That night Joachim, Manny and I ate at a little Thai restaurant across the street from our hotel. The food was surprisingly high quality, especially given the dumpy exterior and ramshackle decorations inside. My green curry was about as good as I’d ever had, and Manny and Joachim both said their dinners were excellent as well. Chalk it up as one of life’s little pleasant surprises, I guess.
“I’m sure you coulda taken at least three tenths off with fresh tires,” Joachim said when the subject of the time attacks came up. “Tomorrow, we’ll swap fresh tires on for your noon run. We shoulda done it for the afternoon run today, but…” he said with a shrug.
The reason we hadn’t is that I’d thought the tires on there were probably good enough and I wanted to save the hassle of a tire swap right at the end of the day.
“Let’s break out the Rs this time,” I said. “Put them on for the eleven o’clock session so I can get a feel for ‘em before the timed runs.”
“It’s time for the good stuff!” Manny chortled, rubbing his hands together like some old-time movie villain. “They ain’t gonna know what hit ‘em!”
Settled into my hotel room after a nice, long shower, I had a video call with Emmy and Angela.
“Laurence is so cute!” Angela said. “I want that lab to hurry up and make us babies!”
“He is completely precious,” Emmy agreed. “He looks very much like an adorable Winston Churchill.”
“Maybe we can visit again sometime in the next few days,” I suggested.
“I like their house, too,” Angela said. “It’s super contemporary, and has great views.”
“Yeah, if there’s one thing we’re missing out on, it’s any real decent view,” I agreed.
“I would not trade houses,” Emmy said. “Their home is very stylish, and yes, it does have a wonderful view, but our house is larger, and to me, more comfortable. Also, we have a studio, and they do not,” she added with a smile.
“Yeah, and our little pool is as big as theirs, but we also have the big pool, too,” Angela added.
We talked like that for a while, about Laurence, Margaret and Olivia’s house, the upcoming video shoot for the next Downfall single, and whatever else, mostly just to hear each other’s voices and feel as if we were together, if only virtually.
When we finally hung up, I had a nice, warm feeling in my heart and a smile on my face.
We got to the track a bit early so the guys could get the tires up to temperature for the first session and change the car’s oil.
I attended the mandatory drivers’ meeting- but for the fast group this time. It was the same old talk as always, explaining the flags, where to enter and exit the track, and the passing rules. There were some drivers who hadn’t been there the day before, but everybody in the fast group had done track days in the past so we all knew the drill.
I made sure I was in the hot pit lane early so I could have an empty track for a while, and used that time with no traffic to re-acquaint myself with the new, improved lines I’d worked on the day before. I felt that I could probably shave off a few more tenths with fresh tires now that I was getting a firmer understanding of how this car performed.
I saw Jeff’s red 911 off in the distance, but we never got close enough to actually interact. That was fine with me- as much fun as it had been playing with him the day before, I wanted to focus on my pursuit of a perfect lap.
After another session of doing the same, Pete Miranda found me talking to the guys in the garage.
“I watched you last session,” he said after I invited him to sit and have a Coke. “You’re really flying out there.”
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s getting to the point where I’m having a hard time finding more speed.”
“I can believe that,” he replied. “I saw your time from last night- that was impressive as hell, for your first time driving that car on the track.”
“I’m getting a feel for it,” I said, looking over at the vivid lavender Porsche. “Really, it’s the exits that have taken the most getting used to. I’m used to using the gas to rotate the car to finish the turn, but with this thing, it doesn’t rotate at all- it just pulls itself out and away.”
“It’s an amazing piece of engineering, alright,” Pete agreed. “So, were you serious about letting me take it out for a session?”
“Of course,” I said. “Any session you want after lunch.”
“Because you’re going to do another timed run,” Pete said, nodding.
“Exactly.”
We both sat there for a minute or two, looking at the 918, thinking about timed runs and whatever else, when Pete broke the silence.
“Take my car out for the time attack session at the end of the day. People are going to look at your time in the 918 and say, ‘Well of course. Look at the car,’ right? But if you put in a real credible lap time in a Boxster, nobody can smack-talk that,” he said.
