Read Chapter 4: Qualifying Snub

The garage smelled of hot rubber and burnt clutch. Elise stood at her station, tablet in hand, watching the timing screens flicker through the final phase of qualifying. Julien was on track. P6. Stuck behind a Haas that had no business being ahead of an Apollon.

She pulled up his sector times. There it was again—the same signature she’d seen in practice. Understeer through Casino Square, scrub on exit, lost time every lap. She’d flagged it after FP3. The car was tight on entry, washing out mid-corner. The balance window was razor-thin, and Julien was driving around a problem that shouldn’t exist.

“He needs a front wing change,” she said to no one in particular.

Marco leaned against the pit wall, arms crossed, watching the screens with the smug patience of a man who knew his job was safe. “He needs to drive better.”

Elise ignored him. She pulled up the saved telemetry from Julien’s earlier push laps—the ones she’d copied to her personal drive after Marco had dismissed her findings. The steering input curve was sharp, committed. The yaw rate told the real story. The front axle was losing grip at exactly the same point every lap. Not a driver error. A car error.

Julien’s voice crackled over the radio. “Still pushing wide through Turn 3. Can’t get the rotation.”

“Copy, Julien,” Marco said smoothly. “Trim front flap two clicks. Confirm.”

Elise’s head snapped up. “No. That will only make the front stiffer. He needs more rear stability, not less front downforce.”

Marco turned to her with the patience of a man explaining gravity to a child. “He’s got understeer. You add front grip. Standard.”

“It’s not entry understeer. It’s mid-corner washout. The rear is stepping out and he’s catching it, which costs him exit speed. You trim the front, you’ll make the imbalance worse.”

The channel went quiet. Elise felt the eyes of the garage on her. Dieter was standing near the door, arms folded, watching with the expression of a man who’d already written his report. Nadia was at the far end of the pit wall, speaking quietly into a headset. No one was going to back her up.

Julien’s voice cut through the silence. “Who do I listen to?”

Marco took a step toward the radio. “Follow my instruction.”

Elise stepped forward too. “Julien, if you adjust the front brake bias two percent rearward and soften the rear anti-roll bar one click, the washout disappears. I have the data from your push laps. The pattern is consistent. It’s not a setup failure, it’s a balance failure.”

A beat of silence. Then Julien’s voice, cold and clipped: “I’ll take Marco’s call.”

The words hit her like a slap. She stood there, holding her breath as Marco issued the front flap adjustment. Elise watched the screens, her jaw tight. She already knew what would happen. She’d seen it in half a dozen simulations, in every lap she’d analyzed since she’d arrived.

Julien crossed the line. The lap was. . . clean. But slow. P10. Behind the Haas, behind a Williams, behind two cars that shouldn’t have been within a second of him.

The session ended. Elise stayed at her station as the garage dissolved into frantic motion, mechanics rolling tires, engineers packing laptops. Julien climbed out of the car, helmet off, face dark. He walked past her without looking, heading toward the debrief room.

She caught up to him at the door.

“Julien. We need to talk about the setup.”

He stopped. Turned. His eyes were flat, unforgiving. “We needed to talk about it before qualifying. You had plenty of data. Plenty of opinions. But you never once brought them to me directly. You waited until I was in the car with thirty seconds left on the clock to suggest a completely different direction.”

“I brought it to Marco. He overruled me.”

“Then you should have come to me.”

“You didn’t exactly make yourself available.”

Julien took a step closer. She could smell the sweat and adrenaline on him. “I’m the driver. I’m the one who has to trust that the person in my ear knows what they’re doing. You’ve been in this paddock for three days, and you’ve already managed to anger my chief mechanic, confuse my race engineer, and ensure I start Monaco from tenth.”

“That’s not what happened, and you know it.”

“I know what I felt in the car. The front was dead from the first corner. I was driving a truck. And the solution you proposed after the fact might have worked, but it was too little, too late. That’s on you.”

Elise’s hands were shaking. Not from fear. From fury. She pulled out her tablet and tapped the screen, bringing up a graph. “You want to know what I saw? I saw your push lap from FP3. Your steering input at Turn 3. Nearly identical to your qualifying lap. Same issue. Same washout. I flagged it to Marco before the session. He dismissed it as noise. I saved the raw data because I knew something like this would happen.”

Julien glanced at the screen. For a flicker, she saw something change in his expression—calculation, maybe even surprise. But it was gone in a second, replaced by the same wall of contempt.

“You saved data to prove you were right?” He shook his head. “That’s not engineering. That’s politics.”

“No. It’s evidence.”

Julien stared at her for a long moment. Then he turned and pushed through the debrief door, letting it swing shut behind him.

Elise stood alone in the corridor, the tablet clutched to her chest. She could hear the low murmur of voices through the door. Marco’s voice, smooth and conciliatory. Dieter’s, clipped and accusatory. Julien’s, still hot with frustration.

She didn’t follow. There was no point. They’d already decided who to blame.

She walked back to the garage, her footsteps echoing on the concrete. The car was under its cover now, mechanics already stripping the floor for inspection. She passed Riko, who was wiping down the front wing. He gave her a look—a long, appraising look that said more than words.

“They’re setting up a press conference,” he said quietly. “Dieter wants to talk about ‘team errors’ before the race.”

“Of course he does.”

“He’s going to name you.”

Elise stopped. “He can’t prove anything.”

“He doesn’t have to. He just has to say it. Everyone will believe him.”

She thought about her tablet, about the data that proved her right. About the memory card in her pocket, heavy as a stone.

“Let him talk,” she said. “I have the receipts.”

Riko smiled—a thin, sharp smile. “You think that matters in this paddock?”

“I think it matters when the race starts and they realize they’re starting from tenth.”

She turned and walked to her station. She opened her laptop, navigated to her personal drive, and opened the folder labeled PRIVATE—DO NOT SHARE. Inside, she dropped another file. The comparison between FP3 and Q2. The steering overlay. The yaw rate graph. Every piece of evidence that showed she’d been right, and Marco had been wrong.

But as she closed the laptop, a thought surfaced, cold and unwelcome.

Julien had vetoed her call. He’d chosen Marco. If the data she’d saved proved she was right, it also proved he was wrong. And a man like Julien Lefèvre didn’t forgive being made a fool.

She was protecting herself. But she was also building a weapon that could destroy the only ally she might have ever had.

The garage lights buzzed overhead. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the click of a camera shutter, the murmur of technicians. She looked across the room, through the glass of the debrief room, where Julien stood with his back to her, arms crossed, head bowed.

She’d saved the data. She’d be ready when the accusations came.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling that the real battle hadn’t started yet—and that she might be fighting it alone.