Page 16 of Tipping Point

Rheese walks away laughing, not sparing us a backwards glance.

I turn back to her to explain, but she’s all fury.

She scoffs and walks away.

I know the guys. We race each other every year. Someone started a pool. A bet. On who fucks her first? It’s probably that cunt Lorenzo from Bianchi. And knowing Rheese, he’s betting on himself.

* * *

CAMILLE

We’re at the Jewel of the Desert circuit in Bahrain and I’m loving the weather. I may be a native Londoner, but the warmer climates suit me better. I’m following famous pop star Lucinda as she navigates the VIP experience. She’s a godsend. When I spot her arriving with her entourage, we scramble for permission to follow her for the day. She’s big in the Latin world and the potential exposure from WebFlix Max has her agent basically frothing at the mouth. Since we do fly-on-the-wall filming when we’re on location, we have to follow them from a couple of steps back. She doesn’t speak any English and her agent translates graciously as she makes her way to her private viewing area, a glass room with a small balcony offering the best views of the track. After she and her four or five friends devour gourmet hors d’oeuvres, guzzling it down with champagne that costs about as much as my month’s rent, we make our way down to the paddock where she and her team get a behind-the-scenes tour of the Velocity Racing garage. Their drivers are Ollie Blythe, another UK native, and Jasper de Vries, a Dutch veteran driver. They finish podium most races and it shows. They wear plain unbranded clothes with easy grace while shaking hands with Lucinda and her “pequeño rebaño”, as she refers to her entourage, or her “little flock”, as her agent translates for us.

I learned this last week. The rich wear branded clothes from fashion houses all around the world, something that distinguishes them, shows off their wealth. The mega rich buy from places you’ve never heard of. There isn’t a logo in sight.

Ollie is a black man from Milton Keynes, handsomely groomed, and perhaps just a smidge too tall for his sport. He does incredible lap times, but he’s constantly having to watch his weight, his lanky frame adding unnecessary kilos to a car that Velocity Racing insists must be as lightweight as possible. Every kilogram Ollie is overweight, translates to lost seconds on the track. His hair is also closely shaved on the sides with the top in two thick cornrows, ending in long braids that hang to his waist. They’re decorated with golden loops and charms, and though boyishly playful in nature, in reality, it gives him a sophisticated look. He never bothers to camouflage his accent, a lilting MLE with a hint of Senegalese. To know him is to love him. He is a man at total ease with who he is and his open face and wide smile reel me in like a charm. Me and Casey gave Lucinda envious looks as she lingers while hugging him.

“You’re not his type.” That’s what Irish said. I don’t look like the women hanging around the paddock. I don’t wear designer clothes casually. I don’t have thousands of dollars of hair extensions, every hair in its place. I don’t wear sunglasses worth as much as a car. I don’t walk like they do, talk like they do. I am nothing like them.

What? Like I don’t know that?

All our hearts break when Ollie’s wife, a blonde bombshell of a supermodel looking woman, steps up to him with a Velocity Energy Drink in one hand, the other hand protectively held over her heavily pregnant belly. She is surprisingly star struck to meet Lucinda, and her agent translates a casual yet kind conversation between the two women as they talk about Spanish food.

I can see why Ollie picked his wife. Her smiles come as easy as his do and her warmth reels you in like a spell.

When we break out of it, we head back up to the private viewing area and prepare to watch the qualifying race.

I make a mental note to ask for Ollie’s wife to be present when we film him at home. Apart from the group shots and the interview-style filming, we have to spend a day with each driver or team principal to give viewers a glimpse into their private life.

In Melbourne, already I was blown away at the speed of the race. I know, in theory, that the cars go more than two hundred and thirty miles an hour. In reality, it’s over in a blink.

A blink, and so much more.

You can hear the cars first, the roar overpowering, and as they tear down the track at impossible speeds, everything in their wake gets a second of fury, of being buffeted, overwhelming noise and the sheer power of the air moving around the car as it forces its way forward at impossible speed.

If you’re close, it snatches the very air out of your lungs.

And it’s relentless. It lasts for almost two hours.

For two hours, every driver has to physically battle the forces exerted on them by the impossible speeds, and every driver has only himself to rely on.

Standing next to the track, trying to capture the split second it takes for a race car to pass a spectator, me and Jay have removed our protective noise cancelling earphones and stand breathless and tense, fighting the air whipping us around, the noise deafening, the smell of fuel and burning tyres sharp, and when we replace our headphones and head back to the rest of the crew, I pull my phone from my pocket and send Dixon a message.

CAMILLE (16:45) I get it.

After the race, everything is a blur.

Casey booked us on a Sunday night red eye to Bahrain from Australia and we scurry to pack our gear and bags and hit the airport after the long day of filming.

The Annual Grande Prima issued us a ton of documentation that we use to secure our visas for the year ahead. I have a dedicated consultant who navigates the murky waters of passports and visas and I’m grateful not to have to do it myself. After spending countless hours in the past in interviews at foreign embassies, this is a service I didn’t even know existed. I have had many opportunities to travel in the past, none of them funded like this. I have ridden camels, spent hours on a longboat in flood season to get to a small town, flown in small aircraft in the cargo hold, slept in train stations and parking lots, camped in deserts and eaten just about every strange meal you can imagine. I have always been grateful for my career, no matter how small it is compared to others.

It has taken me all over the world.

This, however, is on another level.

When we check into the hotel in Bahrain, tired, sore, and hungry, we receive exemplary service, luxury rooms, and spectacular food.

I thank the WebFlix Max gods and try to wrap my head around the fact that I will be on the move like this for the next eleven months. Nothing but a suitcase.

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