He Framed Me to Protect Her, So I Handed His Rival the Crown

Chapter 4 The Restricted Test Window

The oppressive humidity of Singapore hit me the moment I stepped out of the air-conditioned sanctuary of the airport. It was a physical weight, a promise of the brutal conditions that made this night race one of the most demanding on the calendar. By the time I walked into the Magnusson-Drake paddock, my black team-issue polo shirt was already starting to feel clammy.

The garage was a hive of controlled chaos, a stark contrast to the almost clinical silence of Volkov-Leclerc. Here, the air thrummed with a raw, hungry energy. Mechanics moved with a confident swagger, and the scent of high-octane fuel and hot metal was thick and intoxicating. But as I passed, conversations lowered, and gazes followed me—sharp, suspicious, appraising. I was a viper invited into the nest, and no one was quite sure if I had been defanged.

Alistair met me at the threshold to the garage floor. He looked like he hadn't slept, his eyes shadowed with the stress of a championship fight. He thrust a generic paddock pass and a headset into my hands.

"Your console is in the back," he said, his voice flat, gesturing toward a cramped, makeshift station tucked behind a towering rack of Pirelli tires. It was clearly an afterthought, a desk wedged into a space normally reserved for spare parts. "Remember the rules. You're a ghost. Listen, analyze, and speak only to me or Kael on the private channel."

I nodded, my expression impassive, and navigated the maze of air guns and carbon fiber parts to my designated corner. It offered a severely restricted view of the garage, but a direct line of sight to the main timing screens. As I settled in, a man in a crisp, white FIA-branded shirt approached, his face a mask of bureaucratic indifference.

"Ms. Reyes," he said, not offering a hand. "I am Jean-Pierre Laudon, from the Compliance Office. I've been asked to personally oversee your… temporary consulting duties this weekend."

Alistair stiffened beside me. "That's highly irregular."

"The situation is highly irregular," Laudon countered smoothly. "Volkov-Leclerc has filed a formal complaint, citing concerns over potential intellectual property breaches. Until the Monza investigation is concluded, your access will be… limited."

He placed a gloved hand on my console. "You will have the live FIA telemetry feed, the public broadcast feed, and team radio. You will have no access to the Magnusson-Drake historical database, no access to any predictive strategy software, and no ability to run simulation models. Your workstation will be firewalled from the team's primary network. I will be monitoring your activity from the central office."

It was worse than I expected. They hadn't just tied one hand behind my back; they'd put me in a straitjacket. Without historical data from previous years in Singapore, I couldn't model tire degradation. Without the simulation software, I couldn't run projections for pit stop windows or undercut strategies. I was flying blind, armed with nothing but raw, real-time numbers and my own mind. It was a death sentence for any modern strategist.

It was Enzo's work. I could feel his fingerprints all over it. This wasn't just about preventing me from helping Kael; it was about publicly proving I was nothing without the systems I had built for him. It was a calculated, cruel humiliation.

"Understood," I said, my voice betraying nothing. Laudon gave a curt nod and retreated, leaving a chill in his wake.

Alistair looked at me, a flicker of something—pity, perhaps—in his tired eyes. "They've neutered you," he stated.

"They've tried," I corrected him, pulling the foreign headset over my ears. "Let's see how well it works."

The first two practice sessions were an exercise in frustration. I watched the data streams, my mind racing, building mental models where the software should have been. I identified a flaw in their brake balance setup that was costing Kael a tenth of a second in the final sector and relayed it through Alistair. I flagged a potential MGU-K harvesting issue that the engineers had missed. Small things. I was proving I could see the details, but the big picture—the race strategy—was a canvas I was f*******n to paint on.

Then came Saturday. Qualifying.

The sky had been a hazy, threatening grey all afternoon. Twenty minutes before the session began, the heavens opened. A torrential, tropical downpour instantly flooded the track. The first qualifying segment, Q1, was a chaotic ballet of full-wet tires and spray so thick it was like driving through milk.

By Q2, the rain had eased to a persistent drizzle. A narrow, treacherous dry line was beginning to appear. This was the crossover point, the most difficult and most critical moment for a strategist. Get the call to switch to intermediate tires right, and you gain seconds. Get it wrong, and you're in the wall.

I watched the screens, my focus absolute. The Volkov-Leclerc cars, with Mia at the wheel of one, were running a flawless strategy, their calls coming with the swift, confident precision of a team backed by terabytes of data. They pitted Mia for intermediates at the perfect moment, and she sailed through to the final qualifying session, Q3.

Kael made it through as well, but his lap was scrappy, his car fighting him. Alistair was being cautious, his calls safe and reactive. He was losing the rhythm of the track.

As the twelve-minute Q3 shootout began, the drizzle stopped. The powerful track lights began to bake the moisture off the tarmac. The dry line widened with every car that passed. Everyone started the session on intermediates, but the question hung in the humid air like a bomb waiting to explode: when do you risk switching to slicks?

