Last Lap

The body had taken a year to repair, the brain two more. But he was lucky, or so he had told himself. He’d lived, hadn’t he, when so many of his friends had not. The headaches were not so bad these days, he remembered nothing after that sickening lurch to the left and at least the damn thing didn’t burn as they all too often did.

Of course he’d promised Elizabeth he was done with racing and, at the time, he’d meant it. But then a friend asked if wanted to pad his old Aston around Silverstone in a local club meeting. And because this wasn’t work but fun, he managed to justify it to himself and even his wife. The problem was he went and won it. By a mile, in a car that had no business being even halfway up the grid. He still had it.

So then it was a few more club meets, then an invitation to go back to Le Mans in a nice, safe slow car, just for fun you understand. It had broken – these little private entry cars usually did – but not before he’d made some quite big names in far faster cars look decidedly second rate during a long spell in the rain at night.

Which is why, when the call came to return to the top, he could not resist. The top? Well hardly: it was a one-off drive in a good car for a decent team, but it was still a privateer outfit, and it was just sitting in for the usual driver while he recovered from rather more superficial injuries. But it was Formula 1 again. He was back.

Except when he told Elizabeth the good news, his always considered and preternaturally undramatic wife walked out of the house and slammed the door behind her. He was speechless. But upon her return two hours later, she was not.

‘If this is what you need to get it out of your system, to say a proper goodbye and be done with it, do this bloody race,’ she said. Elizabeth never swore. ‘But if you do not announce your retirement that very day, I’ll walk out again and when I go this time, gone I will stay. Do you understand what I am saying to you?’

He did. And enough not to doubt her. And yet while he promised her he’d quit the moment the chequered flag had fallen, even as he slithered away from the outside of row three at the start, he was not sure he could go through with it. He was a racing driver. It wasn’t just his job. It defined him. It was who he was. How could he be anything else?

And yet as those laps ticked by, in that little mental space he’d always kept to one side, he came to realise he had no choice. It was as if all his stars had aligned that day. He’d had a good start and squeezed past a couple off the line. Two more had tangled and taken themselves out, another had dived for the pits with some mechanical malady. Then it rained and he was always good in the wet, particularly at old and dangerous circuits like this. He outbraked the next man and simply drove around the outside of the one after that, knowing that’s where the grip lay. He was second.

Then, with fourteen laps to go it had started to dry. Second place was more than he’d ever imagined. He’d never even stood on a podium at this level before. He’d come back, would show the world what he could do and, just as quickly, disappear for good, leaving it goggling at what might have been. It would be a gesture as grand as they came, topped by a two-fingered salute to all those who said he’d never walk again, let alone race, let alone beat all but one of the bastards. It was perfect.

Almost. It was no more than a glint, a ray of sun gleaming through the clearing clouds, glancing off a scarlet flank some distance ahead of him. But it was enough. To hell with second place.

But while he’d caught the red car, every time they crossed the line, it remained ahead. And now there was just the exit of the last corner, the straight, the kink, and the flag.

Every lap had been the same. He’d use his superior traction to close right up at the exit, slingshotting past, whereupon the red car would pull into his wake, line him up through the kink and slipstream by on the short run to the finishing line. He knew why. As he approached the kink his right foot would lift. Every time. However hard he tried to keep it down, somewhere deep in the reptilian core of his brain, something said no and over-rode the instruction. You cannot do this, and if you try you will not survive. No one can take this corner at 180mph. And the fact that, quite clearly, his opposite number in the red car was doing precisely that and re-taking the lead every lap, proved entirely unpersuasive to his already sorely tested sense of survival.

But that’s what it came down to. Take it flat, or lose. Do it, and one way or the other, your place in racing history is assured. Fail and spend eternity fighting it out in the footnotes. But how? He knew only one way.

The two cars exited the corner together, this lap just like those before. He closed on the white tumble of spaghetti pipes cascading from the rear of the car ahead, close enough to smell the exhaust and wonder all over again whether his opponent’s power gain came more from the design of his engine or the evil brew on which it was running. Then he was alongside, then he was past.

In the mirror he could see the red car tuck in behind him as usual, but knew it would wait until they were through the kink before making its move: he didn’t exactly trust his erstwhile nemesis, but both knew that to go two abreast into the kink would be suicide and murder in the same instant.

This, then, was the moment. So at the point his foot would have lifted, he simply closed his eyes.

It was an old racing driver’s trick, learned as a kid to avoid braking too early for a corner. You distract that autocratic instinct by giving it something even bigger to worry about. His lids barely touched but by the time his eyes could see again a lift would have been fatal, and in the most literal sense. He was committed. His foot stayed down.

The car hit the apex perfectly but as the exit rushed up, the slight change in camber seemed to be dragging him towards the still wet grass. His trajectory was now set, for the car was already over the technical limit, sliding ever so slightly sideways at three miles a minute. It would go where it would go.

That mental safety margin he always left here, best measured in inches rather than feet, was already gone. He no longer thought about winning the race; he thought about Elizabeth and that he’d give everything he had to see her one more time, to tell her how sorry he was for all he’d put her through.

The stupid thing was he was in complete control of the car, he just needed more space than he had. Or did he? The kink was opening out fast. The line he was treading now was between nothing so trite as oversteer and understeer, but life and death itself. And then, in an instant, he knew.

It was going to work out. The fat curving outer face of his rear right crossply tyre kissed the blades of grass at the edge of the circuit as politely as you might kiss the hand of a queen, but the contact patch beneath stayed on the tarmac. He had done it.

And there was the line. He could see the end approaching. He had fought and he had won. Seconds from now he could relax, and do so forever. It was over.

—————————————————————–

Sitting at her husband’s bedside, Elizabeth Armitage looked over at the gaunt figure in front of her, lifeless save the occasional, irregular heaving breath. His had been a good life – not a great one perhaps – but long and full of devotion to his family and the insurance industry in which he’d worked for over 40 years.

Of course when they’d met he’d wanted to be a racing driver, but which young lad didn’t back then? And when he retired at 65 while all the company gave him was a rather ugly carriage clock, she’d bought him a late model MGB roadster, with which he professed himself to be very pleased.

Then, suddenly, she felt something. It was her hand. It was being squeezed. Alarmed and excited in equal measure she sought out her husband’s face and saw to her astonishment his eyes were wide open. Shining, almost glinting you might say. Then his whole body went rigid, every slack and sagging muscle now tensed against some unseen force. His grip held until it hurt and then just as suddenly, a slight shudder passed through his body, his eyes gently closed and his muscles relaxed as life left his body. His race was run.