of the law of Liventia, and at the request of the government of Reçueçn, I am placing you under arrest.”

The other officer stepped forward, pulling out a pair of handcuffs. “Please put your hands behind your back.”

“This is ridiculous!” sputtered Vincent. “I haven’t broken the law here! I’ve only been in Liventia for four days! What am I being charged with!?”

The first police car pulled into the paddock, and two more officers jumped out. One was another Liventian cop. The other, Vincent recognized. He wore a douanier’s uniform, and his badge was a familiar coat of arms, bearing a striped chevron—the Reçuecian insignia.

It was Benetto Conti.

He nodded to the Liventian officers. “Thank you for your assistance, gentlemen.” He produced a large warrant with a gleam in his eye, and showed it to Vincent with unconcealed pride. “Monsieur Von Visp,” he said, “I have a warrant for your arrest on charges of customs fraud.” He pulled out another sheet of paper—another warrant. “And here is another, with more charges—two counts of grand larceny, four counts of criminal conspiracy, one count of kidnapping, aggravated assault, police evasion—”

“I know my rights!” interrupted Vincent. “You have no jurisdiction here!”

“Sir, you are under arrest by the authority of the government of Liventia,” said the police officer with the handcuffs. “Please put your hands behind your back.” The third officer placed a hand on his holster.

Grumbling, Vincent complied. The Liventian police pushed him into the back of their squad car and as the WGPC began to celebrate its finale, Vincent was driven away to the police station where he found himself in a holding cell.

“He’ll stay in Liventian custody until a judge approves the extradition request and grants the transfer,” one of the officers said to Conti. “But we’re happy to cooperate with you in the meantime. If you want to question him, feel free.”

Conti thanked the officer and stepped into the cell with Vincent.

“Don’t I get a phone call or something?” Vincent said.

“That’s just something in American movies,” said Benetto. “But I’m feeling gracious.” He glanced at Vincent and realized that the billionaire, who had been arrested still wearing his fire suit, did not have his own phone with him. “Here, you can use my cell.”

“Can I have some privacy?” said Vincent.

“Sure.”

A moment later, Vincent was alone in the cell, and he dialed Yakov’s number.

It was hard to judge the UrGa financial advisor’s tone over the weak cell connection. He sounded surprised, or maybe skeptical. “Vincent?” he said. “What is this number you’re calling from? I don’t recognize it.”

“I know, I know, it’s not a secure line. I can’t help it. Look, I’ve been arrested; I’m in a holding cell somewhere in Talbott right now. I think it’s for the heist. But I don’t even know what’s going on. You said you were going to solve all my problems!”

“Well, I took care of one, didn’t I?” said Yakov. “Courbet won’t be causing you any trouble…”

“So it was you!” Vincent was furious. “You stole my money, you son of a bitch!”

“Vincent, the cash is all in an account in Copper Cuprum now. The name on the account is Espoir Neuf-investyr.”

“Oh, you must be real proud of yourself,” Vincent yelled. “You’ve got my money all hidden away offshore where nobody can find it, and I bet you’re feeling untouchable. Even the account name is a dig at me. Destroying everything I built wasn’t enough for you, huh? You had to rub a little salt in the wound!? You have all the gold, too, don’t you!”

Yakov hesitated just for a moment, and Vincent didn’t need to hear anything else from him.

“Well you watch your back, motherfucker! You’re not as untouchable as you think! You think you’re all high and mighty with your spetsnaz operatives and your government friends, and you can just suck the blood of that dog, Vincent Von Visp! Well guess what! I’m not just gonna roll over! I’m not your pawn, no, I’m going to be your worst nightmare! I’ve lost a lot, but I know how to fight, and I always bounce back! I’m sure they’re going to send me to prison, but you mark your calendar. The day I get out, you better start sleeping with one eye open!”

Vincent didn’t bother hanging up. He threw the phone across the room and it shattered on the bars of the cell.

Conti heard the noise and ran back. “What the fuck, you ingrate!”

“Fuck off,” said Vincent.

“I tried to help you,” said Conti. “And it turns out you were just as evil as everybody said. Well I hope you’re happy with where you’ve gotten yourself. Get used to being in a cell. Once we get back to Reçueçn, you’re going away for a loooong time.”

by **Recuecn** » Thu May 08, 2025 6:59 am

Reçueçn, 28 years ago

Moussa stepped off the train holding Abdoulaye by the hand. In the other arm, he held a sleeping Malick, leaning against his shoulder.

"Look, Abdoulaye," said Moussa. "This is our new home!"

Abdoulaye hadn't said anything since they'd landed in Sicily. He'd followed his father in a daze. The shock had sent him into a fugue state so deep that he had to be led by the hand everywhere Moussa took him.

"Everything will be new here," Moussa said, hoping that something, at least, was getting through to his son. "It will be strange at first, but you will come to like it."

Malick woke, rubbing his eyes sleepily and sitting up in the crook of Moussa's elbow. Moussa set him down on his feet. It seemed he had caught some of the conversation. "This is our home?" he asked. "This is a train station."

"Come with me," said Moussa. He led the way out of the train station and into the street. Centre ville in Reçueçn was like nothing Malick or Abdoulaye had seen before. Cobbled streets were lined with tall, stone buildings. Compared to the bustle of Bamako, the roads felt empty, but the cars that did pass by looked shiny and futuristic compared to the dilapidated, obsolete models on the roads in Mali. A castle could be seen on the bluff to the south, banners flapping in the breeze over the parapet. Down the street, you could catch a glimpse of the skyscrapers in the business district, and far beyond that, the jagged horizon was white with snowcapped mountains.

"I don't know where our house, will be," said Moussa. "But this country—this is our home now."

Abdoulaye didn't know what to think. After such a long journey, it was finally over. After everything that had happened, this was the moment that it had all been for. The race was finished. He thought maybe he wanted to cry, but he wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel.

A cab drove up and slowed to a stop at the entrance to the station. The driver rolled down the window and offered them a ride.

"Non, merci," called Moussa. He remembered the stories of how expensive taxis were here. Leaning down to his boys, he pointed at the car. "That's what I am going to drive," he said. "We'll find a refugee center to sleep at tonight. Then tomorrow, I will figure out how to get a job driving one of those cars."

Abdoulaye nodded. He didn't understand.

"What about us?" asked Malick. "What will we do without Mama?"

Moussa picked up his boys and hugged them tightly. "I'll take care of you," he said. "As long as I'm driving, we'll be okay."

That sentence would linger in Abdoulaye's memory. Long after his recollection of the rest of the journey had been suppressed as a trauma response to his mother's loss, he would remember those words. They sank into his stomach and settled in his soul. Eventually, his father's quote became his own mantra.

As long as I'm driving, we'll be okay.

(O.O) · by **TJUN-ia** » Thu May 08, 2025 4:29 pm

Final Stats
Langdon - P3 (14 points, only behind iBen Toralmintii and Ted Pressley)
Batu - P10 (1 point)
Donny - DNF (Lap 16)

Driver's Championship Top 3 - Ted Pressley (108), R.L. Cruisin (104), Ryker Lane (76)
Batu - P28 (4), Donny - P15 (24)
Teammates: Langdon - P7 (63), PLA - P22 (8), Kalkar - P25 (5), Rahel - N/A (0)

Constructor's Top 3 - Ælund (169), Nexus (144), Pressley Racing (107)
KISMO - 6th (68), WGPC Motorworks - 13th (21)

For one final time, Batu Tüvshinbayar partook in WGPC 21...and it finally seemed to click.
Around the Talbott Autodrome, he fell to Brendan Faloe, but that was only for 9th after Cocoabo #37 ended up DNFing from the event.
For lap after lap, he focused on simply getting every corner right, every braking zone right, and even while iBen Toralmintii was booking it, en route to a famous swansong win, he didn't give up all the way to the flag. Because he had scored a point. A KISMO point. One point that hopefully showed KISMO that he was capable of driving this car next season...whatever that looks like.

Seeing iBen claim that famous win, celebrated like it was the last day on Earth, it felt like the universe put a bow on his career and Batu was certainly happy for him. As he was for the new World Champ Ted Pressley, who Batu congratulated in parc ferme. After everything he's been through over the past few years, this was a long time coming. It seemed poetic that as one Pressley departs the Earth, another conquers it on the track. What will happen now between the new champ and the "rival" team named after his father remains to be seen, but that will certainly be one thing to keep an eye on this offseason.

