Page 78 of Well Played

GET TORQUED

BY CECELIA CONWAY

One hot shot race car driver and one rival team’s mechanic. What could go wrong?

Charly Dane is new to the dirt track circuit but she’s making an impact. Especially on crew chief Robbie Faraday.

When sparks fly between the two of them will she tell him to get torqued or will them dive in to their mutual feelings.

1

Spring

Robbie

The comforting aromas of rubber,lubricants, and good old nostril tingling scent of racing fuel soothe my nerves. I didn’t think I’d have anything to be nervous about when I took over as crew chief this year.

Except Charlotte Dane has been kicking our ass over the first few races at the start of this season.

She’s risen from relative obscurity and been dominating the spring national racing circuit. Well, she isn’t a complete unknown. Charly, as she’s known to her growing fan base, has raced just about everything. From karts as a kid in California to her new role as a factory test driver for one of the big four manufacturers.

They’ve historically had poor race results, especially in the dirt track series. Charly’s job is to come in and see what they can do to improve. I don’t know if until now they’ve had bad luck with their drivers, but in the few months of off season prepthey’ve gone from the bottom of the pile to challenging for the championship lead. It’s a remarkable turnaround that no one predicted prior to Charly’s arrival.

So far Eddie, my driver, is keeping up with her, but with every checkered flag Charly takes, she edges farther ahead. At this point in the season we have to catch up, and keep up, otherwise the fall is going to be miserable.

Tonight we’re at Lawrenceburg Speedway. Our teams’ haulers are parked near each other. Just one other team separates us. Beside the stark white trailer next to us are flashes of neon pink and contrasting black. Everything Charly touches turns pink, and the little girls eat it up.

She’s like a dirt track Barbie, everything she wears is pink and she keeps her hair in a long blonde ponytail. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but she leans into the stereotype. Before the race, hoards of fans crowd around her pit and she stands outside signing autographs. She takes pictures with everyone and always has a genuine smile.

Eddie poked his head out of the trailer earlier, saw the crowd, and disappeared back inside. Notoriously reclusive, people often think he’s an asshole, but he’s just incredibly shy. Thankfully, our sponsors love him and he has a proven track record of wins to keep them coming back.

“Hey Robbie, can I get a hand with this?” One of my crew members calls over. I move to help him bust a stuck lug nut loose. We’ve got a half hour before hot laps start, so we need to be ready as soon as possible.

Nerves ratchet through me. Lawrenceburg has always been one of my favorite tracks. It’s fast, a clay oval, just shy of a quarter mile, and one of the tracks I grew up attending. Saturday nights under the lights, watching my dad wheel his car around, listening to the roar of the crowd. It all feeds into the pressure I constantly feel now that I’m in charge.

My dad, Sebastian Faraday, is a former USAC champion and one time Indy car driver. A week after my mom brought me home from the hospital after being born, Dad plunked me in his old midget car so I could ‘get used to the feeling’.

When my driving career fizzled in my teens, he begrudgingly admitted that I didn’t have the heart for it.

What I loved was the science. Even when I was little, I’d watch the engines being taken apart and put back together, fascinated by how everything fit. As I got older, I got more and more into the mechanics of cranking out as much horsepower as possible.

The more experience I got in the garage, the more I appreciated the technical details that had to change between each track. There are innumerable variables that go into preparing a race car and I love puzzling them out.

With five minutes to go before we need to push off, Eddie pops out of the trailer, race suit on, and helmet tucked under his arm. I climb on the four wheeler and the rest of the guys pile on behind me. Eddie clamors into the car and with a thumbs up, I crank the four wheeler’s engine and push us toward the track.

We’re in an earlier hot lap group, which is both good and bad. We won’t be able to see what other cars are doing and the track isn’t as worked in as it’ll be by the time we get to the race but, there’s more time to work out any kinks afterward.

When the steward waves us forward, we push Eddie down into the infield where a push truck is idling. They get him moving and the spring car’s engine comes to life with a roar. Late spring sunlight gleams off the top wing as Eddie puts it through its paces, testing different braking points and seeing what he thinks might be the best running line later.

As he shoots by the starter stand, we all clap and wave. While he takes his cool down lap, we run back to the four wheeler sowe’ll be able to push him straight back to the hauler and start prep for his qualifying run.

Just as we’re leaving, Charly’s team rolls past and I motion for someone else to take over driving the four wheeler. I hop off, making my way back to the fence to watch how Charly does.

Even though it’s early, still two hours from race time, the stands are filling up and when they see Charly; they cheer and clap.

I study her line as her pink and black car flies around the track, using many of the same strategies Eddie did in his hot lap session.

There’s no denying she’s fast, and an extremely talented driver.

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