Page 68 of Dirty Air
“Did anything else change between free practice and qualifying?”
Fritz looks away. A car exits the pit lane and he watches it leave. A flash in his peripheral, and he cringes as another car follows the first out.
The same thing happened out on the track. He only had three chances to put in a good lap, but every time he passed a car on their slow lap, as soon as they faded to his peripheral, he let up on the accelerator and braced for impact.
“You would not ask me if you did not already know.”
“I wasn’t the one who caught it.” Henry pulls up an acceleration graphic and plays it next to the on-board footage. “Our team flagged it pretty quickly, but we have to assume, with all eyes on you, that most of the grid will know by tomorrow.”
Fritz tries to brace himself. “What can I do about it?”
“Well, we can't unpack a PTSD reaction overnight, unfortunately.” Henry turns his stool towards Fritz, perching his elbow on the desk, his cheek against his fist. “Best thing I can think to do is wave shit in your peripheral until it doesn’t bother you anymore.”
“Dieter will just love that.”
“It probably wouldn’t help unless you’re in a driving environment. But, obviously, driving around the city and trying to startle you isn’t the safest idea—especially since we’re trying to avoid another car accident.”
“Do we have a simulator?”
“Not here, not that I know of.” Henry thinks and then whips his chair back until he faces the other direction. “Hey, do we have any simulators in the fan zone?”
“You cannot be serious.” Fritz is willing to do a lot, but he’s not willing to hang out in the fan zone all night. He’d be a sitting target.
“There’s a few,” William’s race engineer says. Fritz wouldn’t have thought the man had been listening to their conversation, since William’s car is on the track for Q2. Did all race engineers have freaky hearing?
“Right. Okay.” Henry digs out his phone, but he turns back to face Fritz. “I’m going to make some calls right now and try to get one of the simulators moved to your hotel room for the night. Can you ask Dieter to help you?”
It sounds insane, but it’s better than being trapped in the fan zone. “How fast can they set it up?”
“Hopefully pretty quick.” Henry scrolls through his contacts until he finds who he’s looking for. “It’ll be better to move it while the fans and reporters are distracted with qualifying.”
Fritz shouldn’t be surprised to see a full sim racer in his hotel room, but he definitely startles a bit.
After justifying his qualifying result to every single reporter in the paddock, he’s already had a long enough day. He's not looking forward to homework.
“Thought you’d have a bigger room,” Dieter says, parking his rolling bag in the short hallway.
Why were people always disappointed in his hotel rooms? “I am still a VFIBR employee.”
“That’s something to look forward to for next year.”
It takes a moment for them to figure out how to power on the machine, but once they do, it prompts them to download the team app and make an account.
Favorite driver? Himself.
Purchase merch? No, thank you.
Take a quiz? Please, just let him get on the sim.
Once Fritz is finally in line for the sim, it makes him wait two minutes to see if anyone else will join.
There are no other sim machines connected. Nobody elsecanjoin.
Fritz looks at Dieter, exasperated.
“Get desensitized quickly and we won’t have to wait.”
The game allows for three laps at a time, which should be enough to use as a baseline, but Dieter insists that he should run two rounds, just in case.
