The session ended. The mechanics began the long process of stripping the car for the Qualifying setup. The paddock hummed with the news of the "fast Arcadia," but the consensus was still the same: Kaito was a flash in the pan. A lucky rookie who found a gap in the traffic.

Leo walked toward the hospitality unit to get some food. His walk was steady, his shoulders back. He didn’t look like a tired rookie. He looked like a predator that had just finished its first scout of the territory.

The heat of Melbourne was still intense, but for Leo Kaito, the ice was already forming. The simulation hadn’t ended when he left the pod. It had just moved to a bigger screen. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

And he was the only one who knew the controls.

---

The final ten minutes of Free Practice 1 at Albert Park felt like the slow settling of dust after a storm. The initial frantic energy of the session had peaked when Leo set those purple sectors, but now, the track was crowded with cars on high-fuel runs. The air was thick with the smell of scorched rubber and the shimmering heat haze rising off the asphalt.

Leo sat in the cockpit of the Arcadia number 24, his gloved hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. He wasn’t chasing a lap time anymore. He was doing something much more tedious, but far more important for the long game.

"Tires are at thirty-four percent life," Elias’s voice said over the radio. "The track temp has climbed another two degrees. We want you to stay out on this used set. We need to see how the rear-right holds up through the long sweepers. Keep the pace consistent, Leo. No heroics."

"Copy," Leo replied. His voice was flat, almost mechanical.

He eased the car out of the pits. The vibration of the engine felt different now that the tires were worn. There was a lack of "bite" when he turned the wheel, a slight delay that a normal rookie would have found frustrating. To Leo, it was just another variable to be integrated into the framework.

He moved through the high-speed section of Sector 2. The car wanted to wander, to drift toward the grass as the worn rubber struggled to maintain its grip against the lateral G-forces.

Leo adjusted his inputs. He didn’t fight the slide; he anticipated it. He used the "Auditory Mapping" to listen to the graining of the tires, a specific, sandpaper-like hiss that told him exactly how much life was left in the carcass.

’Degradation rate: 1.2% per lap at this temperature,’ he calculated. ’If I shift the brake bias two clicks forward, I can protect the rears for the final sprint.’

He made the adjustment. The car became slightly more difficult to turn, but the rear stayed stable. He was middle-of-the-pack now, surrounded by veterans like Matteo Rossi and aggressive youngsters like Rafael Vega.

Vega’s ART car pulled alongside him on the back straight. The Spaniard waved a hand dismissively as he surged past, clearly unimpressed by Leo’s current "languid" pace. Leo didn’t move to block. He didn’t even look in his mirrors. He simply tucked into Vega’s slipstream, using the "Slipstream Prediction" to see how the air moved around the ART car’s rear wing.

’He’s running a lower downforce setup than we thought,’ Leo noted. ’He’ll be fast on the straights, but he’s killing his tires in the chicane. He won’t last the full race distance at this pace.’

He filed the information away. Every car he followed, every driver who passed him, was a data point. He was building a library of his rivals’ weaknesses while they were busy laughing at his "fading" performance.

"Five minutes left," Elias said. "Check the dashboard. You’re currently P7. Dubois has just gone P3. Alessandro Rossi is still holding P1."

Leo glanced at the screen.

1. A. Rossi (Prema) - 1:29.1

2. T. Moreau (Prema) - 1:29.3

3. O. Dubois (DAMS) - 1:29.4

...

7. L. Kaito (Arcadia) - 1:29.8

It was a respectable position. It was enough to keep the sponsors from panicking and Anya from pulling her hair out, but it wasn’t enough to make the big teams take him seriously. He was "the kid who had a fast sector but couldn’t keep the tires under him."

It was the perfect disguise.

As he rounded the final corner, he saw the checkered flag waving above the start-finish line. The session was over. The roar of twenty-two engines began to soften as drivers backed off, entering their cooling laps.

"That’s the flag, Leo. Bring it in," Anya said. She sounded calmer now, the edge of anxiety replaced by a professional focus. "Good job on the long run. The data looks solid."

"Copy. Bringing her home."

Leo drove the cooling lap slowly. He watched the grandstands. The fans were already looking at their phones, checking the final standings. He looked at the giant digital screens scattered around the park. The headlines were already scrolling across the bottom of the news feeds.

[ROSSI DOMINATES FP1.

MYSTERY ARCADIA ROOKIE SHOWS PROMISE BEFORE TYRE STRUGGLES.

KAITO P7: A FLASH IN THE PAN?]

One local Australian blog had a more dismissive headline: [TECH-TURNED-DRIVER FINDS REAL TRACKS HARDER THAN VIDEO GAMES.]

Leo felt a small, cold twitch of a smile behind his balaclava. It was a sensation of pure, evil satisfaction. In the Simex pod, he had learned that the greatest advantage wasn’t speed or reaction time, it was being underestimated.

When the Ghost Drivers in the simulation thought they had his pattern, they became static. They stopped evolving. And that was when he destroyed them.

He rolled into the pit lane, the heat from the other cars radiating against his chassis. He saw the Prema garage, where Alessandro Rossi was already out of his car, standing with a group of Italian journalists.

Rossi looked relaxed, his posture that of a man who had already won the weekend. He didn’t even glance at the Arcadia car as it hissed past.