Offseason. That word carried a lot of weight to it now. Batu was, once again, out of the car for a while...and he didn't really know how to feel. The journey to make it back here was tougher than expected but once he did make it back, he didn't want the season to end. But now that it was over, it was time to take stock with familiar faces. Next week, he would be in Tundra Falls in Newmanistan to see the NSSCRA season off with an interesting meeting afoot - one in which both Batu and Lam were humble with their performances while Tshering had crashed out again and was looking for answers. Once more, it felt like the chess player was the odd one out...but hopefully, meeting in the flesh will make things better.

Speaking of meeting in the flesh...the time had finally arrived. After talking to the media one final time, one final race debrief and one final shower in the paddock, the moment had arrived - Batu and Adonis were going to meet up once more. Donny DNFd on Lap 16 of this race, ending a terrible campaign at HMG that seemed to spiral downwards the moment Batu reappeared on the grid...a trend that Batu had thought about in the back of his mind over the last few days. If it did turn out that this wasn't coincidental at all, if Batu's return to the grid had indeed caused Donny into a crisis in that car...the Batu didn't know what he'd do at that point.

But that was a matter for later. Right now, Donny wanted to talk...and to Batu, that was all that mattered. This conversation shouldn't matter, its just a meeting between friends, but the fact there was a certain degree of privacy to it meant that this couldn't be treated as "normal" at all. Whatever Donny had to say, he wanted to share it privately - so Batu had to follow that request. There would be no special clothing for this occasion, no rituals to complete, no contemplation either. Batu was going to go there and just let it all happen...because that would be best.

No gimmicks, no dreams, no nightmares. Let's go.
Let it all play out.

Batu Tüvshinbayar will return.
Lane Carter? Shaken, but not stirred...

by **Tumbra** » Fri May 09, 2025 9:39 am

Iskajärvi
Present

"Good afternoon, Mr. Pressley," came the low voice of Romeo Latibeaudiere, Ted's therapist. In the weeks that Ted had been seeing Romeo for his sessions — Ælund had booked him for them — Ted noticed that Romeo had an accent that was vaguely unplaceable — was it Kyrasian^[French]? Licentian^[Dutch]? His surname indicated he might've come from somewhere like Cobrio, but there was nothing distinctly Cobre in his office or his personality.

"Hey. And you can call me Ted, Romeo," replied Ted as he settled down on the couch. "I mean..."

"If that is what you wish for me to call you, then I will not refuse," replied Romeo. "Shoes off if you want to lie on the couch, please, I get it's very comfortable."

"Right. Sorry." Ted slipped out of his shoes before settling in on the couch.

"You seem more relaxed today. I don't recall you wanting to lie on the couch before. Is it because of the world title?"

"So you've heard?" He closed his eyes, trying to make himself comfortable.

"I'd have to be a hermit to not have heard, Ted. Which, by the way, congratulations."

Ted himself didn't realise it, but Romeo noticed that Ted visibly exhaled and relaxed when Romeo congratulated the WGPC driver on the title. "Shall we start with that for today?"

"What? Oh, I didn't —" Ted's eyes sprung open again, only to see Romeo leisurely jotting down something on his notepad. "Didn't think that was on our list of topics we could discuss."

"We can discuss it if you'd like, Ted, particularly because it relates to how you process emotions." He looked up at Ted and offered a kindly smile. "Now, I've read the race report and all, but I'll admit — I'm not all that familiar with how the sport really works. Why don't we begin with, let's say, sharing with me what happened in Liventia, and how you felt during it?"

Talbott
Sunday Morning

"Looks like no rain," murmured Ted to Urmo, his race engineer, as the skies looked much clearer than they did an hour before. The Tumbran tapped his foot, almost impatiently, as he looked at the AGP-007 — for this week, adorned in red for some reason — as the engineers prepared her. Her, Ted had begun to refer to his car as, even though he hadn't given her a name yet. He'd treated her well — bar that one week in Hapilopper, where he'd foolishly tried to overtake one Chase Cutter — and she'd treated him...well...less nicely back. A gearbox failure in Turori and a negative reaction to being near the other Chase Cutter in Aji no Moto left him needing to play catch-up to surprise championship leader RL Cruisin.

"Surprised? The clouds have always gathered in the morning, then dissipated right as we're about to go on track."

Ted looked down at his watch, as if it would provide him with answers; but the numbers were already seared into his brain. A ten-point gap meant that if he won the race, Cruisin had to finish third and below for him to win the World Championship. If he finished second, Cruisin had to finish sixth and below, and if he finished third, eighth and below. Fourth and Cruisin had to not score for Ted to win. There were several problems, however; he was going to be starting with Cruisin right next to him — and he was going to be starting on the wrong side of the grid. Fate had somehow dictated that Ted would tie twice that day, first in the first session of qualifying with a KISMO, and secondly with Cruisin in the Piers Ivchenko. The first time he'd set the time first, so he was ranked higher in the determination of who would make it through to the top-ten shootout; the second time he'd set the timing after Cruisin, which meant that he'd take the grid spot beneath him.

"You nervous?" Urmo grinned, seeing that Ted hadn't responded. A season of working together meant that he was used to Ted's tics by now. There was a sort of easy camaraderie about them; Urmo knew what information Ted liked to hear, and Ted liked that Urmo always tried.

"Yeah," replied Ted, looking back down at his shoe. It was at times like these that the worst of Ted — the superstitious, anxious, indecisive Ted, the suddenly religious Ted, the Ted who was snappy on the radio, the demanding, competitive Ted — began to pop out. Some he'd allow himself to indulge in — he'd privately moaned to Urmo all weekend about the red car, even as he'd topped the timesheets in practice and had another above-average qualifying session to cap his run of really rather impressive qualifying positions — while others he'd kept under wraps. Urmo had commented about how quiet Ted had been on the radio in practice; Ted had quietly responded after he was out of the car that he didn't want to accidentally sound rude or be mean.

"Well, there's always a chance."

"Of what?"

"Making up the ten-point gap. What're you aiming for?"

"Second," Ted said without missing a beat. "Gives us enough leeway. He'll have to make up two places. "

"Not the win?" Urmo gently ribbed.

Ted shrugged. "'Spect Somner will win. Pole's been too powerful this season..."

Talbott
Lap 0 of 50

It had been nearly two years since there had been a race in Liventia — the last time the circus had descended upon its Liventian home was at the start of the twentieth season — but everything felt familiar, in a way. Ted had scored points here both times he'd raced here; but the fact that Cruisin had won at his debut race didn't seem to help his nerves. Nevertheless, Cruisin came over and peered into his cockpit, clasping Ted's hands briefly and patting his shoulder as if to wish the Tumbran good luck; the Tumbran responded in kind. There was no ill-will between them, really; both had sort of accidentally fallen into the title fight, Cruisin coming from behind as a dark horse to throw a spanner in the brief Janne-Ted ascendancy; Ted having vehemently denied being in the fight for the championship until it became untenable to do so. Both of them were championship rivals, but both had their own shadows to outrace. For Cruisin, it was the long shadow of being the longest-tenured driver on the grid but without the success that his compatriot Toralmintii had found; for Ted, it was the shadow of his father and his own reputation of being just a solid midfield driver. Hopefully that latter part had been shed this season.

Once he was alone, however, he felt more comfortable. Was this something every WGPC driver felt? There wasn't much time for him to ruminate, however, as after one last tap on the helmet, he was left alone with the other twenty-seven drivers who'd taken the grid and they were peeling off for the formation lap.

And at that moment, all thought of the world championship disappeared. For now, at least.

Iskajärvi
Present

"Mm, interesting. Didn't know pre-race procedures were so...intricate."

"I think it was just that week in particular, really," Ted replied sheepishly to Romeo's gentle probing. "Stress. You know. And all that."

"You increase your superstitions when you're stressed?"

"Well, when you put it like that, I don't think that's how I'd put it exactly — but so much had changed in that week that I just wanted to keep control, you know? Like...the car was red, I was wearing a different race suit, it all felt so different. So I had to keep to a routine."

"Is that something you would say you...prioritise? Control?"

"I'd call it agency."

"Agency, interesting," Romeo murmured as he jotted the word down on his notepad. "And that's definitely something you've talked to me about several times before. And I believe the reason you brought this up was because..."

"Yep," Ted muttered, mood suddenly down. "Yep."

"I see. Do keep going if you'd like. I watched the race on television but I do find your recollection interesting."

"Sure," Ted shrugged.