“You’d be cool with that?” I asked.
“Of course,” Pete said. “I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it.”
I thought about it for a moment, and suggested that we swap cars all afternoon. “That way I can get more familiar with your car, and you can have fun in the Spyder,” I said.
“I have a hard time wrapping my brain around the idea that you’re letting me take your two million dollar Porsche out for the whole afternoon,” Pete said.
“Everybody seems so hung up on how much that car costs,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Because it costs more than most of us will ever have?” Pete suggested, which got a laugh from Manny and Joachim.
“He ain’t wrong,” Manny said.
“You know what car my mom bought me when I turned sixteen?” I asked, taking a sip of my Coke while I waited for an answer.
“No idea,” Pete said, shrugging.
“A bus pass,” I said. “We didn’t have any money.”
“You seem to be making up for lost time,” Pete said, raising his Coke in a toast.
“Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” I said, returning his salute.
“That… is a commendable attitude,” Pete said.
The eleven o’clock session went off like clockwork. The race-spec tires gripped like velcro to the track and all those little slips that had cost me in the previous day’s timed run just vanished. The Porsche simply didn’t make any wrong moves, and I felt as if I’d finally connected with the car. The track was hot, the car was running perfectly, and everything was in total sync.
I’d gotten the seventh spot in the lineup, which meant I wouldn’t get out on the track until ten after or thereabouts, so we waited until that very last moment to pull the warmers to keep as much heat in them as possible. I rolled up to the hot pit lane and saw only one car in line ahead of me. Reassured that we’d planned it correctly, I only had two minutes wait before the marshal waved me onto the track.
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Like the day before, I didn’t try for maximum speed until the tail end of my warm-up lap. All I needed to do was to get the tires hot and keep them there, and I was golden.
Driving hard out of nine and up the front straight, I relaxed my shoulders, breathed deeply and put every thought out of my head but turn one. I took the late entry line that I’d been working on, sending me flying into two at an insanely fast speed. Turn two is well banked- practically a bowl, but tilted. I used that camber to pin the car to a tight inside line where most people let the car run wide at the exit. This kept me hard to the right, shortening the track that tiny bit for me. Three went off perfectly, and thanks to the car’s serious aero package I stayed stuck to the track across the top of four, where it would get light at lower speeds.
Five, six and seven flowed just right and I went into eight faster than I ever had in the Spyder, and maybe as fast as I’d managed in the GT3. Thanks to a day and a half of running my wide line, the track was cleaner out there than it had been the day before, or in fact, any time I’d driven it.
My reference points lined up, I braked late and hard for nine, slingshotting out of the dip right at the apex. From the moment my tires kissed the inside curbing I had my foot slammed to the floor for maximum drive.
The car’s electronic nannies gave me all the torque-vectored power they could and the Spyder clawed its way through that exit at eye-watering speed, hitting the front straight with massive drive. After crossing the line I glanced down at the dash and saw two hundred and three miles per hour, and that was after I’d eased off a bit.
My cool-down lap felt glacially slow, even though I was still lapping faster than most drivers had been doing in the fast group in the morning’s sessions.
The timing lights showed my lap as I rolled into the pit- I’d just hit a 1:21.72- two seconds faster than I’d managed the day before. I saw Pete standing near the classroom, so I pulled up next to him.
“That was really fucking fast,” he said when I pulled my helmet off. “Like, that’s probably the fastest I’ve ever seen an unmodified car ever go around this track.”
“It felt fast,” I said.
“I bet it did! I’d just bet it did.”
“So, come by my garage in twenty minutes or so with your Boxster and we can swap,” I said, reaching my fist out for a knuckle bump.
Back at the garage I told the guys to swap back to the street tires. I doubted Pete would push the car hard enough to keep heat in the race tires, and I didn’t want him to lose it because the tires were too cold. The street tires would work well at lower speeds, and didn’t need the warmers.
