My Formula 1 System

Victor had worked his way forward in the opening laps. A few sharp overtakes, a well-timed response to the chaos behind, and a steady pace through Baku’s unforgiving corners had given him a teetering position. But since all that happened in the earlier chaos right after lights-out, it didn’t count. He’d lost all as much as he’d gained. Thus, he remained in P10 even after fifteen laps.

Early on, the race is a zero-sum game. With the pack bunched tight, the rate of overtaking almost perfectly mirrors the rate of being overtaken. For every bold lunge into the first turns, a driver is likely shuffled back by another in the berserk, multi-car slipstream. However, once the field straightens into a high-speed line, the data becomes heavily skewed toward stagnation. The race settles into a follow-the-leader rhythm. Aerodynamic wakes make following impossible. And overtaking chances plummets.

But this logic actually holds for cars on a similar performance level. Chances of overtaking reduce. Chances of being overtaken reduce, too.

For slower cars, chances of being overtaken shoot up!

Victor found himself gradually noticing the transpose. His delta widened, and his dash warned him of rising brake and engine temperatures as a result of another machine getting closer to his rear.

The most haunting sign, of course, is the mirror profile.

Victor realized that holding his position was about to become much harder. Max Addams was coming. If he didn’t know Max before, he was about to now!

Freed from the congestion that once trapped him earlier in the race, Addams now had clean air and clear intent. His car closed the gap gradually through the middle sector, its nose appearing larger with every corner.

Despite being an improvement, newer and flashier, Victor Surmann’s Ferrari was actually... slower than Max Addam’s Red Bull. The 81 made up with its insane acceleration and other high-tier hybrid era adaptive features, but the Red Bull’s design was exceptionally "slippery," meaning as the car gains speed, it encounters less air resistance than the Ferrari, allowing the driver to make the best use of ERS.

"...Max Addams is living on the limit here. All sectors, he’s hit the top five on pace, challenging even Marko Ignatova, who’s leagues away...!"

"...he could be hunting here, and what better way to begin squeezing his way to the top than to prey on the Trampos rookie? "The gap is tumbling down now, and the stopwatch shows no mercy for the car ahead! Victor Surmann’s about to have his hands full...!"

The first attack came into Turn 3, two laps later.

Addams carried tremendous speed down the straight and pulled toward the inside under braking. It was a convincing move, the kind that forced younger drivers into mistakes.

However, Victor didn’t panic. He simply shifted his car half a meter toward the apex, calmly closing the door without sudden movements. Max had to lift and fall back in line.

**Good defense. Energy is looking good, Vic. Keep getting your hairpins right**

Through the next sequence of corners, Victor kept the car planted with just him, his thoughts, and the co-pilots, his engineers. The narrow streets left almost no margin for error, yet his steering remained smooth and calculated.

Impatient, Addams tried again. Victor had held him for three laps now. This time, the move came later, deeper into the braking zone of Turn 1. The Red Bull darted toward the inside with aggressive intent, but since it was the first corner, it was easy for Victor to anticipate that.

Instead of reacting late, he positioned his car early on the defensive line, toggling his brake balance to plus two, and forcing Addams to attempt the overtake around the outside. It was a smart move, but it didn’t exactly work as he imagined it would. The moment was just too fast for anything to happen mechanically. But at least, both cars exited the corner without a scratch, Victor still in P10.

"....You have to wonder where he’s finding the grip! It’s a masterclass in defensive management. Trampos Racing would be elated to see Surmann unwilling to lose his spot for four laps in a row...!"

When Max Addams realized that the door was bolted shut, he dropped back slightly to find cleaner air. Probing for chances in the narrow chutes of a street track like Baku is a recipe for overheating, and following centimeters behind a slower car cooks the brakes and murders the front tires because there is no cool breeze hitting the radiators.

The hunter deliberately expanded the gap from 0.4 to 1.5 seconds. To the cheering crowd, it looked like he’d given up, but it was merely a tactical reset. Victor had just simply refused to give him any weakness.