Talbott
Lap 1 of 50

The race director, whomever they were, had left them standing on the grid for a remarkably short amount of time; Ted had nearly been caught off guard by how fast the five red lights had gone off before he found himself moving on instinct, being pushed back into his seat. He'd wanted to move to the outside of the grid, to possibly get a jump on the Cocoabo in front of him for turn 2; but at the last moment he'd decided to move inwards, possibly to try and block Cruisin off.

No dice. He peeped the amber of the Ivchenko tiptoe ahead, and decided to change course.

And so as the circus swept into the first corner, a slow left-hander, he'd hedged again; taking advantage of the Cocoabo's bad start, he swung back outside. A small grinding sound as they bumped wheels; but Ted was reasonably sure, at least from what he felt under his rear, that he'd kept all four wheels on the kerbs. The Cocoabo gave way; by the time they were out of turn 2 and sprinting down to turn 7, he and Cruisin were level again.

Turn after turn, and the two jostled; it was soon clear to Ted that whomever exited the hairpin first would quite literally win the world title. He broke later than he was comfortable with — turned early, anything to secure the inside line — which seemed to catch Cruisin unawares. Another sound of a scrape — his heart was in his mouth, his breaths weren't coming, as he feared for his tyres — but as he sped away from the corner, he was ahead. Nothing felt off.

"Check the pressures on the left rear," he mumbled onto the radio.

"Everything positive. P6, P6. Cruisin P7, Cocoabo P8."

Ted exhaled as he found his mind once again wandering to the topic of the world title, as he stared at the rear of the now-glowing Chase Cutter as it sped away from him.

"Four more positions to go, Ted. Don't lose focus. Laukkanen P5," came the somewhat-unintelligible words of Urmo through the headpiece.

Iskajärvi
Present

"You keep mentioning that you had to keep your mind focused on the race itself. Compartmentalising?" Romeo leaned forward in his seat, clearly interested in Ted's retelling of the Liventian race.

"It's a bit difficult when it's so intertwined," Ted admitted. "I mean. Doing well in the race meant I was in with a shot of winning the world title, you know, and it was a bit difficult to separate the two."

"Mmm. Are you able to compartmentalise, or do you do that, in other parts of your life?" It was clear what Romeo was referring to; after all, Ted had ended his last recollection on the person that had the highest chance of breaking the compartmentalisation, if anything.

"Yeah, yeah, I figure. You have to if you want to be a WGPC driver, really. When in the car, all you can focus on is the car. When out of it, you can think about the rest. But in the car, if you're not a hundred percent focused on the whole driving thing, then...you might as well be in the wall. It's that fast."

"So, when you mentioned Janne Laukkanen, on track he was just Janne Laukkanen? Or is he also the Janne Laukkanen you're in a relationship with?" Romeo had a way of cutting straight to what he wanted to know, even if he could be a bit clinical; but Ted appreciated it.

"The former," he said without missing a beat. "It's easier when you can't see him. In the car he's just...the car, you know? We get mad, we swear, but all of us understand that we're all stressed. Not to mention there are two of them."

"And that makes a difference?"

"If I go around thinking it could be Janne Laukkanen when in reality it's Ryker Lane in that Nexus, it could bite me in the arse after," Ted chuckled. "No, on the track everyone except Abdoulaye is fair game."

Talbott
Lap 8 of 50

"Can't seem to hold on," came the complaint from over the radio. "Brakes are extremely warm, tyres are falling off."

"Don't give up yet, try to get him at 7. He's losing a lot of time in Sector 1," Urmo exhaled as he quickly scanned the timing screen. Next to him, Edvin looked somewhat concerned at the lack of progress both him and Abdoulaye were making; the hope was for Abs to try and score some points, but he hadn't been moving up the grid as quickly as they'd hoped. For Ted, meanwhile, there had been no expectations set beyond "bring it home in the points;" he'd decided that piling on even more pressure on the Tumbran was not the way to go this weekend in particular.

"Yeah, but the dirty air, it's crazy coming from him. Should be illegal."

"Well, it hasn't been ruled illegal in the past few years, and certainly won't be illegal now. Just hold on; you're gaining on him. Don't be afraid of the force field or whatever it is they have, Ted, whatever happens happens."

Ted gripped the wheel harder — or however hard he could — and tweaked the brake differential as they whined onto the front straight. In the tow of the baby blue car was the red Ælund, hot on its tail, but the two were rapidly bearing down on another red car. Its driver, Vincent Von Visp, was looking relatively twitchy in the cockpit today — a guilty conscience, perhaps? — but the two had long since learned not to tread too close to him. For Ted, the experience was rather more learned than experienced; after seeing what the number 66 had done to Abdoulaye in Hapilopper, he wanted to stay away from the UrGa.

But now was not the time for what he wanted; he had to grit his teeth and try to pull off the overtake as quickly as possible. The DRS closed as they slowed; Janne and Ted were now on the rear of the UrGa. Sector 1 was not known for being the best for overtaking, though he could try to position himself to get past both Janne and Vincent at the turn 7 hairpin, however ballsy that would be. Janne's Paragon Warp screamed as he drew level with Von Visp, with the UrGa choosing to save his one defensive move — presumably — for turn 7. But he chose to move at the right-hander of 6, instead, lurching to the left in a desperate attempt to perhaps force Janne onto the grass, but at the same time opening an opportunity for Ted to seize the inside lane going into 7.

And that was it. Ted's CMYK engine screamed as it leapt up the inside, taking advantage of Von Visp's perhaps desperate move; and with the inside line going into the hairpin, he was ahead before the Recuecian and the Tumbran even applied the brakes. He braced himself for a shove, a spin, but as he sped away onto the second straight, he found himself exhaling again. Janne was still tussling with Von Visp; giving him a bit of breathing room.

"Von Visp, moving dangerously," Ted murmured through the radio. "Crazy. Absolutely crazy man."

"Ted, we need you to keep the temps low. You're eating your tyres and brakes." Urmo's voice crackled in his ears again, sounding a bit worried. "You alright? Don't forget to drink."

Ted took a drink of the liquid in the compartment — instantly regretting it the moment the scalding liquid touched his tongue — but he sputtered a response. "Yeah, I — I needed that. What's our status?"

"Ahead, P3, Langdon, two point zero."

"Are we still on track for lap 15?"

"You'll have to make the tyres last, Ted, you've been shredding them. Mode 3, please."

"Can we get Langdon on track in that mode?"

"Affirmative. But we need lift and coast, Ted, we need lift and coast."

Talbott
Lap 36 of 50

Surprisingly, the race had eased off after; evidently Von Visp was providing some sort of formidable boundary to those behind them. By the time he caught up to Langdon, he'd already pushed past his compatriot Ron Somner; evidently Langdon, having been stiffed out of a win by Somner earlier in the season, had some sort of chip on his shoulder. The Viska proved to be surprisingly easy to get past; a well-time dive up the inside of turn 16 dealt with the rookie. An undercut during the first round of pit stops would then deal with Langdon, meaning that Ted, by lap 18, was in the place he technically needed to be in to win the title — but he didn't know it yet.

An incident on lap 30 had bunched the field under a virtual safety car, but provided a convenient excuse to swap to a two-stopper, putting the hards on. But by this point he was secure in second — Langdon had melted off after the first round of pit stops — and with Ted's boots being unable to keep up with whatever Toralmintii was on, settled into a nice rhythm as he watched Toralmintii gradually disappear.

The few times he'd spoken over the radio to Urmo, he'd wanted to ask where Cruisin was; but he was afraid that he'd be fifth, or third; looking in his rear-view mirrors revealed nothing but lapped cars. Finally, on lap 36, he steeled himself to ask.

"Urmo," he asked. "Status."

"You're in P2. Toralmintii, P1, 12 seconds ahead. Langdon, P3, 44 seconds behind."

"That far back?"

"He's not going very fast, no."

"And —"

"P7."

"I didn't say —"

"— We know." Ted exhaled, evidently audible enough for the radio to pick up. "Breathe, Ted, chin up. Bring her home, okay? You're not under threat, your tyres are fine, your brakes are still cooked. And drink."

Talbott
Lap 50 of 50

The race was over. Ted had managed to cross the line in second, a cool thirty seconds behind iBen; but that didn't matter. iBen had his farewell victory, his swansong; it was his day, his story to tell. What Ted cared more about was the three-car tussle that Von Visp, Somner, and Cruisin were involved in; as the laps had gone by, his requests for information had become more frequent and seemingly desperate enough that Urmo had to tell him that he was actively dropping back to Langdon in third to shut Ted up and get him to drive. But Urmo still indulged him; whenever the Somner-Von Visp-Cruisin trio crossed the line, never too far away from each other, Urmo's voice would blithely inform Ted of the current status.