It isn’t that I didn’t think Pete was capable of driving the car fast enough, but rather that he’d be intimidated by the idea of trashing a car worth more than twice as much as his house, so he’d most likely take it just that little bit easy and not push it to the edge. He had repeatedly mentioned how expensive the Spyder was, so it must have been nagging at him a bit.
The street sport tires were back on the car and the tank filled by the time Pete showed up with his black and gold Boxster. He still seemed as if he couldn’t believe it when I handed him the plain-looking fob for the 918.
“See you out there,” I said with a smile as he got in and started it up.
His Boxster was a pure race car, so it didn’t even need any sort of key or fob- a simple push-button start was all it took to get that 3.7 liter motor spinning. I resisted the urge to follow Pete out onto the track to watch him drive. I didn’t want him thinking I was keeping an eye on him, so I waited a bit before queueing up in the hot pit lane.
By coincidence, I found myself right behind Rob in his Cayman. Now, as I understood it, the Cayman was just a coupe version of a Boxster, so we should have fairly evenly matched hardware, right?
We were waved on together, so I tailed Rob as he accelerated onto the track. I’d seen no sign of recognition, so I was pretty sure he had no idea it was me behind him since I wasn’t in the unmistakable lavender Spyder.
I stayed with him for a few laps, noticing with amusement that he was taking the line through three that I’d shown him. Through seven, eight and nine, though, he kept to a much tighter line. On our third pass through there I finally realized why- since the cars we were driving had about one third the horsepower of the 918, it was more important to shorten the track than it was to line up the entrances for better drive out of seven and then nine.
Hitting the gas at the apex of nine, the motor just didn’t have the juice to overpower the tires the way I was used to, accelerating onto the front straight. After all, a smooth, flowing line wasn’t as important in the lighter car as it had been in the heavier, much more powerful 918.
Learning to run the track this way required a bit of a mental shift, and I was grateful for Rob’s unintentional instruction. It was on lap five, I think, when he finally had enough of the black and gold Boxster on his butt. He signaled and moved over on the front straight to let me pass. There was no way I’d turn down an offer like that, so I gave him a ‘thank you’ wave as I motored by.
Using my newfound understanding of how to drive the little Boxster, I picked up the pace a bit. As I gained speed, I did start to reach the grip limits of the tires. This actually felt a lot like my GT3, just at a lower speed. On the positive side, I was able to use the oversteer to rotate through a few of the turns in a way that the all wheel drive of the Spyder simply would not allow.
I’d seen the Spyder out on the course every now and then but off in the distance on some other part of the track, so I thought about stopping by Pete’s pit to see how it went. Realizing I didn’t want to seem overprotective or anything like that, I just rolled back to the garage.
“Where’s Manny?” I asked as Joachim lifted the car to put the warmers on.
“I sent him in to town- I found some of these tires in a place in Lancaster. I told him to buy another set like this, but also a set of race DOTs in this size,” Joachim said, indicating the Boxster’s wheels. “I know you wanna set a really hot lap this afternoon’s timed run.”
“Am I that obvious?” I asked with a laugh as I grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler.
“Hey- we’re here to kick ass and chew gum,” Joachim said with a smirk. “But we didn’t bring any gum.”
While Joachim had the car up he checked under the hood just to make sure everything looked good, even though we both knew it was probably all just fine. The Boxster had run perfectly and Pete seemed like the kind of guy who took care of his race car.
While I was relaxing and Joachim was keeping himself busy, Pete and Rob wandered into the open door of the garage.
“Hey, guys,” I said. “Grab something cold to drink and make yourselves comfortable.”
“Rob here came by my pit. He saw the Spyder parked there and wondered what was up,” Pete explained. “When I told him we’d swapped cars for the afternoon he realized it was you in the black Boxster last session.”
“Yeah, that was me,” I admitted. “I didn’t mean to follow you out like that, but when I saw I’d wound up behind you in the starting lane, I figured I’d be able to learn some more, regarding these kinds of cars.”
“You mean ‘slow ones’?” Rob asked.
