Checkered Flag Cheater (15 page)

“See that?” Harlan shouted, his voice almost noiseless in the roar. He was pointing at Lonny Marzones's car. “He keeps all four tires on the dirt.”

Trace nodded.

Jimmy shouted, “It may look cool to show daylight under that tire, but you've got more control with all four on the ground.”

Trace nodded. It made sense.

Suddenly someone tapped Trace hard on the shoulder. An ATV had come up close behind. “You Trace?” asked the driver, a guy about Trace's age; he remained on the ATV.

“Yes.”

“Let's go. We've been looking all over for you,” the driver said. He wore Lonny Marzones's cap and crew shirt.

“Yahoo!” Jimmy shouted.

Trace jumped onto the back of the ATV, and held on as they sped off to the Marzones hauler.

The Marzones crew chief was waiting, hands on his
hips, like an unhappy father. “I hate when Lonny does this,” he said as Trace arrived.

Trace glanced uncertainly at the crew chief.

“That's Bob,” the ATV driver murmured over his shoulder to Trace. “Don't take him too seriously.”

Bob gestured for Trace to get off and come forward. “That's why it's called a backup car—so it's there if we need it,” he said. “But you can have a couple of laps during intermission, before they start the heats.”

“Great!” Trace said, trying not to sound too eager.

“He looks about the same general size as Lonny,” the crew chief said to the others on the Marzones team. “Let's get him strapped in. Use some pads if his ass is too skinny.”

If Trace's Super Stock cockpit was a tight fit, the sprint car's interior was tighter still—like being buckled into a straitjacket. He did end up sitting on some flex-foam pads that wrapped around his hips. “Use this helmet—it goes with our safety system,” Bob said.

Trace pulled on a fresh Team Marzones helmet, then leaned forward to be fitted for a head and neck support (HANS) device; it was a sturdy fiberglass tongue that ran flat against his spine, upward to a stiff collar around his neck, which itself was hooked to several rings on Trace's loaner helmet, with its built-in receiver. “This system is designed to cut down your newtons,” Bob said.

“My newtons?” Trace said.

“Not talking Fig Newtons here,” Bob replied as a younger crew member stiffened Trace's range of head and
neck movement. “Newton the scientist. G-forces are what kill you when you wreck—which you damn well better not.”

“Don't worry,” Trace said. He could look only a few degrees left or right; his arms had only inches of lateral movement.

“Worrying is what Lonny pays me for,” the chief said gruffly as he watched his men work.

“He's good to go!” a crew guy said to Bob, who stepped forward and tugged at all the belts just to make sure.

Bob himself hooked up Trace's window net. “Okay, let's get this over with,” he said to his crew.

The sprint car was push-start, and Trace concentrated on the starting sequence: transmission in gear (little lever on the right); fuel switch to On position.

“Ready?” Bob called.

Trace took a breath and gave a two-fingered wave forward.

A push truck bumped behind him and pressed Trace forward, down pit row. The sprint car's brake was a down-press pedal, not a forward leg-throw as in most cars—not that he planned on using much brake. As he approached the track entrance, Trace flipped the ignition switch to On—and the engine coughed alive.

Alone on the track, Trace idled along—no throttle applied—at somewhere close to thirty miles per hour. The 700-plus horsepower engine was less a motor than a force of nature—the rumbling inside an active volcano or the
deep-lung cough of a far-off thunderstorm. The slightest tap to the gas pedal broke loose the rear tires: he had instant, unlimited power.

On his first lap he concentrated on keeping a consistent, steady pace through the turns and down the straights. He had watched enough sprint car action to know that slowing for corners was the sure sign of an amateur. He quickly completed two laps, but the on-track flagman did not wave him to the pits. The Marzones crew members and chief stood near the pit exit; on Trace's third lap, Bob circled a finger for him to bring up the speed—but slowly. Goose bumps washed over Trace's arms.

Gradually he built up speed to a half throttle. Fighting the impulse to slow for the turns, he pitched faster into them—and trusted the car. The gathering g-forces signaled “spinout!” but the squat, fat-tired car—pressed downward by the rooftop airfoil—twisted the high-banked clay turns like a waterslide car flung sideways through its curved chute. Trace plunged out of the corners and down the straightaway—with the next turn in his face within seconds.

