Leo came off Turn 7 alongside Moreau’s rear wing. The Frenchman registered him — Leo saw the slight tightening of the Prema’s line on the exit, the instinctive defensive movement of a driver who had suddenly become aware that someone was beside them.

Leo was already past.

He moved back to the racing line for Turn 8.

"Leo." Anya’s voice on the radio. Not the controlled professional tone. Something rawer. "What— that was— stay on it. Stay on the lap."

"Copy," Leo said.

Leo’s voice was flat but his heart rate was not.

He was aware of it now — the specific, physical response to 6.6G through a left-hander on the wrong line with a rival fifteen metres ahead and seventeen centimetres of clearance.

The pod had simulated high G-load and the physical response. But it had not simulated what it felt like when the consequence of getting it wrong was real metal hitting real concrete barrier at real speed.

His hands had been completely steady through the manoeuvre.

His forearms were carrying the tremor of it now. Not visible. Not enough to affect inputs. But there.

’Adrenaline,’ he noted. ’Processing. Back to zero.’

He breathed once. The tremor settled.

Sector 2 continued.

--- 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Kimi Nakamura was at Turn 10.

The Japanese driver was on his own push lap — clean, precise, the Hitech car moving through the braking zone with the quiet efficiency of a man who had done the same corner a thousand times and had removed every unnecessary variable from the equation. Nakamura braked exactly on his marker. Apex exactly on his line. Exit exactly on his calculated point.

No more. No less.

Leo came off Turn 9 with four tenths more exit speed than Nakamura and the closing rate made the gap disappear faster than the circuit’s layout should have allowed.

He didn’t go around this time.

He braked.

Not hard. Not panicked. He hit the braking point 6 metres earlier than his planned marker and adjusted the brake bias two clicks rearward in one thumb movement to rotate the car tighter. The nose swung. The rear squatted. He found the apex of Turn 10 on a line that was inside Nakamura’s path — not around him, through a gap he had created by altering the geometry of his own braking zone.

He came out of Turn 10 ahead.

Nakamura’s Hitech car appeared in his mirrors, close, before the speed differential pulled them apart.

"Sector 2," Elias said. His voice had changed. The professional detachment was thinner now. Something underneath it. "41.0. Purple. Combined — you’re at 1:08.7 through two sectors. Rossi’s combined through two sectors in Q1 was 1:09.2."

A silence.

Then Anya. Not a tactical instruction. Not a sector update.

Just two words.

"Leo. *Please.*"

He understood what she was asking. Not for caution. For the lap to be real. For the numbers on the timing board to belong to a car that was going to cross the finish line.

"I’ve got it," he said.

He entered Sector 3.

---

The chicane was clean.

Both elements. The front wing responded to the additional downforce setting with the sharp, loaded precision of a car that was balanced correctly and being driven at the edge of its design capability.

He clipped the inside kerb on the first element and the car bounced once — the same bounce as Q1 — and came back level in the same three-tenths of a second.

The front-left temperature warning appeared on the dash.

93 degrees. One degree below the Q1 spike. The grip was still there. He kept the throttle position he had planned.

The final corner. He drove it the way the simulation had built it — the specific, slightly delayed throttle application that protected the front-left load on exit while sacrificing exactly zero exit speed because the line compensated for it.

He crossed the line.

The timing board updated.

[2. L. Kaito (Arcadia) — 1:27.4 🟣]

P2. A 1:27.4. Three-tenths faster than his Q1 best. Sector 2 and Sector 1 both purple. The fastest combined time through two sectors in the session by half a second.

"P2," Elias said. The professional control was almost gone now. "P2 behind Rossi. He went 1:27.2 on his first Q2 lap. You’re two-tenths behind. Moreau is P3. Three-tenths back."

Leo drove the cool-down curve without answering.

He was aware of his forearms. The accumulated tightness from six hard laps across Q1 and the beginning of Q2. The neck ache had spread down between his shoulder blades.

His eyes felt dry inside the helmet from the sustained focus of the Auditory Mapping and the Slipstream Prediction running simultaneously through two sector battles with rivals who hadn’t moved out of his way.

The physical cost was real.

He acknowledged it. Put it in the category of things that existed and could not be changed. Moved on.

’Two-tenths behind Rossi,’ he thought. ’On my first Q2 lap. With traffic in Sector 2. With the front-left running one degree hotter than optimal.’

He thought about the second push lap he had held in reserve.

The fresh set of tyres sitting on the rack in the Arcadia garage. Still cold. Still carrying the full compound edge that a new tyre brought before any heat cycle had worked through it.

He thought about what a clean lap looked like. No Moreau fifteen metres ahead in Turn 7. No Nakamura in the Turn 10 braking zone. The circuit to himself.

He thought about Rossi’s 1:27.2.

He thought about the Racing Instinct sitting at 9.1% and the fact that he had not yet asked it to give him everything it had.

Two-tenths.

He came through the final corner and saw the grandstands ahead. The crowd was up. Not all of it. The sections that could see the giant timing screen above the pit straight. His name sat in P2. The gap. The bracket of time that sat between him and the championship favourite who had been fast every single session of this weekend.

He allowed the dark amusement one more visit.

Then he pressed the radio switch.

"Elias," he said. "Bring the second set out. I want them on the car before the track temperature drops another degree."

A pause on the radio. He could hear Elias typing.

"Copy," Elias said. "They’ll be ready."

"And tell Anya—" Leo came through Turn 1 on the cool-down lap and felt the circuit beneath him.

"Tell her what?" Elias asked.

"Tell her P2 is not where we’re finishing."