There was no risk of Cruisin suddenly coming from behind and overtaking Ted, now, at least; he'd been waved past them once without Ted even noticing. But if Cruisin managed to finish fifth, they'd be tied on points; and Ted couldn't recall who would come out on top in that scenario.

"They're on the turn 15 straight. Ted, stay with me, do the usual procedures, please, I don't want us to get disqualified for something like a plank length or inadequate fuel samples. Patience, please, we'll know soon."

Ted complied, going through what would usually be the motions much more consciously, hung on to every word Urmo uttered.

"They're on the final straight. That's — that's Ron P5. Von Visp P6. And Cruisin P7. That's it, Ted, that's it! You — you are the World Champion!"

Iskajärvi
Present

"So a bit of an anticlimax after the original dash up?"

"Well, they were probably the eight most stressful laps of my life. But after..."

"And how did you feel after?"

"A blur." Romeo raised an eyebrow at Ted's response. "Jubilation, relief, everything. Believe me when I say I don't really remember." Ted chuckled. "I know there were a lot of hugs from Ælund, a lot of hugs from the Pressley folk, a nice chat with iBen, a nice chat with Cruisin. That much I remember because they caught it on camera. There was no time for anything else, really."

"I see," Romeo was scribbling notes down. "And, two weeks out from it, how do you feel?"

Ted sighed, the happy memory evidently being weighed down. "I — I think it's been a lot more hollow than I thought? Sure, I'm happy that I'm World Champion. But it's...I've given up a lot to be there. On top of the greasy pole. And I've felt a bit empty since. I guess it's just been a time of introspection?"

"Introspection? What about?"

"About the past, I think. Lately I've been dreaming a lot about when I was young, when I first stepped into a go-kart. About how I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Sure, I'm here now, but what did I lose, ultimately? What doors closed off to me the moment I stepped into that go-kart? And what control, what agency I lost when I stepped into bigger and bigger cars."

"Earlier you mentioned that too. Agency. Is that something that you think about often? Your ability to make decisions that are uniquely yours, not hemmed in by any other influences in your life? Like —"

"Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of what I do is basically determined by how not to be, well, him. But he'll never be separated from me, unless I take another surname, and it's as much mine as it was his. So I'm not changing it. But as much as possible I want to forge my own path."

"Is that why you don't drive for the team that bears your name? That you — I believe you said it in the post-race conference — own and have handed over control to Ian Ashburn indefinitely?"

"The very same. And...yeah, I figure. The seat occupied by Danielle Johnsilvaturr now, and Sophie McCreary before her, had my name on it before I refused to — well, before I split with him, really. I just didn't want to feel as if I was still his plaything, you know? That I was just his way to extend his own racing career, in the days before the sport went global." Ted looked out of the window, somewhat wistfully. "And I don't want to go back unless I really feel I want to take control."

Several moments of silence followed as Ted simply looked out of the window.

"We're nearly out of time, but there's just one more thing I want to cover. You mentioned last week you were going to Tumbra over the weekend? How was it?"

Grantfeldt
One Week After Talbott

Autumn had long since set in by the time Ted returned to Tumbra. Now that the season was over — and his father was dead — Ted felt slightly less apprehensive in making the journey back to his home country. Briefly he'd considered going under a pseudonym, but then figured that it was likely to break at least three laws, and also he didn't think that highly of himself that he even needed one. The WGPC grid needed less divas driving slow cars; one had even been shoved off the grid this season.

There was the inevitable press pack tailing him, of course, but Ian Ashburn, the CEO of Pressley, had made arrangements for him to travel incognito; surprisingly, this meant he travelled from Nantwich (in the midwestern state of Finnley) south to Dorival (in the more western state of Iswilyn) before finally heading north to Millsburgh, in Grantfeldt. By the time he reached the family house, it was 10.30pm; but his mother was still there to hug him and tell him that there was always a room available for him.

It wasn't the time to come out to his mother yet, he decided on Saturday morning as she asked if he'd met up with Sophie McCreary yet. No, mother, he responded in that same, somewhat detached fashion. She's busy.

Spending time with his mother, however, wasn't really why he was here. After she'd left for the city proper — to go to the community soup kitchen she helped at more and more these days — Ted found himself alone again, looking and catching glimpses of his father and the once-happy family that existed in a much smaller house, much closer to the city of Millsburgh. Pictures of him when he was younger. Pictures of the family. And so on. Half an hour after he scarfed down the small meal of scrambled eggs and toast, he decided he couldn't take it. He needed a walk.

And the grounds were a good place for one, even if Ted would rather have been in the city. The Pressley family home was now entirely his mother's — at least, until her own passing — but it was huge. It seemed that in the last few years of his life the elder Pressley had turned this plot of land into his own little private world, the epitome of what privilege and a life of business had done for him. Ted walked over the bridge that spanned the pond; he walked along the hedge that separated Pressley from The World, that kept the news of Charlie's illness away from the rest of the world while he lay in bed, unable to move after his stroke. Just thinking, ruminating on what had been. What could have been. And what lay ahead.

Soon he reached the place where two tall hedges met, a single birch tree marking where they met; and beneath it, a simple headstone. Less than two months ago he had been here, watching as his father had been committed to the earth in perpetuity; letting the world work its magic on his coffin, and, eventually, the body of Charlie himself. Less than two months ago he had been told by Ian Ashburn in no uncertain terms that he had to hold on to the Pressley name, lest someone take it from him; less than two months ago he had begrudgingly agreed to let Ian take the lead and drive out the wolf in the henhouse himself. Orange leaves surrounded the grave, bar a stone bowl attached to a plinth, and a neatly-swept rectangular area. Was it his mother, or one of the groundskeepers? There was no broom in sight.

Slowly, Ted walked up to the plinth; the bowl on top was full of petals of various colours. Evidently it had been refilled recently, probably by a member of the ever-invisible help. He looked at the headstone, which was still freshly cut, its inscription still clear. Would the inscriptions be here in ten years? Fifteen? A hundred? Would the headstone, at all?

No matter. The time had come to make peace with his father, no matter how reluctant he was. Charlie Pressley was now gone; whatever was unsaid between the two would now remain that way forever, lost to time, space, and death. Charlie wasn't around anymore, but Ted still was; and it was useless to carry on whatever he had forever.

Ted Pressley grabbed a handful of petals — pink, red, yellow, all sorts — from the bowl. He walked up to the grave, careful not to walk on the just-swept part. The leaves would crunch under his shoes; inevitably, by tomorrow, the petals would be gone, mixed in with whatever autumn foliage there was on the grounds of the estate. And the grave would need to be swept again, and the bowl on the stone plinth refilled.

But he let the petals fall anyway.

by **Trans-Dniesters** » Tue May 13, 2025 8:20 am

Yakov Leonidovich Yurievsky stared at the phone in his hand in a state of utter confusion. Specifically, he was staring at the picture that he had just received from his recently departed visitor, the quiet but cunning Valentin Georgiyevich Mironchenko, whose position as the second-in-command of the controversial Zimmer Private Military Corporation was all but an open secret. Mironchenko had sent to Yurievsky a picture of a battered and bruised man with a blindfold over his eyes and holding up a copy of a prominent Pridnestrovian newspaper dated from two days before the day of the Liventian Grand Prix. It was none other than Nicholas Courbet, the Recuecian security guard whom Vincent Von Visp had wanted to be "eliminated" due to the fact that Courbet had seen Vincent taking out money in order to make his "payments" to Urotovsky-Gatutin under the guise of being a pay driver in the World Grand Prix Championship. Vincent had wanted poor Courbet "taken care of" because Vincent, thanks to the aforementioned payments to UrGa, had triggered an investigation into his finances, and the Recuecian was afraid that Courbet could tip off the authorities to his "activities." Yakov had passed the job on to the Zimmerites, who also had their own thing happening in Recuecn so it would have been convenient for them to take care of two birds with one stone as the Westerners liked to say. It should have been a clean and simple operation, in and out, objectives accomplished, and no one should have been the wiser.

But Vincent Von Visp just had to ruin everything.