He powered through the turns, fighting the feeling that the big tires were going to shred or roll over off their rims. Again he flashed by the Marzones crew, none of whom did anything but watch. He brought his speed up still more. By the fifth lap, he was running close to three-quarters throttle, and breaking off sharp, tight, controlled drifts through both ends of the track. He found a rhythm—an actual count inside his head—which helped
him hit the corners just right and kept him from getting squirrelly out the back side.

The flagman threw the checkered, and the crew chief waved Trace in. He backed off immediately. Slowing, he took the engine out of gear before the pit exit, then coasted off the track with enough momentum to get partway down pit row. There he remembered to turn off the fuel switch. When the big engine starved and died, he switched the ignition to Off.

A local push truck rocked him from behind and rolled Trace the rest of the way to the Marzones hauler.

“Nothing to it, right?” Bob asked. His men unhooked the window net and began to unbuckle Trace.

“I wouldn't say that!” Trace answered, rolling his neck to loosen the muscles.

For the first time, Bob showed a hint of smile. “It was a trick question, kid.”

Trace removed his helmet, which Bob stepped forward to take, and then Trace pulled himself backward from the cockpit. Lonny Marzones walked over, warm and sweaty-looking in his racing suit. “You must have a sprint car hidden away somewhere, right, son?”

“I wish,” Trace said. He wanted to give Marzones a huge hug, but settled for a long, pumping handshake. “Thanks.”

“You looked comfortable out there,” Marzones said.

Trace let out two lungfuls of air. “I think I held my breath the whole time!”

The Marzones crew laughed—the good kind of laugh.

“We wouldn't have known by watching,” Marzones said, “and that's the main thing. It's what we do—driving as in life—we try to make it look easy.”

By then Harlan and Jimmy had arrived.

“What do you think, chief?” Marzones said to Harlan.

“About what? I was over getting a hot dog,” Harlan said.

“Yeah, right,” Trace said.

Marzones turned to his own crew chief. “How about you, Bobby?”

Bob quickly put his hard-boiled face back on. “He didn't wreck.”

“Pay no attention to them,” Marzones said to Trace with a smile. “I think you could move up tomorrow.”

When Marzones was gone, Trace went to his cabin and called Mel. He had to tell somebody about his sprint car laps. She picked up on the first ring, and they talked for twenty minutes—until Harlan pounded on the door.

“Gotta go,” Trace said.

“I wish I was there with you tonight,” she said.

“Really?” Trace said stupidly.

“Really,” she said. “Now go drive fast.”

Trace's dream night continued in the heats. Starting second in the second heat, he maintained his placement—missing a checkered flag by a nose. His car was quick out of the corners but a half note slow down the straights. Still, a second place would put him well up to start the feature.

Smoky took the Blu Super Stock inside the hauler, so with time to kill, Trace wandered down pit row. He headed away from the big sprint car haulers—he was, after all, only a Super Stock driver—and gravitated toward the grassroots end of the pits. Pits had their pecking order. On the far side were the homemade flatbed trailers, the retrofitted furniture trucks, the worn-out but repainted tractor-trailer rigs. There was music and the smell of home-cooked food—burgers and barbecue—on grill kettles. Trailer doors were open wide, wives and husbands worked on their cars in front of God and everybody. Young motor heads hung close by the family race cars waiting for a chance to help. Family teams were laughing, arguing, working together. Trace found himself walking slower in order to listen, to take it all in.

“Hey, you look hungry,” a large woman said. Behind a cloud of greasy smoke she was turning chicken wings on a propane grill. To the side was a beat-up gray Super Stock. The scene was like the old days, back at Headwaters Speedway when he drove his old Street Stock. When his dad was with him in the pits.

“No thanks. I've got to drive,” Trace said.

She squinted and waved smoke away from her face. “Come by later, then. There might be leftovers,” she said.

“Maybe I will,” Trace said.