“I wouldn't call them slow, really,” I said. “I mean, sure, maybe in comparison to the 918, but…”
“Leah, that car of yours is the fastest thing I’ve ever driven,” Pete said. “Hands down. It’s intimidating how fast it is.”
“It should be- it’s got nearly three times the ponies our cars have,” Rob said.
“Well, yeah, sure, but it isn’t just that. I’ve driven high horsepower cars before, but none had the ability to get the power to the ground like this thing. In the 918, you step on the accelerator and it just goes. No drama, no wheelspin, just the hand of god slamming you back into the seat harder than you’d think possible,” Pete said.
“Must be nice,” Rob replied, shaking his head.
“It is,” Pete said. “It is.”
“You know what’s funny?” I asked. “Once I started to get the feel for your car, I liked that I could step the rear out a bit to oversteer my way through some of the turns. The electronic aids on the Spyder are so over-controlling that I can’t just play, you know? You can’t get it sideways no matter how hard you try.”
“Get it sideways? On a race track?” Rob asked, amazed.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “I haven’t found any way to turn off or even reduce the TC below what it allows in ‘Race’ mode, and with the front wheels pulling through the turns, you just can’t get it to drift at all.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Rob said.
“Hey, Pete, one of my guys went into town to get you another set of tires to repay you for letting me play with your Boxster. You want us to mount them, or do you want to hang onto them until later?” I asked, changing the subject.
“One of your guys?” Rob asked, looking around and seeing Joachim for what seemed to be the first time.
“I guess Leah gave the rest of her mechanics the weekend off,” Pete said to Rob. “She only brought two this time.”
“We didn’t bother with the team rig, either,” I said. “Mainly since it has ‘BMW’ in giant letters on the side.”
“Team rig? BMW?” Rob asked, puzzled.
“Leah’s daily driver is a factory GT3 M6,” Pete said.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” Rob said, a look of disbelief on his face. “A real, honest to god factory race car?”
“In all its blue, white and indigo glory,” I said. “Normally Joachim here would be looking at the data and fine-tuning the car every time I came off the track, but with the 918, he doesn’t really have much to do.”
“Except put on the tire warmers and make sure Leah’s got gas,” Joachim volunteered as he dropped the hood. “And Manny, he mostly just makes lunch.”
“Fuck me,” Rob said, shaking his head. “It’s a different world.”
Angela’s little Z4 pulled up in front of the open garage door at about that moment. She got out and peered into the darkness of the garage, looking for me.
“Hey, babe,” I called. ”In here.”
She looked amazing in a little bitty silk summer dress I hadn’t seen before. “Emmy said she’s sorry, but the last time she came to this track she got a really bad headache from all the sun,” Angela said, leaning down to give me a kiss. Looking around, she asked, “Where’s your car?”
“Pete Miranda here, that’s his car. We traded for the afternoon,” I said, indicating where Pete sat.
“Pete Miranda? Angela asked. “Any relation to Zach Miranda from the band ‘Murder Ballot’?”
“You know Zach?” Pete asked, surprised. “He’s my nephew.”
“Our friend Stephanie manages his band,” Angela said.
“Hey, I’m being rude here,” I said, interrupting. “Pete, Rob, this is my wife Angela. Angela, this is Pete, one of the driving instructors here, and Rob, one of the guys from the club.”
“I think we’ve met, at a club dinner,” Angela said, shaking Rob’s hand. “Pleased to meet you,” she said to Pete, shaking his hand.
“It’s too bad you weren’t here earlier,” Pete said to Angela. “Leah here set the best time of the weekend an hour and a half ago.”
“Really?” Angela asked, excited. “Fastest of anybody?”
“Pete- maybe you should try to beat that time this afternoon,” I suggested.
“That’s going to be tough,” he said, doubtful.
“Baby, I saw a shop right by the front gate. Is that a gift shop?” Angela asked.
“They have shirts and souvenirs and things like that,” Pete offered. “But mostly it’s stuff for racers. Helmets, driving suits, so on.”
“I’ll be right back,” Angela said. “I want to get something for Tiffany and Maddie.” With that, she gave me another kiss and turned to leave.