When Vincent Von Visp had gone to Yakov to inform him about the former's financial issues back in his home country, Yakov had come up with a plan that would have and should have gotten Vincent off the hook. It should have been so easy. Someone who was used to manipulating finances like Vincent should have known that the best way to get the authorities off his back was to actually have something to his money, and Yakov had offered the option to the Recuecian. And then other things came along, and a simple heist to get the douaniers off of Vincent's back had become an actual plot to steal the Von Visp family gold, a plot initiated by none other than the Minister of Finance of Pridnestrovia Boris Borisovich Tokarev. Now both heists had been pulled off, but not before the Recuecian authorities had come to the belief that Vincent Von Visp was in on the whole thing simply because the bastard had gone back to Recuecn City to make sure that everything went off without a hitch.

If Yakov could lay his hands on Vincent and shake him for messing up such a good plan then he would have done so already. But given how much heat Vincent had managed to accrue back home, perhaps it wasn't really that surprising that Vincent had gone low profile. It just so happened that Vincent sequestered himself away from even his own WGPC team, UrGa. And because of that, neither Yakov nor Vincent was able to make sense of the events that had occurred on that fateful afternoon in Recuecn City, and when the opportunity looked like it was finally about to come, it might be too late. Word had already gotten to Yakov via his contacts that the authorities were about to come down on Vincent hard. The Liventian authorities, in cooperation with the Recuecian douaniers whose investigation into Vincent Von Visp had been the ones who opened the can of worms in the first place, were now bearing down on the Talbott Autodrome to arrest Vincent.

Yakov could already hear the sirens blaring up and down the paddock as the authorities made their move to arrest Vincent. Yakov knew that he had to remain out of sight and out of mind, especially now that Valentin fucking Mironchenko had just sent him some incredibly damning evidence that, if found in his possession, would see him headed for the cell right next to Vincent's. At the same time though, Yakov had to admit that he was curious to see if Vincent could manage to escape the dragnet closing around him yet again. He had already done so successfully in Recuecn itself and Esmerel; surely he could do it once again. Eventually, curiosity overcame Yakov's caution and he carefully made his way down from the safety of his office to the Urotovsky-Gatutin area of the paddock. The scene he saw before him would not have been out of place in a cheaply made and produced movie, but Yakov quickly reminded himself that this was real life. And if Vincent tried to ask for help from the old Pridnestrovian, that would shine a blinding spotlight on Yakov, and he couldn't have any of that.

Dozens upon dozens of uniformed policemen from Liventia had descended upon the UrGa garages. They were surrounding the red and green UrGa GPC21-2 numbered 66, and the driver of said vehicle was already conversing with a man in a suit as well as one of the aforementioned uniformed Liventian police officers. Well, so much for Vincent making his great escape yet again, Yakov thought to himself. It would appear that the authorities had timed their appearance such that Vincent simply wouldn't have any opportunity to run away from them once again. If Vincent had hoped to slip past their fingers right after the Liventian Grand Prix then the cops had clearly considered that possibility as well because they had closed off any and all avenues of escape.

For what had to be the first time in his life, Vincent Von Visp had found himself in a situation that he couldn't talk or bribe his way out of.

For a brief moment, Yakov thought that Vincent was going to make a run for it despite being surrounded by cops from at least two different countries. But reason thankfully came over the Recuecian, and Vincent let himself be escorted away by the police, even if it was with utmost reluctance. And, most tellingly, no one in UrGa was lifting a finger to stop Vincent's arrest. In a way, Yakov expected it. Vincent had not seen any need to ingratiate himself to the rest of the team, and since practically everyone else knew that Vincent's presence in UrGa was all thanks to one Yakov Yurievsky, that made him even more of a social pariah among the team than he already was. Plus, it didn't help Vincent's cause that he saw himself above the "rabble" that was Urotovsky-Gatutin; hell, he had tried to get rid of one of their own (his race engineer Illarion Osipov) in one of the first races of the season with the main UrGa team just because Illarion was carrying out what the team principal had told him to do. If anything, everyone in UrGa (apart from one man, that is) looked like they were more than happy to have finally gotten rid of the troublesome redhead, and all without incurring the wrath of the old man who had brought him into the fold in the first place.

In fact, none other than the team principal of the Urotovsky-Gatutin Motorsports Division himself, Vasily Semyonovich Gatutin, was happy to see Vincent Von Visp hauled away in irons. Statistically speaking, Vincent Von Visp and Nepö Kinder were both on equal terms. That would have been and should have been a good thing, but the fact of the matter was that their pairing was absolutely dysfunctional. Both Kinder and Von Visp were more focused on one-upping each other rather than looking at the big picture and fighting for the championship. And if Von Visp wasn't busy being a menace to his teammate then the Recuecian was terrorizing the rest of the grid. And the man didn't even have any regrets with what he had done. Heck, he actually celebrated being the most hated man on the grid, and for a brief moment in Serizawa, Vincent Von Visp could definitely claim that title after winning the sprint race there. But now, nobody cared much about him anymore. His antics had become a regular feature of the grands prix, and everyone else was just doing their best to avoid Vincent and stay out of his way. And now it was Vincent's turn to be dragged off to his fate, and Vasily Gatutin couldn't be any more relieved. There was every possibility that UrGa would have been stuck with the same dysfunctional lineup for next season courtesy of Yakov Yurievsky's connections and influence, but thankfully that possibility had now been taken away, and Vasily couldn't be any happier.

Vasily watched as the Liventian policemen put Vincent Von Visp in handcuffs and hauled him away, and then he looked down at his tablet computer and opened the latest set of documents that he had received from the team's analysis suite in Myrilsk. The documents were line graphs showing two lines, one red and one blue, that were closely matched with each other barring a handful of data points which skewed to one extreme or another. The red line was labeled Киндерь and the blue line was named Фицпатрик. The two lines were almost evenly matched, which was something that Vasily liked to see, but the number that pleased him the most was the one attached to the end of the multi-page document. It said simply, "RISK OF CONFLICT: 5%" Vasily nodded his head in satisfaction, and then he sent a short one-word reply back to Myrilsk: APPROVED.

At the same time that Vasily Gatutin was finalizing his plans for the next season of the WGPC, Yakov Yurievsky realized that his window of clearing up what had happened in Recuecn City with Vincent Von Visp was rapidly slamming shut. He couldn't really go out there to stop the arrest because that would put the spotlight on him and all of the illegal activities he was linked to, and Yakov simply couldn't have that. But at the same time, Yakov had to let Vincent know that the older man was going to do what he could to help out the young Recuecian with his troubles, legal and otherwise. It was perhaps strange to see such an amoral man like Yakov Yurievsky be affected this deeply by something so simple as an arrest, but Yakov had felt a dark kinship with Vincent since he first laid eyes on him, and the two of them had had so much fun messing around with both Preston Autos and Tropicorp down in WGP2. It was a shame that they couldn't do any of that when Vincent got "promoted" to WGPC, and if this was how this dark partnership was going to end like this, then it would be even more of a shame. But, for the moment at least, Yakov was powerless to stop his blackhearted comrade from being thrown behind bars. Unless...

Valerie! Yakov thought to himself. Vincent's assistant! Surely he could reach out to her and help him clear up everything with Vincent once and for all. But where the fuck was she? Yakov didn't see Valerie go with her boss when Vincent had been arrested. In fact, Valerie seemed to have disappeared into thin air after her boss had been dragged away. Yakov thought about calling out her name but thought better of it. Not only would it attract attention, but there was also no guarantee that Valerie would respond to Yakov's calls. Yurievsky had the feeling that Valerie was loyal to Vincent and only Vincent. The only option left now for the elder Pridnestrovian was to wait. Surely Vincent would be the one trying to reach out to him now that he had landed himself in trouble.

Hours passed, and while most of UrGa's personnel had packed up their team's belongings in preparation for the long flight back to Pridnestrovia, Yakov Yurievsky was still in his personal office waiting for the call. He didn't know exactly how Recuecian law worked (a rare gap in the usually knowledgeable Yakov's expertise), but for whatever reason Yakov felt that Vincent would reach out to him before his actual legal team. Finally, eventually, Yakov felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He took it out and saw that the call was coming from an unknown number, but considering the small number of people who actually knew his number, Yakov was reasonably sure that he could answer this call without falling victim to a potential scam. Yakov slid his thumb across the screen of his phone, and then he said, "Hello? Who is this?"

"Oh, don't tell me you've already forgotten about me, you old bastard!" Vincent Von Visp said from the other end of the line. Yakov could hear a faint echoing effect from Vincent's end, meaning that the red-haired bastard had to be in a jail cell now.

“Vincent?” Yurievsky asked. “What is this number you’re calling from? I don’t recognize it.”

“I know, I know, it’s not a secure line. I can’t help it," Vincent replied dismissively.

"And how in the world did you get a phone to call me?" Yakov pressed.