She looked more closely at him as the air cleared. “Hey, ain't you that Blu driver?”

“Yep,” Trace said.

“The guy on the billboards.”

“That's me.”

She looked sideways to her team's flatbed trailer, where three guys pounded on a tire. They looked like a father and two grown sons—her family—but she didn't call to them; they were too busy telling one another how to get the tire off the rim. “So what brings you down to this end of the pits—the cheap seats?” she asked Trace with a throaty laugh. She kept turning chicken wings.

“I don't know,” he said.

Something in his voice made her cock her head to look twice at him; she put down her tongs and stepped away from the grill and the smoke. Like that of the Carhartt lady, her face had seen some road, some weather. “Must be the down-home cooking,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Must be,” Trace said.

“Seriously, come by later. All you'd have to do is sit in a lawn chair and eat. My family is entertainment enough.”

In the feature race, Trace started in the fourth row, inside. After the sprint car, his Super Stock felt wide and slow—like a school bus. But Jason Nelson, two rows back, was a good wake-up call; by lap 2, orange tin loomed in the dust and thunder just off Trace's right side. Nelson rocked him hard coming out of turn 4. Trace lost his line, and saw Nelson push past him on the high side. With full gas pedal, Trace spun and wallowed across the soft shoulder of the
infield, kicking up chalk dust and barely missing a big bumper tire. When he fought his way back into traffic, he was running in the middle of the pack.

A restart on lap 10 closed up the field. As he bumped and tapped within the tight parade of cars leaning toward green, Trace heard himself say, “Come on, Smoky!”

His engine started to wake up on lap 12. It was nothing he could point to—not rpm or responsiveness in the throttle—but more like an increase in personality. The field had spread out, and Trace began to reel in cars one by one. He found bite on the high side, and better bite down low. Nelson was running third, but Trace set his sights not on him or the two cars ahead; rather, he began to race against the track. As long as he had room to move, he stayed on his best line and concentrated on nailing his lift spots; then it was hammer down, and out the far side of the turn. Focusing on the track rather than individual cars, Trace felt his lap times tightening—but running down the leaders was a gradual process.
If on a circular track Train A is averaging 80 miles per hour, and Train B, only three car lengths behind it, is averaging 82 mph, how long does it take Train B to catch Train A?

Until lap 17.

Trace finally got tight behind Nelson—and began tapping his rear bumper pipe to get him loose. Nelson stayed on task and kept his line—making sure to swing his butt wide in the corners in order to take up two lanes. Trace finally got his nose inside Nelson's rear quarter panel, and held it there until he could make the pass down low.

After that, he had two laps to catch the leader. His engine kicked up another notch—he felt the surge this time. It was a strong enough punch that Trace threw a millisecond's glance sideways as he passed the pits. Smoky's motor home sat with satellite dish fully erect. Its cup pointed directly at Trace.

The fix was in.

With new power, Trace swung wide and streamed by the leader on the outside. He actually backed off the gas for the final lap, but still streamed under the checkered flag by two car lengths.

After his weigh-in, and the photo op, he headed to tech lane. There a small cluster of drivers—including old man Nelson—waited. Jason's father was out of control. He swore, kicked dirt, and jabbed his finger toward the Blu Super Stock.

The chief pit steward nodded and nodded, then gestured for Nelson to go away—back to his trailer. Jason Nelson hung to the side, watching.

“Great going, kid!” Harlan shouted over the engine noise.

Trace didn't reply.

“You ran them off the track tonight!”

Trace set his jaw. “Don't thank me,” he muttered as he got ready for the usual tech circus.

“Huh?” Harlan said. “You drove the hell out of that car tonight.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Trace began, but the pit steward walked up.

“I know, I know,” Harlan said to him. “Take it to the tech shed.”

“If you already know, what does that tell me?” the steward replied.

“It tells me, ‘Hurry up and get done so we can pick up our check,' ” Harlan replied.

Trace sat inside the car, as usual, as the tech guys swarmed over it. Being teched was like being in a traffic stop: take orders from the authorities, and say as little as possible. But after twenty minutes, the tech guys picked up their tools and walked away.