Chasing the Chimaera
A short story
This is my submission for the monthly Symposium at the Soaring Twenties Social Club. This month's theme is 'Chimera.'
Aden Decorra sat strapped into the thrumming, rumbling yellow Chilson race car, yellow with streaks of deep blue, the V10 growling even in neutral. Fifth on the grid, ahead were only four cars between him and the lead, waiting like he was for the lights to come and the lights to go and the race to start.
His vision was limited by the helmet: four cars, a bit of track, the lights overhead, and the grandstands on either side in his periphery but everything focused, dwindling down to a point. There were the lights and the bit of road in front of him and the four cars. Everything else seemed to wave and shimmer at the edges like it wasn’t real, like it wasn’t there.
Four cars between him and a win, a first win, the first of many and motorsport immortality.
Inside his dark green helmet all he could smell was his own sweat and breath, hot, but his breathing was calm despite the rising knot in his belly, anxious to be moving, anxious for the waiting to end but no thoughts hard thoughts running through his mind—no plans for strategy, no attempt to anticipate what the cars in front would do—just a feeling of readiness and a right foot ready to stamp the throttle.
His hands sweat in their gloves, the left gripping the steering wheel, the right on the gear shift—a gear shift because James Upton, the billionaire founder of the Single-Seat Racing Championship (SSRC), was obsessed with old school single-seat racing, old school Formula 1.
The cars were to have wide, squat, angular bodies, fat tires, screaming 3.5L V10 engines, six-speed manual gearboxes, hard-wearing tires, and no traction control, ABS, DRS, or any other kind of driver assist. The result was a raw, Promethean bellow from the cars and an aggressive all-out race based on driver talent. In most motor racing it was understood that the car accounted for eighty percent of the race, the driver twenty. An important twenty, but just twenty nevertheless.
Upton wanted the driver to account for at least fifty percent of the equation, to put cars with the same engine and the same chassis and limited custom input from each team on a track and let the drivers go at it—real driving, real racing.
The radio crackled in Aden’s ear. “Green flag. Green flag.”
“Copy.”
One red light.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Out.
Throttle eased in to avoid wheel spin then down hard. If there had been room in the car Aden would have been pushed back against the seat. There was no room, no gap in the harness, but the g-force pulled nonetheless, every bit of him hammered back like an anvil dropped from space just pulling, pulling, pulling him backward and rocketing him forward into the tunnel of light under the Portuguese sun.
In front, a blue and white GPC slotted into fourth and the line of cars approached turn one of Circuito do Estoril, a sharp right-hander, each car slowing into the breaking zone before pulling away.
A soft right at turn two, then a hard right at three, a hard left at four, and a long straightaway with a slight right-handed elbow at five.
Aden maintained his place in fifth, the four ahead stretching out in front as each exited from four and pulled away.
He checked his mirror. An orange Lyon hung in tight behind him.
Into the long sweeping left-handed Parabolica Interior of turn six, a hard right at seven, a slight right at eight, and into the chicane at Gancho, turns nine and ten. Aden slowed to a crawl twisting the wheel left then right again and took the sweeping right at Esses with his foot hard down, then a hard left at twelve into the long right-hander Parabolica Ayrton Senna and on into the straight, foot down hard again, engine screaming to the highest pitch its ten cylinders could produce down the straightaway past the pit lane and the grandstand, all merely a blur, noise in his field of vision, the only thing that mattered was the track, the car in front, the engine.
Right, right, right, left, right, left, right, right, left, right, right, left, right.
Repeat.
Sixth gear down the straight. First, second, fourth, third, fifth, second, third, second, fourth, sixth, third, fourth, fifth, first at the chicane, second, faster, third, faster, hard around Senna, fourth, fifth, sixth down the straight.
On the third lap Aden got within a few tenths of the GPC in front coming out of Senna into the straight and with greater exit speed pulled to the right on the inside and braked comfortably into turn 1.
Aden barely registered the g-force pulling his head to the left around the turn. He rocketed out of the corner using the full width of the track to its extreme left side and aimed for the next car in front, an orange Lyon. He tried to go around the outside at turn three, then inside at turn four but couldn’t manage to get past, opting instead to slot in right behind the Lyon on the straight, through the slight turn at five, and around the left-handed Parabolica Interior.
Following, following, keeping close lap after lap Aden finally saw his chance. Down the straight, wheel to wheel with Camposano driving the orange Lyon. Wheel to wheel, the revs pushing from seven to eight to nine thousand in both cars as they pushed hard in sixth gear coming closer and closer to turn one.
Into turn one on the inside right, the left front tire locking up. Aden entered the turn, tapping the throttle to throw the back end of the car out to the left, fishtailing ever so slightly, and overtook Camposano, the Italian running wide on his left.
Aden pulled into third.
“Watch the tires, Aden.”
“Copy,” Aden said. He knew the engineers were over-cautious. He knew how he was using the tires, where they were wearing and where they had grip. The hard-wearing Goodyears should last the entire race unless he was reckless around the corners. Luckily at Estoril, although a mostly right-handed track, there were plenty of left turns to balance the tire wear.
In front of him was the other blue and white GPC and somewhere farther ahead, possibly too far ahead, was the silver arrow of Noyers.
Bromley in the GPC was a master defender. Although Aden reached within half a second of him within another lap, Bromley had the magic ability to make his car wider that it was, almost as wide as the track itself.
Bromley would take the racing line into turn one, Aden would dive to the inside right, and somehow Bromley would turn in even quicker to cut off Aden’s advance.
Into turn two, Bromley came just right of the racing line and pulled ahead of Aden. Aden hit the throttle into three, a sweeping right-hander, and tried to go around the outside, using his speed as they came down the hill, but he went too wide and lost time. Bromley pulled ahead.