"That's way beyond the point," Vincent dismissed once again. "Look, I’ve been arrested; I’m in a holding cell somewhere in Talbott right now," he said. "I think it’s for the heist. But I don’t even know what’s going on. You said you were going to solve all my problems!”

Of course it was about the heist, Yakov thought to himself. Everything about the plan hinged on Vincent being nowhere near Visp Financier when the VDV Spetsnaz struck, but somehow the idiot bastard managed to find the time to get from Hapilopper to Recuecn City and ruin what was supposed to be a foolproof plan. If Vincent had not been at his own bank when the heist went down then he would have been able to report all of his missing money as having been stolen by the thieves, and the douaniers would have gotten off his back and that would have been the end of it. But Vincent just had to see the plan for himself and ruined what should have been a great plan to remove all suspicions that the douaniers had on him. Now, the man had all but incriminated himself by being at the scene of the crime, and now he had the nerve to ask Yakov to pick up the pieces of his own brazen stupidity! If they weren't two blackhearted peas in a pod then Yakov would have already told Vincent to go fuck himself. Instead, Yakov held his tongue and opted for a more diplomatic approach. He chose his words carefully in order to not say anything incriminating over an unsecured line.

"Well, I was taking care of your problems, wasn't I?" Yakov said. "But you couldn't just be a good boy and keep practicing in your fast little cars! You had to come down there and see for yourself if the rook was no longer going to be on the board!"

“So it was you!” Vincent shouted furiously. “You stole my money, you son of a bitch!”

"I did no such thing, Vincent!" Yakov shouted back. "I am not some common thief who just steals and takes! Your money has been transferred to an offshore account in Copper Cuprum for safekeeping, and you would have had access to it right away if you had just stayed out of the fucking way! But if you really want to get your hands back on your money while you're behind bars, the name on the account is Espoir Neuf-investyr.” Yakov Yurievsky was a man who was not easy to anger, but his frustration at Vincent ruining what should have been a perfectly good plan by his mere presence finally boiled over, and his earlier attempts at discretion gave away to what was practically a scolding over an unsecured line.

“Oh, you must be real proud of yourself right now, aren't you?!” Vincent yelled back. “You’ve got my money all hidden away offshore where nobody can find it, and I bet you’re feeling untouchable right. Even the account name is a fucking dig at me. Destroying everything I built wasn’t enough for you, huh? You had to rub a little salt in the wound as well!? You had to have all the gold too, don’t you!”

"What the—? How dare you!" Yakov retorted. "I am not trying to destroy your life's work! I was trying to save it!" But whatever Yakov said next was drowned out by a flurry of accusations from the young Recuecian.

“Well you watch your back, motherfucker!" Vincent Von Visp cried out. "You’re not as untouchable as you think! You think you’re all high and mighty with your Spetsnaz operatives and your government friends, and that you can just suck the blood of that dog, Vincent Von Visp, just like that! Well, guess what! I’m not just gonna roll over! I’m not your pawn! No, I’m going to be your worst nightmare! I’ve lost a lot, but I know how to fight, and I always bounce back! I’m sure they’re going to send me to prison, but you mark your calendar. The day I get out, you better start sleeping with one eye open!” Yakov then thought he heard a clattering sound before the line went dead.

"Fucking idiot," Yurievsky muttered before putting away his own phone. It was all falling apart before his very eyes. Vincent Von Visp was no longer a friend but an enemy, at least for as long as the Recuecian believed that he had been screwed over by the one person whom he could have almost thought of as a friend. Maybe Yakov really should have said something to Vincent while the law wasn’t on his ass yet. But too late for that now, and unless he could find a way to hand Vincent another solution to the young blackheart’s most recent conundrum. And if the money was so important to Vincent, it was all hidden away in that account in Copper Cuprum, though the monetary value of the gold that the Zimmerites took had to come out of Yakov’s own pocket. And if Vincent really, really needed to get out of jail fast, those same Zimmerites who had happily stolen his gold would also break him out of jail as soon as he (or Yakov) gave the signal. It was all about getting the word out to the man.

“Oh, the network is not going to like this,” Yakov muttered to himself. Beyond his own friendship (if something born from a desire to sow as much evil as possible could even be called that) with Vincent, Yakov also had to ensure that he was in close contact with his fellow blackheart because that was what his fellow oligarchs told him to do. They had a few things to talk about with Monsieur Von Visp as well, and if he was angry at Yakov then that would make those conversations a little more testy than they needed to be.

works? · by **Abanhfleft** » Mon May 26, 2025 8:22 am

It was the end of yet another season of the World Grand Prix Championship. A new drivers' champion had been crowned, as well as a new constructors' champion. The defending champions, both Brendan Faloe and Urotovsky-Gatutin Motorsports Division, had not done the best possible job that they could in defending said titles. It was particularly egregious with UrGa, who in their infinite wisdom decided to drop the driver pairing that had led them to the constructors' title in the first place and replaced them with an unproven and untested lineup that ended up being more trouble for the team than it was worth. Whatever UrGa had been expecting out of both Nepö Kinder and Vincent Von Visp, it probably wasn't what the Pridnestrovians actually got. The two of them would end up trying to one-up each other rather than helping each other out for the greater good, and that was most definitely not a recipe for success. And if that wasn't enough, Von Visp also took a perverse pleasure in bending the rules as far as he could while also coming out of any racing incidents squeaky clean. The most egregious of these incidents was when Von Visp, in trying to stop his teammate Kinder from overtaking him, ended up crashing into his fellow Recuecian driver Abdoulaye Goita and sending the latter into a fiery crash. Goita survived, but Von Visp did not suffer any consequences for his role in the crash, and just a few weeks later Von Visp would end up winning a sprint race. Many felt that Von Visp should never have been able to take part in the sprint race at Serizawa in the first place because of his role in nearly ending Goita's season, career, and life, but because he had escaped scot-free, Von Visp made it known just how much he thought about the rules and consequences at the top step of the podium.

But everything had its consequences, and while Vincent Von Visp looked like he was going to be able to outrun the consequences of his actions, the ending of this edition of the Liventian Grand Prix proved otherwise. Rumors abounded the paddock that Von Visp had hired a crew of professional thieves to steal some of his own money in an attempt to get a couple of fraud investigators off his back. For many people, there was a certain catharsis in seeing the man who had paid his way into this most exclusive of clubs lose his membership by the same thing that Vincent had used to force his way into the WGPC in the first place. But while Vincent Von Visp may be gone, at least for the time being, life went on for everyone else, even as their struggles were only beginning despite this being the end of the season.

One of those who were struggling to come to terms with how poorly their season had gone was none other than William Archer. The young Fleftic driver had officially ended his association with Preston Autos at the start of the season after a less than amicable split at the end of Season 20 due to the unexpected massive underperformance of Preston's challenger that season. After shopping himself around and offering his services to other teams, William would end up going to Viska Racing. And while Will didn't expect himself to hit the ground running with the Aurun team, at the very least he expected that he would get used to the car quickly enough, and the results would follow soon after. But that wasn't what happened. In fact, for most of the season William Archer stayed exactly where had started off, and in some respects he had even regressed. Meanwhile, William's new teammate in Viska, the rookie Ron Sommer from Katzeburg, was wiping the floor with Will. One or two pole positions and even a race win! Meanwhile, Will Archer had a big fat zero next to those particular stats during his first season with Viska. It was something that was mystifying to him because, even when Preston were at their worst, William was still able to wrangle some speed out of that piece of shit that was the PGP-04, and he even managed to win a race in the fucking shitbox. But while the Viska was nowhere near being a shitbox like last season's Preston, William simply couldn't find a way to get in sync with the new car no matter how hard he tried.

There was a part of William that remained convinced that all he needed was one more weekend, one more race, and he would finally be able to show everyone else what he was capable of doing in that Viska. But mostly, Will was just glad and relieved that the season was over. Statistically speaking, it might be his worst ever season in the WGPC since his rookie season. No poles, no wins, not even just one fucking podium. Not that William could have possibly gotten any of those if he had stayed with Preston this season. Will had no idea what was going on behind the scenes with the Hapiloppian team for this season, but apparently it was bad enough that they relented to letting the Valentians take over the team's operations going into the second half of the season. William meant no offense to the Valentians, but if the Haps were asking for their help to keep Preston Autos running then whatever happened must have been very serious indeed. And Will was more than glad to be nowhere near that absolute mess of a team, not that he appeared to have ended up someplace better with Viska. Will may no longer have the same trust issues with Viska that he had with Preston, but thanks to the unprecedented rise of Ron Sommer, new issues were cropping up in Will's mind instead.

