Chapter 692: Mexico Grand Prix. 3
The goal was patience, not force. Victor implemented it faithfully, and with it, he caught up with Alejandro Vasquez.
For three laps he had sat in red behind white, reading it like a sentence he already knew how to finish. Victor did not overreach. He waited for the small crack in the armor, and it came at the exit of T2 in his fourth attempted lap.
Alejandro Vasquez got a fraction too tidy on the throttle, and extra careful on the curb. Seeing this, Victor drifted his Ferrari a car’s width wider through the corner, just enough to look like he was giving up the inside, instead of lunging at the obvious gap Alejandro omitted.
Thinking Victor was slow to see it, Vasquez committed to covering the line the Trampos boy appeared to have abandoned.
That was his mistake.
shROOOM!
The white compounds bit into the asphalt as Victor launched the trap, exploding out of it, while Vasquez still wrestled the wheel, waiting for a fight that had already ended.
VROOOOOM.
Victor’s engine screamed a high-pitched "GOTCHA" right in Vasquez’s ear.
By the time Vasquez even looked at his mirror, there was nothing there but the smell of burnt rubber and the blur of a disappearing rear wing.
He was totally confused because he thought the fight was going to happen inside the turn, not after it.
P9— Victor Surmann ↑
P10— Alejandro Vasquez ↓
Victor was past him before the crowd even understood what had happened.
**Beautifully done, Victor! That’s the move of the season!**
**P9 is yours. Keep pushing, the gap to P8 is three seconds**
"Copy," Victor growled, huffing and puffing from the gForce."Tires are holding. Let’s hunt."
After making it down an alley, he inhaled calmer air and also gave the smallest breath of acknowledgement to his defeated rival behind, not because he was modest, but because he was already moving on.
However, the circuit was louder than before, like a reaction to Victor’s overtake on Vasquez.
Indeed it was.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"
The crowd made its answer with a wave of sound that wasn’t praise, filled with roughness, an ugly edge, and disappointment.
Victor had taken the place they wanted kept, and they did not bother pretending otherwise.
However, Victor did not care.
Maybe a little bit.
But he didn’t.
Behind him, Alejandro Vasquez stayed in the mirrors for a few seconds longer than Victor expected.
Sadly, the overtake landed in that place where it bruised more than just points.
In his cockpit, Alejandro’s jaw tightened, feeling the race slipping from his feeble grip.
Was this it?
Was he really washed?
Though Alejandro was far from the best, he’d spent a decade defending against the best in the world, and yet a kid—a rookie with barely a season of grease on his suit—had just played him like a beginner.
His steering wheel felt way heavier than it was supposed to. The tires weren’t totally dead yet, but they weren’t fresh enough to let him get away with any mistakes. He could feel it every time he turned in—the car leaned too much, and the back end would slide out just a bit before finally catching.
**Stay with it** his engineer said over the radio.
Alejandro tightened his grip on the wheel.
His racing career wasn’t archived footage. Not yet. Never.
But F1 racing didn’t care about internal speeches.
The cars behind him certainly didn’t.
They arrived almost immediately.
Two of them. Bianchi and Rutherford.
Fresh tires. Sharper pace. No emotional attachment to Alejandro Vasquez or what he represented to the crowd. They attacked him the way wolves attacked a limping animal, diving without any tactical setup.
Alejandro braked late and tried to hold the line at every opening turn, but Bianchi stayed tight on his side.
Denko Rutherford used the opportunity, going wider, got the better exit, and snatched the lead between the three after battling with Matteo for a while.
Like a third wheel in the middle of two fierce racers, Alejandro simply watched both dump pressure on him as they occupied the next section in tandem, all engines screaming.
The Spaniard tried to defend on one side and get back his advantage without letting the other loose, but soon enough, Denko and Matteo were done letting him hang on.
On the straight to lap 24, they insolently pulled away in a manner that it was a question if Vasquez’s Mercedes actually ran on horsepower.
P13.
The crowd felt it before the timing tower even changed. You could hear the groan roll through the circuit.
"...Oh, that’s a hard one for Vasquez. You can feel the frustration out there...
"...And those tires are finished now. He’s exposed in every direction..."
The camera cut across the stands. People shaking their heads. Hands on faces. A kid in a blue Vasquez cap just staring up at the screen.
Alejandro kept driving anyway.
Victor, meanwhile, was looking forward.
The two drivers who had just dispatched Alejandro were now his primary concern. They were moving fast, their pace fueled by the clean air they’d inherited.
But they were also dueling each other, their cars weaving in a dangerous dance of aggression as they fought for the right to chase Victor.
**********
The pressure from behind was getting ugly now.
Rutherford kept throwing the car down the inside at Matteo who’d retaken the advantage, and Matteo defended like a man fighting for his life. Every corner looked messy. Late braking. Tiny lockups. Cars twitching on exit.
It slowed them down just enough for Victor to stay close, but he could feel his own tires giving up too.
The whole grid was struggling now.
Back in the Trampos garage, the engineers stared at the screens with tense faces. The hard tires were finally starting to grain up, the rubber tearing itself apart little by little.
Victor pushed through another three laps around the Autódromo. The car felt worse every turn. Less grip. The steering started feeling light in the middle sector, almost like the front tires weren’t really there anymore.
He needed something.
A way to break them before his own tires died first.
Then the idea came to him.
A bad idea.
The kind of idea every safety briefing tells you never to try.
He remembered the warning from earlier about Turn 7, where Luca had nearly lost his car.
Since the warning, Victor had been avoiding that portion without really understanding the exact danger it posed, yet he knew it was simply a hazard.
Trampos told him to stay tight through the corner. Never go wide. But now, Victor thought differently.
What if he made them follow him there?
"Gap behind?"
**Denko is six-tenths back. Matteo eight tenths. Both inside DRS range. Defense**
Victor’s eyes stayed locked on the next corner.
"I’m not defending," he said quietly.
"I’m leading."
********
Lap 23 started with Victor changing his ERS usage a little, then he eased off slightly through the stadium section and let Rutherford get closer. Really close. Close enough for Rutherford to start believing the overtake was already his.
Victor could see the front wing filling his mirrors now, twitching left and right impatiently.
As they blasted toward Sector 2, Victor did something strange.
He didn’t defend the inside.
Instead, he drifted outward toward Turn 7, leaving the door wide open.
To Rutherford, it probably looked like panic. Like Victor had finally made a mistake. He took it instantly, throwing the car into the gap.
Unbeknownst to him, Victor never aimed for the apex.
At the last second, he snapped the car sideways, retracing to the cleaner strip of asphalt. The JYX-81 jerked violently beneath him, tires screaming for grip, but it stayed under control.
Denko Rutherford didn’t see it as he hit the unscrubbed patch head-on
TRTTTCHH!
The moment his front-left touched it, the car lost grip completely as the contact tire practically tore.
"WOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH!"
"What the fuck?" Rutherford cussed as he corrected hard, but the front end refused to bite, and the car snapped sideways across the corner.
"...oh my! That’s chaos for the Renault!"
Behind Denko, Matteo had nowhere to go. He was tucked too close behind his rival to react.
BANG!
Matteo slammed straight into him.
KRKKK—SHHHK!
Carbon fiber burst across the track like broken glass. Pieces of the front wing flew into the air while the two cars tangled together, spinning wildly toward the barriers.
SCREEEECH!
Tires screamed against the asphalt.
BOOM!
One of the cars smashed into the wall, smoke and dust exploding outward.
The impact reached Victor a second later through the floor of his car.
A heavy, ugly THUD that rattled through his seat.
He never looked back.
