Checkered Flag Cheater

THE
MOTOR
NOVELS

Checkered Flag Cheater
Super Stock Rookie
Saturday Night Dirt

W   I   L   L       W   E   A   V   E   R

FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX
New York

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2010 by Will Weaver
All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by D&M Publishers, Inc.
Printed in March 2010 in the United States of America
by RR Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Designed by Jay Colvin
First edition, 2010
1    3    5    7    9    10    8    6    4    2

www.fsgteen.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weaver, Will.

Checkered flag cheater / Will Weaver.— 1st ed.

  p. cm. — (Motor novels)

Summary: Trace Bonham, a teenaged professional stock car racer, blows away the competition wherever he races, but with every victory Trace is increasingly aware that his winning is due to more than just his driving skills.

ISBN: 978-0-374-35062-8

[1. Stock car racing—Fiction. 2. Automobile racing—Fiction. 3. Cheating—Fiction. 4. Middle West—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.W3623Ch 2010
[Fic]—dc22

2009013600

Frontispiece: Photograph © Dennis Peterson

SPECIAL THANKS

to Skyler Smith, driver for Team Weaver Racing. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks also to Tom Jensen for his book
Cheating
, about the pursuit of speed in NASCAR, and to Lin Johnson for his tech tips.

1

Trace Bonham poked the Seek button. Radio stations were hard to find late at night in the eastern tip of Iowa—or maybe it was the car radio. This vehicle, bought for cash in Indiana, was an American tin can. The right front tire had a high-speed shimmy that vibrated his teeth, and the yellow headlight beams were like two flashlights with old batteries. However, all it had to do was get him home to Minnesota, then down to South Dakota to catch up with Team Blu. Driving this car at night was like driving his Team Blu Super Stock—keep the pedal down and hope that nothing happened just ahead . . .

 

 

“Don't be afraid of big dust or smoke in front of you,” Harlan said. Harlan was Team Blu's crew chief. “In fact, it's best to drive straight into it, because whatever happened—whoever spun out or wrecked—ain't there anymore.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Trace muttered as he pulled on his helmet. Team Blu was ready for the twenty-lap feature—another high-banked short track where the circling stock cars spun up dust like a tornado stuck in neutral. Another state, another speedway, another exhibition race for Team Blu.

“Find yourself a middle line and stay in it,” Harlan continued. “There's gonna be a lot of spinouts, and spinouts don't stay in the middle of the track, either—they end up over the fence or into the infield.”

“You want to drive this thing?” Trace shot back.

“Are you kidding?” Harlan said. “It's way too dangerous—especially in a dust bowl like this track.” His son, Jimmy Joe, the setup man on Team Blu, cackled with laughter. Even Smoky, their engine builder, croaked out a laugh.

Trace flipped down his visor and fired the engine. He spun the tires—and left a gift of fresh dust for Team Blu—as he headed down pit row. The pits were choked with haze, a combination of dust and poor lighting, and he made sure not to run into anybody. Then it was up the ramp and down onto the track.

Whether the track surface was dry, slick dust or tacky gumbo, there was nothing quite like merging with the
rumbling parade of twenty other brightly lettered stock cars. He drew near his starting slot—last row, inside—but didn't take it immediately. Falling into line right away meant looking overeager. Like a rookie. Technically, Trace was a Super Stock rookie this year, but he had raced enough to know the mental game.

He scrubbed the tires—a back-and-forth, controlled-swerving technique that warmed and softened their rubber.

“Close up for green!” said a woman's voice in Trace's helmet radio receiver. At her command, the parade of Super Stocks sucked together like magnets. Trace wedged in bumper to bumper, wheel to wheel with the Super Stocks around him. Then the cars paired off, two-wide. To keep his hands loose, Trace waggled his gloved fingers on the small hoop of the quick-lock steering wheel.

Nudge and tap—bump and rock—the Super Stocks pushed one another like train cars rounding a tight curve.

“Lookin' good for green,” the woman's voice said.

At the sudden roar of the front cars, Trace slammed the hammer down and powered up into the explosion of dust. The biggest part of any race was getting through the first turn after the green flag; he dove in hard, and pitched his Super Stock to the left—

“Whoa!” Trace yelled, and yanked the steering wheel of his car lot beater to the right. He was way over the centerline—and headed to the ditch. This was two-lane
blacktop, Highway 61 north; the only left turn was into some farmer's field.

He shook his head to clear it, rolled down the window, and spit out a stale piece of gum. He let his head hang out, gulped in mouthfuls of chilly April air, then leaned back inside and took a long slug of cola.

When he focused down the highway again, Trace's own face got larger and larger in the windshield: it was not a hallucination but a Blu energy drink billboard. Trace, ten feet tall, leaned against his blue Super Stock.
BLU BY YOU. FEEL YOUR POWER
! the big letters read.

The billboards were all over the Midwest. He mostly had gotten past the weirdness of seeing himself on signs, but sometimes—like tonight—he got caught off guard. The whole story looped through his head: driving the snot out of his Street Stock one night at Headwaters Speedway; catching the eye of the special guest driver, Cal Hopkins; winning the Super Stock tryout; signing with Team Blu for a fully sponsored ride. Sometimes, like now, it felt too good to be true—which was the exact moment when red and blue lights lit up beneath the billboard.

“Damn!” He braked, but too late. The strobes of a cop's light bar flared across the empty highway as the cruiser pulled out behind Trace—who slowed, signaled his car onto the shoulder, then skidded to a stop.

The cop car was local, which was probably better than being stopped by a state highway patrol officer. Trace rolled down his window, then kept his hands on the steering wheel.

“License and registration?” a woman's voice asked. Her shoulder patch read
DEPUTY SHERIFF
.

“Sure,” Trace said. “Just bought this car off a lot in Indiana. I don't have the title yet, but the papers are in the backseat.”

She shone her flashlight beam into his face, then to the backseat. “Okay,” she said. “Reach back and get them for me.”

Trace moved deliberately as he retrieved the papers. Same with his wallet and driver's license.

She focused her light first on the purchase agreement, which seemed to pass inspection, then on his license. “Trace Bonham,” she said.

“That's me.” He looked fully at her, trying not to squint or scowl into her light.

“So where you going in such a hurry, Trace?”

“Just trying to get home.”

“Where's home?” She looked again at his license.

Trace told her his home address—his dad's farm, in north-central Minnesota. She nodded, then glanced over the car again. “Would you mind stepping out and popping the trunk?”

“No problem.”

The officer stood back as Trace got out and opened the trunk. She came alongside and skittered her beam in all corners. Except for the skinny spare tire, the trunk was empty.

“Thanks,” she said. She held up his license and peered over it at his face, tilting her head left, then right, as if to see him from different angles.

“Everything okay?” Trace asked.

“Yes. Except for your speed, of course,” she answered.

Trace kept silent.

She squinted at him. “I feel like I've seen you before,” she said.