Page 203 of Trading Paint

Alley was not amused by the time I got back to my hauler. I refused to let this bother me and smiled at her despite my temper boiling under the surface.

She had no reaction at all, other than slowly raising a single finger to me hiding it from Lane. You can guess which one.

Spencer returned right about then from god knows where with more food in his mouth. “Why did we have to change gas tanks this morning?”

“Are you fucking stupid? Or have you not been paying attention?” Alley asked him handing Lane over to me once again.

Aiden walked with a cocky gait, he smiled wide tucking in his shirt. “Jimi’s looking for you. He looks crazy.”

Even better.

“Why the fuck are you smiling?” I asked heading inside.

Aiden’s grin widened. “Nothin...” his expression turned panicked as though I just caught him. Emma, straightening out her skirt, walked past as well but didn’t stop. Race days were just as crazy for her as they were for me since she and Alley attended every media event I attended.

I couldn’t understand why everyone was acting so strange today. You have Spencer who is in his own world. Aiden who just smiles, and then Emma, who apparently needs to check her attire before she leaves as her shirt was on backward.

Jimi was crazy when I walked inside, that much was evident by his distraught pacing. He reminded me of Gordon. “How’d it get in there?” he asked.

I looked behind me—I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, someone else, or if it was a rhetorical question.

“Marcus asked that we meet with him this morning so we should get going. Gordon just informed me they found a mixture of methanol and ethanol in the fuel.”

My jaw clenched as I started my own pacing, my luck just got a whole hell of a lot shittier. Like I said, NASCAR is very specific on fuel and tires and adding additives like methanol and ethanol into the fuel they provided was not allowed. It added increased the oxygen content and in turn could make you go faster.

The problem was,how did it get in there if we didn’t add it? As I’ve said before, the car is inspected numerous times throughout the weekend. Not one of those inspections detected anything wrong with the car. Why now? We had been using the same fuel.

“What does this mean?” I asked leaning against the stainless counter in the hauler. Kyle opened the door just then.

Dad looked up at him and then down at his phone he was flipping obsessively in his hand.

“They’re fining us $50,000 but we get to keep the starting position since the additive wasn’t detected prior to qualifying.”

“Fifty thousanddollars for a fucking additive?”I yelled. “How the hell did it get in there?”

Dad and I both glanced at Kyle who held up his hands in defense. “We have no idea.” His glare was evidence he really didn’t know. “Mason and Gentry were with the car all morning.”

“What about last night?” Dad asked his face scrunched as he contemplated all the ways something like this could have happened.

“Mason was the last to leave the garage area He said a couple other teams were in there but left right after him.”

We had no answers, just that we were being fined $50,000.

I’ll let you in on a little secret here, or not really a secret but what most outside of this tight knit circle of NASCAR racing don’t know. These rules are bullshit at times, everyone in the garage area will tell you that. Today was proof of that.

Don’t get me wrong, I understood the need for them and respected NASCAR for what they did but, really?

This seemed a little steep for something we didn’t do.

My other problem was explaining this to Simplex.

This was not the sort of thing your sponsor wanted to see. When you think about it, without corporate sponsors and fans, we wouldn’t have this sport. The money provided pays for us to be competitive, such as buying parts, building these cars and paying the salaries for the team members and myself, oh and according to NASCAR, buying additives for our fuel tanks.

In turn for this money, the primary sponsor has final say in team colors, uniforms, paint schemes and other team appearances.

What we do for the sponsor ispresentourselves in a positive way and advertise for them.

How do you think we looked now?

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