"Well, well, well, will you look at that, lil Willy," the doubter said once William had finally had a quiet moment to himself in Liventia at the end of the grand prix. "If this season hasn't proven to you that you're never going to be in a team where they like your teammate more than they do you then I don't even know what to do with you anymore. How many times has that happened now, bro? Three? It all started with that absolute mess that was Bitten Heroes. You were never going to get any favors against... who was it again? Was it Anneliese who was your teammate back then? Anyway, it doesn't matter who she is, the point I'm trying to make is that you were never going to get any favors in a Lisanderan team with a Lisanderan driver. And we all know about the bullshit that happened at Preston. 'The savior of Preston!' 'Yeah, we wanna a championship with Willy!' Fucking bullshit! As soon as Rudy started beating your ass, they went all in on him! You ever thought about why they dropped Rudy all of a sudden after you left? It's because they know Rudy can beat you, but they don't know if he can beat Luminna or that Valentian chick, what's her name, and Preston benched their golden boy because they no longer had a punching bag for him!"

"Jesus Christ, are we going to go over the same old bullshit again?!" the supporter shouted back. "I have spent the better part of the last two years hearing nothing from you but moaning and groaning about how William is being screwed over by Preston again and again and again! I really thought that you would have come up with something better or at least different by now!"

"You've got the nerve to talk," the doubter sneered. "Where the fuck have you been these last few weeks?! I thought you were the supporter, bro! You should have been supporting your boy lil Willy here! It's in your fucking name! But no, when the going gets tough, the supporter goes running! I was the only one who was at lil Willy's side when everything was going against him! I'm with William Archer through thick and thin! Meanwhile, what does the self-proclaimed 'supporter' do? Turn tail and run, that's what!"

"If you're the only person who stood by William at his worst then he might as well not have any more supporters, am I right?!"

"Come on now, guy," the doubter sneered again. "If lil Willy was being really honest with himself, our names would actually be the other way around. I'm the only one who's actually looking out for number one, while you are nothing but a fickle-minded fair-weather fan! You're the real doubter, and I'm the real supporter!"

"Will you two please just shut the fuck up!?" William cried out. "I have had it with the both of you! None of you have actually done anything to help me ever since you two popped up in my goddamn head! You!" he said, pointing a finger right at the doubter. "All you have done since you appeared is to double guess every single move that I've ever made! Always telling me that I'm not gonna be anything as long as I've got a fucking teammate that lives and breathes! You're never gonna be satisfied unless I do an Ankei Souzare and race for my own team! And don't you dare think that you're in the clear, you fucker!" William said as he turned his attention to the supporter. "I don't always listen to this doubting bastard, but when I do, it's when he's got a point that even I can't ignore. Where the fuck have you been these past few weeks, huh? Weren't you supposed to pick me up after I got shown up by my own rookie teammate? Where the fuck were you, huh?!"

The supporter had no answer; he couldn't even look William in the eye. "Yeah, that's what I thought," he muttered. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but the doubter has got a fucking point. You weren't here when you were supposed to be supporting me. That's your name, isn't it? The supporter? Fat lot of supporting you gave me after I got left in the dust by Sommer! I don't have any more room in me for fickle shits like you! So why don't you get out of here and become a fan of Ron fucking Sommer instead, huh? Come on! Get the fuck out of here!"

"You're making a big fucking mistake taking his side, Will, and you know that," the supporter muttered while shaking his head. "You're a disappointment, Will. That's what you are. I hope you realize that before it's too late," the supporter said before he disappeared from view.

"Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya," the doubter said as he cast a mocking wave goodbye to the supporter. "Now that that useless piece of crap is gone, let's talk next steps! Viska didn't work out, but I have some ideas on where you could go next—"

"Oh, you thought that I was done with you?! Well, guess what, motherfucker!" William shouted. "You've been nothing but a constant negative presence and influence in my life ever since you first showed up! I've never been able to look at the positive side of things ever since I let you out of my head! I can't fucking live like that anymore, man. You've got to go too! Ever since you showed up, I've only gotten worse and worse, and I can't let that happen to me! I gotta stop the slide before it gets even worse! And on top of all that, I can't fucking stand you anymore!"

"Oh, now you want me gone too?!" the doubter shouted back. "Me, the only person who helped you pull your head out of your ass and made you realize just how much of a shithole Preston Autos has become?! If it wasn't for me, you would still be stuck in that personal hell of yours!"

"I don't care if you saved me from myself!" William shouted. "I have had enough of you making me look like an absolute fool in front of everyone else! Now get the fuck out of here before I make you leave!"

"Whatever did I do in this world to deserve an empty-headed fucking dumb fuck like William Jessper Archer to go to business for himself?" the doubter moaned. "You wanna keep getting fucked over by every single team you drive for, that's your choice! I tried to help you, lil Willy, but I can't help those who won't help themselves. Turns out I've been wasting my time on you all along! Enjoy your new hell in Viska, boy! Enjoy eating Ron Sommer's dust!" And after showing William the middle finger, the doubter vanished from view as well, and for the first time since the start of the season, William Archer finally felt like he was at peace.

The doubter may have been a pain in the ass but he did have a point, at least about how this had to be William's worst ever season in the WGPC ever since he first entered the competition. For someone like him who harbored hopes and dreams of becoming a WGPC drivers' champion, that was simply unacceptable. Not only that, but Will's hopes of getting himself and his career back on track by getting one over his new rookie teammate did not pan out the way that he would have wanted. In fact, it went completely the other way around: Ron Sommer proved that he was one of the drivers to look out for in the future by wiping the floor with his teammate, someone who also looked like he was one of the drivers in the future until he had a much publicized deterioration of his relationship with his old team. The rumors were already beginning to swirl: William Archer is now washed. Sure, it was only one season, but who was to say that the trend wouldn't continue into the next one? That is, if Viska would still want to avail of Will's services. Will wanted to prove that he was still capable of driving a car that wasn't powered or designed by Preston, but as always, his fate next season depended on if there was a team that was interested in hiring him. But Ron Sommer had blown him away so comprehensively that there might not be a chance to prove himself again. But William had to believe in himself. He had to believe that, given a second crack at Sommer, he could assert his dominance and haul Viska back to title contention. Now, if there was only a way to ensure that Sommer wouldn't show Will up again...

"That can be arranged," a voice spoke from behind William.

"What the— Who the fuck said that?" William asked. "Who are you?"

"Why don't you turn around and take a look, William? I heard that you needed a new friend after you kicked the last two out to the curb."

William hesitated, but eventually he did as the voice said and turned around. There was a figure hiding in the shadows, and as soon as Will turned around the figure walked into the light. William gasped. At first glance, the figure looked like none other than the villain of the WGPC grid, Vincent Von Visp. But that should be impossible since Von Visp had just been taken away by the Liventian police. And upon closer inspection, Will realized that the person before him was not actually Vincent Von Visp but yet another clone of William Archer. The only difference between this new clone and the real William was that the clone had bright red hair and a twirling mustache that would have put Von Visp's own facial hair to shame if someone other than Will could actually see him. "What the... who are you?" Will asked his latest doppelganger.

"I'm the start of your villain arc, buddy," the villain replied matter-of-factly. "You said it yourself, man. Ron Sommer showed you up here at Viska last season. But there's this thing called the sophomore slump, and wouldn't it just be nice if Ronnie boy went through the mother of all slumps? And if he doesn't go through such a slump, well, I'd be more than happy to help him along with that."

"Well, fuck me," William muttered. Looks like his mental breakdown was going to carry on into the next season, even if the visions and voices had taken on a newer and even darker form. "Why the fuck did I go into WGPC anyway?" he asked himself. It was beginning to look more and more like William Archer would not get any sort of mental relief at all for as long as he was in the World Grand Prix Championship.

“This is it, man”, Adonis Fitzpatrick said to himself as he waited behind the paddock. Now or never. Truth or consequences. Whatever happens, happens, and he would just have to accept it no matter what.