"The track's not ready," Alistair's voice crackled in my ear, directed at his engineers. "The simulations say another four minutes on inters, minimum. We'll do one banker lap and then reassess."

"He's wrong," I murmured to myself. I wasn't looking at a simulation. I was watching the micro-sector data. I was watching the way Kael's car was sliding on the exits of the slow corners, the tread on his intermediates overheating on the drying surface. I was watching the onboard camera of the Haas car in front of him, seeing the way the tires were starting to grain. The simulation was wrong because it couldn't account for the unique combination of humidity, track temperature, and rubbering-in that was happening in real time.

"Alistair," I said into my private channel, my voice calm and low. "You need to bring him in. Now."

"For what? Another set of inters?" he shot back, his tone dismissive.

"No. For soft-compound slicks."

There was a stunned silence on the channel. In the background, I could hear an engineer mutter, "She's insane."

"Maya, the track is still damp off-line," Alistair argued, his voice tight with disbelief. "One mistake and he's in the barrier. We'll lose the entire session."

"You'll lose it anyway if you stay out," I countered, my voice hardening. "The inters are overheating. Look at his sector two time, he's already two-tenths down on his previous lap. The track is evolving faster than your model. The optimal window for the slick tire out-lap is *this* lap. In two minutes, it will be too late. Everyone will have pitted, and we'll be stuck in their wake."

I could feel Kael listening on the other end, a silent arbiter. The decision was his. Trust the man who had been by his side for a decade, or trust the ghost in the machine who had been his enemy a week ago.

"What do you see, Maya?" Kael's voice cut through the debate, steady and demanding. He wasn't asking for my opinion. He was asking for my data.

"I see a 1.7-second performance delta opening up between the intermediate and the soft tire in the next ninety seconds," I said, the numbers flowing. "Your out-lap will be compromised, you'll need to be careful in turns three and fourteen. But if you can get the tires up to temperature by the time you start your flying lap, the grip will be there. The track will come to you. You'll have one shot. The final lap of the session."

Another beat of silence. It felt like an eternity.

"Box, Kael. Box. Confirm," I pushed, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"Boxing," Kael's voice came back, clipped and decisive. "I'm coming in."

The garage exploded into a flurry of frantic activity. Alistair, his face pale, relayed the order. The mechanics, looking utterly bewildered, scrambled to pull out a set of slick tires. It was a maverick call, a gamble of monumental proportions.

As Kael peeled into the pit lane, the cameras zoomed in. On the world feed, the commentators were incredulous.

"Magnusson is pitting! And... my goodness, they're putting on slick tires! This is either an act of strategic genius or career suicide!"

Enzo would be watching. He would be laughing, certain he was about to witness my spectacular, self-inflicted downfall.

Kael's out-lap was terrifying. The car slithered and squirmed, he fought the wheel just to keep it on the black stuff. His first two sector times were disastrously slow.

"It's not working," Alistair said, his voice grim. "We've thrown it away."

"Wait," I said, my eyes glued to the tire temperature telemetry. "Wait for it..."

Then, it happened. As Kael crossed the line to start his final, flying lap, the tires hit their optimal temperature window. The car settled. The grip was there.

The timing screen lit up.

Sector one: purple. Fastest of anyone.

The Magnusson-Drake garage, which had been holding its collective breath, let out a raw, guttural roar.

Sector two: purple. He was on a legendary lap.

I could hear Kael's breathing over the radio, ragged and focused. I could hear the engine screaming as he threaded the car through the concrete canyon, inches from the walls.

He rounded the final corner, the car dancing on the very edge of adhesion, and blasted across the finish line just as the checkered flag waved.

The timing screen flashed.

**P1. K. MAGNUSSON. 1:39.465.**

Pole position. By over half a second.

The garage erupted. Mechanics were jumping, hugging, screaming. The sound was deafening. Through the chaos, Kael's voice came over the global radio feed, breathless and electric, for the whole world to hear.

"Perfect call, Maya," he panted. "f*****g perfect."

My name. He'd said my name. On the broadcast that was being piped into every garage, every boardroom, every hospitality suite in the paddock. Including Enzo's.

I sank back into my chair, my hands trembling slightly, and allowed myself a small, sharp smile.

When the pandemonium subsided, a new presence appeared at my isolated console. It was Kael. He was still in his race suit, helmet under his arm, his face flushed with victory and exertion. He didn't say a word. He simply reached over, unplugged the restricted, listen-only headset from my console, and dropped it into a nearby bin.

Then, he unclipped the headset from his own belt—the primary, command-channel headset worn by the chief strategist on the main pit wall—and placed it carefully on the desk in front of me.

Alistair stood behind him, his expression one of grudging, profound respect.

"Tomorrow," Kael said, his pale blue eyes locking onto mine, a fire burning in their depths. "You're on the main wall. Welcome to the team."

At that exact moment, my phone, which I'd left on the desk, lit up. A single, furious text message from a number I knew by heart.

Enzo.

[What the hell do you think you're doing?]