Around and around they went, lap after lap. Aden rocking and bouncing, g-force pulling left then right, as he rocketed around each turn, looking for a gap, a weakness he could exploit in Bromley’s defense and all the while the V10 screaming behind his seat, urging him on, and nagging him that Noyers was out there ahead driving in clean air stuck behind no one but backmarkers setting fastest lap after fastest lap.
All the while his arms ached, his shoulders threatened to seize with the exertion, the left in particular.
There it was, the opportunity he had been waiting for like a path to heaven opening up in front of him, a bit of black open road as Bromley took the chicane too wide, locked up, and Aden pounced dancing into the corner in his typical style, cutting across Bromley’s left, skimming Bromley’s front left with his rear right as he passed through the chicane and screaming off onto the clear open circuit in search of Noyers.
It was as if there was no race and all the other cars had disappeared, with them the lights and the crowds, and he was eight years old again and driving a kart on the track in Freeport, just him and the car and the road.
Except it wasn’t. He wasn’t just driving, he was driving to win. Somewhere ahead was Noyers, last year’s champion, the man to beat if he was to not only win the race but advance in the racing world—race winner, organization champion, world champion.
And then it happened.
It started to rain.
Aden hated the rain but, unlike the other drivers, he didn’t fear the rain. Where the others slowed and crept around corners, Aden pushed that little bit more, forcing the car and the tires to the edge of control, throwing up spray behind him as he left the racing line to overtake.
Passing Bromley had lit an ember in his mind, a belief that he could win, that he would win. He was ecstatic, giddy.
“Box, Aden, box for wet tires,” said the voice over the radio.
Aden ignored it. While everyone else would pit to put on wet tires in the pouring rain and lose precious seconds, up to half a minute, he would push on.
“What’s Noyers doing?” he said on his way around Senna. The pit lane was just ahead.
“Noyers just entered the pit lane. Box, box now, Aden.”
“I’ll pass him while he’s in the pit. I’ll be in the lead.”
“Negative, Aden. We need you to pit.”
“How many laps are left?”
“Ten, repeat, ten.”
“It’s not raining that hard. I can do it.”
“Aden, this is James.” James was the team manager. The orders were now coming from the highest team authority in the pit lane, not just an engineer. “Box now, Aden, and we’ll put on wets.”
“Negative. I’m going to win.”
The radio transmitted static but no one spoke. They knew there was no arguing; they couldn’t make him pit, and shouting at him would just be a distraction.
As the yellow and blue car screamed down the straight into turn one, Aden saw Noyers on the pit road approaching the exit just past the turn.
Push, push, brake, brake, brake, throttle.
Noyers hit the throttle, breaking the pit lane speed limit but it was too late. Aden was past him and away, dancing in the rain from Noyers, Camposano, and every other driver now on wet tires—grippier on the corners but slower—and pulling further and further ahead.
The Portuguese sun had been replaced by dark, billowing clouds and sheets of rain, heavy but not too heavy to stop the race outright.
The track and the rain became one, one tunnel down which Aden was going and going, round and round, past backmarkers.
One car had spun out at turn one, another at the Parabolica, another going around Senna but Aden just kept on using the lightest touch of the wheel to correct for the fishtailing rear of his car as he came out of each turn and jamming the throttle to sprint down each straight farther and farther away from Noyers, closer and closer to the win.
Three laps. Then two. Then one.
He pushed the shifter away from him to get into first gear for turn one, then hit the clutch and pulled the shifter towards him for second. The revs screamed up to eight thousand and he jumped to fourth, then back to second for the turn.
There was no thinking, he was driving just by feel, by instinct as he and the car became one.
A long right-hander around Senna for one last time, so long it felt like it would never end, like the release, the relief of the final straight and the chequered flag would never come. Right, right, the wheel trembling in his hands.
There it was, a beautiful ribbon of black.
Fifth, sixth gear.
Elation. Ecstasy. The joy of the win.
The line approached.
Radio static.
“Backmarkers spun out on the track.”
Aden was looking, looking for the flag. There! High off to the right. And a red flag too.
He was raising a fist high in the air.
A win. A win. Everything for a win.
And there, invisible through the rain until it was too late, was a silver car spun out and stalled on the track just past the finish line.
Aden, going two hundred miles per hour down the straight, looking at the chequered flag, picturing the podium, didn’t see it save for a flash of silver in the rain.
Hard left. Hard on the brake. The slick tires hydroplaned and the yellow and blue Chilson ran straight into the back of Noyers and rocketed into the air.
Silver and yellow shattered into a thousand pieces glinting in the rain.
The car was airborne and then rolling sideways, rolling, rolling in black, rolling to a stop, green helmet rocked side to side.
He saw himself climbing out of the cockpit, he saw the flag, the podium, the champagne. He saw it all. And then he saw the circuit as a tunnel stretching out before him, infinitely long yet disappearing ahead around a curve and he wanted to drive on, to find the end of that road with one more turn, one more lap, one more win. If he could just get back in the car and drive he’d be able to make it, he was sure of it.
The harness tightened. The engine thrummed. The lights came on and they went out.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, strictly a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance, perceived resemblance, or similarity to any other fictional works, to actual events or persons, living or dead, and any perceived slights of people, places, or organizations are products of the reader’s imagination. This fiction is the result of a partnership between a human writer and the character(s) he accessed with his creative subconscious as he raced through the story with them. No AI of any kind, generative or otherwise, was used in any way to write this story.
Adam- I think it's been something like twenty years since I used the word "Chimera." Don't think I've used "chimaera," though. And this piece is a great reminder. Hope you're well this week? Cheers, -Thalia