It had been Donny Fitzpatrick's idea to call upon his "friend" (if he could even be called that) Batu Tüvshinbayar to this meeting behind the paddock so the two of them could finally figure out where they stood with regards to each other. Donny had been aware that he had been avoiding the matter of properly defining his relationship with Batu ever since the two of them had gotten together on that fateful night in Oxyrhynchus, and it turned out that running away was not the solution because the more that Adonis tried to delay the inevitable, the more that it tried to force Donny to confront it face to face. Adonis had hoped that he could keep everything to the back of his mind for the entirety of this season, but circumstances made it so that Batu would never actually be far away, and it seemed as if Batu was getting closer and closer to the poor Fleftic driver. First he was signed by KISMO as a reserve driver, and then Batu got a place in the Motorworks team, and then KISMO promoted Batu to the senior team for the last few races of the season while Shuhei Kamado took on a bigger role behind the scenes for the Ajian team.

It seemed as if wherever Donny turned, Batu was there. Adonis had tried to avoid the issue but that turned out to be the wrong choice because as soon as Batu returned to the WGPC, Donny's form suffered what would turn out to be an irreversible downward slide. Donny had started off the season reasonably well, and he even managed to drag his reluctant HMG to a podium at the Nexus Wardship, but as soon as Batu showed up for the new support series, everything went downhill for young Fitzpatrick. And he couldn't really blame the car because his teammate Skiia Vialiv was soon able to extract speed out of the HMG while Donny was left eating dust once again. And while it had to be a coincidence that the downward slide happened when Batu returned, Donny just couldn't make himself dismiss the possibility outright. And now that he had nothing to play for at Liventia, that was when Adonis finally made the decision to confront his problem instead of running away from it. He had sent a text to Batu asking the Mongolian if they could see each other behind the paddock at the end of the Liventian Grand Prix because texting just wasn't cutting it anymore. Donny knew that he had to talk to Batu face to face in order to settle this matter between them, whatever it was, once and for all.

But once again, it had seemed as if fate was conspiring to make sure that neither Donny nor Batu got the answers or the closure that they wanted. The end of the Liventian Grand Prix had seen the Liventian police descend upon Talbott Autodrome and arrest none other than Vincent Von Visp for money laundering or financial fraud or something like it. The sheer number of police that had come down to Talbott to arrest Von Visp had made it almost impossible to find a place where two people could have a private conversation. Thankfully the cops started clearing out almost as soon as they had got their man, and by the time night fell over the paddock, it was almost as if the authorities had never been there in the first place, which suited Adonis just fine. The less people potentially walking in on him and Batu talking, the better.

Speaking of which, there was the man himself. Donny could see Batu making his way along the paddock to the place where Adonis said he would be waiting for the Mongolian. And just like that, Donny's heart began to beat faster. It wasn't as if he wasn't used to his heart beating faster than usual; it happened literally every time he sat behind the wheel of a racing car. But this time it was different. Nothing was really at stake here, but at the same time everything was at stake. Whatever Donny and Batu said and did in the next few minutes could potentially define their friendship, their relationship, for the next few years if not the rest of their lives. Adonis knew that he must not fuck this up.

"There he is," Donny said as Batu walked up to him. He could sense the nervousness coming out of the Mongolian; it was radiating out of Batu like waves of heat. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you," Adonis said.

"I'm here now, like you asked me to," Batu replied. "You said that you had something to say to me that a text just wouldn't be able to say properly. So, what is it?"

Donny took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he chose his words as carefully as he could. "What I wanted to say is that..." Adonis began. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry? Sorry for what?" Batu asked.

"I'm sorry for not being a good friend," Donny added. "I'm sorry that I haven't been able to reply to all your texts, and I'm also sorry that I haven't been there to support you this whole season. I'm sorry I wasn't there when you didn't get a seat at the beginning, I'm sorry I wasn't there to congratulate you when you got into OGP, sorry if I didn't congratulate you for getting into Motorworks, and I'm really, really sorry that I wasn't there when you finally got that ride in KISMO. I'm really, really sorry that I wasn't there for you. It's just that I've been going through some problems of my own, and I just had to take care of myself before I could worry about anyone else. And for that, I have to say I'm sorry yet again."

Silence descended over the two drivers as Batu seemingly processed what Donny had just told him. Or at least that was what Donny thought was happening before Batu asked him another question. "Is that it?" Batu said. "Is that all that you wanted to say?"

"What... what do you mean?" Adonis asked back.

"Is that really why you asked me to see me tonight? So you could tell me you're sorry?" Batu pressed. Donny had the feeling that Batu had been expecting something more, or at least he was expecting something else.

“I, uh… is there something else you wanted me to say?” Donny asked, genuinely curious.

“Maybe,” Batu shrugged. “I think I expected something else.” The disappointment was clearly evident in the Mongolian’s voice, and once again Adonis Fitzpatrick didn’t know what he was supposed to do except maybe repeating himself.

“I’m sorry,” Donny said once again. “I think I’m being selfish once again. Aside from that night in Oxy, I’ve never given anything back to you in this relationship. You’re the only one who’s been giving, and I’ve done nothing but take and take and take. And it’s not fair to you. It’s not fair for you. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to give something back to you, and maybe… Maybe that’s the real reason why I haven’t been getting back to you when you got back to the grid. Maybe I’m actually the one who’s afraid. Maybe I’m afraid that I actually have nothing to give after taking everything that you’ve given me. And if that’s the case, then I don’t want to be a parasite kind of friend to you.”

“Are you saying that… you don’t want to be my friend anymore?” Batu asked, and Donny could feel the hurt emanating from the former’s voice.

“No, no!That’s not what I’m trying to say at all!” Adonis shook his head. “I don’t want to lose your friendship! That’s exactly why I’m saying I’m sorry that I haven’t been the friend that you thought I could be. I’m not the friend that I should be. But I want to change all that. I’m trying to change all that. I just don’t know how, and again, for that, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to keep apologizing, Donny,” Batu said as he put his hands on Donny’s. “It’s okay. It’s all right. I accept your apology.”

And there it was. Adonis had finally offered his apologies to Batu, and Batu had accepted it. Donny really hoped that Batu was as sincere in accepting his apology as Donny had been in giving it out. There really shouldn’t be anything more that needed to be said tonight, but Adonis just had this feeling that there was still something, just one more thing, that he needed to say or do before he and Batu went their separate ways for the offseason. He just couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Adonis took another look at Batu, specifically the Mongolian’s facial features. Donny looked at Batu's eyes, saw the way that they were perfectly shaped to give the young man both an innocent and an inquisitive look. Donny had always liked the way that Batu looked, and tonight was no exception. Batu's nose complemented his eyes so well, as did his lips. Adonis had not really taken note of Batu's lips before since he had always been drawn to the Mongolian's eyes, but tonight had given Donny a chance to see those lips up close and personal. How did Donny not notice those lips before? They weren't quite as perfect for Batu as his eyes were, but they still looked so damn good even in the dim lighting in the rear of the paddock area. Maybe Donny should take a closer look just to see what he had been missing out on...

It all happened so fast. Donny wasn't even sure if he knew what he was doing or if something or someone else had possessed him to do it. It definitely felt as if Donny was observing what happened next between him and Batu from the perspective of a detached observer even as he doing it. Donny reached out, took hold of Batu's face with both of his hands, and kissed the Mongolian in the lips. It was a move that definitely took both parties by surprise. Batu was genuinely taken by surprise by Donny's kiss; he probably wasn't expecting anything like it from the older Fleftic driver. But perhaps nobody could have been more surprised by what happened other than Donny himself. He did not plan to end tonight with a kiss to Batu; not at all. Adonis Fitzpatrick just wanted to talk, to clear up any confusion between him and Batu with regards to their friendship. Donny thought that he had cleared that up tonight after offering his apologies to the Mongolian. But a kiss... well, now things have just gotten a lot more complicated. Like, a lot more complicated.

"I'm sorry," Donny immediately blurted out as he let go of Batu's face. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have done that. I should not have done that! I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry..." he kept repeating over and over even as he ran away from Batu. What should have been the moment that both men were finally able to put a label on their relationship had just turned into a night of confusion, chaos, and even more uncertainty than when they had agreed to meet. And it was all Donny Fitzpatrick's fault.

Whoa, ayoko nang mag-sorry
Ooh, sawa na kong magsisi
Pasensya ka na, mabilis lang akong mataranta

Ako ang hari ng sablay, ako ang hari ng sablay
Hinding hindi makasabay
Sabay sa agos ng aking buhay

World Grand Prix Championship 21 [RP/results]

WGPC21 :: Grand Prix of Liventia Preview

à quelque chose, malheur est bon

17. Words

Tropicorp Preview: Grand Prix of Liventia

WGPC21 XII-1 - In Two Minds

WGPC 21 - Statistical Data Zone (Work in Progress)

Just Desserts

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WGPC21 XII-2 - Sunrise and Sunset

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