In his Ferrari, Victor switched his focus back to the rhythm of the circuit rather than the threat behind. It was a little moment in a race where many things happened at once, but some people did notice.

Something was becoming clear.

The rookie wasn’t just surviving the pressure.

He was managing it.

The young driver’s racecraft was beginning to mature on Formula One’s most unforgiving tracks.

*****

While the battles on track continued to tighten, the Trampos pit wall remained vigilant, quiet, and efficient. Screens glowed in the shade of the command canopy, rows of telemetry streamed, and monitors tracked the performance and every heartbeat of the race.

Their esteemed Team Principal, Mr. Grant, prowled to the booths. He usually did this to ground himself whenever the race was spilling over. His presence also acted as a priming energy of the pit wall, but today, his brow was furrowed in a way that signaled a coming storm.

Mr. Grant stood behind a primary console, arms folded, while observing the information calmly. He leaned over shoulders and giraffed occasionally to get a closer look at the glowing maps. He’d put one hand on the headrest of the chair, leaning in so close he was almost touching the screen. When the radio got loud, he’d squeeze his headset against his ears with both hands, staring at the floor while he listened to the driver’s voice.

"Status on both drivers?" he asked without looking up.

Moritz adjusted his headset and scanned the incoming numbers.

"Victor’s stable. Tire temps holding. Battery deployment normal."

"And Luca?"

"Lap pace is strong, but... we’re seeing slight degradation in the internal electrical wiring system. It’s subtle, but the readings are drifting."

"Drifting how?"

"Voltage irregularity in the control loop. Nothing critical yet, but if it worsens, we might have to consider a precautionary pit stop."

Colt entered the conversation, bringing up a diagnostic graph.

"It started around Lap Eight. Possibly vibration through Sector One. Could’ve been that earlier compression when the pack bunched up."

With their voices low, they deliberated for a moment. Could it just be that, or was it the heat of the streets? Or perhaps a freak vibration from a slight graze? Regardless of the cause, it was a ticking time bomb that could necessitate a pitstop they hadn’t planned for.

"Keep monitoring it," Mr. Grant said calmly. "No panic calls yet."

The engineers nodded and returned to their stations. Colt pulled his headset down around his neck and rubbed his eyes, which were probably tired from all those glowing numbers. Two others scooted their rolling chairs together until their elbows bumped, pointing at a weird wiggle on the graph while Mr. Ruben walked in from the second door with a cup of coffee.

Meanwhile, Mr. Grant had left the pit wall platform toward the back of the garage. The roar of passing engines and the cheering crowd briefly shook the structure as he walked underneath steel.

And that was where he saw them.

The pit crew line stood ready along the service lane, positioned beside the tire racks like silent sentinels waiting for their moment. There were twelve of them, standing in perfect, eerie symmetry. They wore premium, midnight-black fire suits with sock masks already pulled tight over their faces, leaving only cold, focused eyes visible. A few were in Trampos’ colors, but their posture felt different from the usual crew Mr. Grant had worked with for years. Their movements were controlled, professional, and too perfect.

These were the specialists the board had insisted on hiring for this race. A pit crew recruited from the highest echelons of aerospace and mechanical engineering, costing the team millions just for this single weekend.

Mr. Grant stopped in his tracks, his hands balled into fists in his pockets as he looked across the row of unfamiliar figures.

They had arrived only days before the Grand Prix. Highly trained, incredibly efficient, capable of performing pit stops measured in fractions of a second. Objectively, they were an upgrade, but Mr. Grant didn’t like them. Specifically, he disliked what they represented. They represented an implicit message from the board.

To Grant, these men and women were a middle finger to his leadership. The more he looked at them, the more he saw a crack in the foundation he had built. By bringing in outsiders to replace his loyal crew, Vallotton wasn’t just "optimizing performance"; she was telling the world that Grant’s people weren’t good enough.

Perhaps—that he wasn’t good enough.