Chapter 58 - 22: Give Him a 16-Year Seat

Chapter 58: Chapter 22: Give Him a 16-Year Seat

March 25 arrived in the blink of an eye, marking the kickoff of the second leg of the WSK Europa Series.

As soon as Wu Shi and Verstappen arrived at the track, they noticed the driver of car number 363, the Thai driver from the United Kingdom.

"I suspect the reporter at the last stop took a bribe from him," Wu Shi said suddenly.

"Why?" Verstappen looked over.

"Otherwise, with so many drivers around, why would he specifically emphasize to us how amazing he is?" Wu Shi replied.

"Are you nervous?" Verstappen asked.

"I shouldn’t be. Why do you ask?" Wu Shi retorted.

"Because if a reporter took money to emphasize how amazing he is, it could only be to make you more nervous for the race. They want you to push yourself too close to the limit and then just wait for you to make a mistake and crash out," Verstappen said seriously.

"There are dirty tricks like that?"

"My fath—"

"AHEM!" Jos’s deep, booming cough interrupted the two. He scolded, "The race is about to start. What are you two still chatting about? Hurry up and get ready!"

The two boys were shooed toward their karts. Unsure of Albon’s true strength, Wu Shi didn’t leave the pit lane right away. Instead, he lined up at the back of the pack, ready to observe the highly praised driver’s actual speed.

Verstappen, however, didn’t overthink things. Sticking to his usual habit, he lined up at the front to ensure he had a clean track ahead. After the warm-up lap, he quickly started his flying lap. He was extremely familiar with this circuit. Coming out of the final corner and onto the starting grid, he kept the throttle wide open. His kart gradually drifted to the right, riding the right-side line right before the false Turn 1. He cleared the corner with almost no lift off the throttle.

Immediately after that, he had to decelerate slightly to enter the next corner. This long sweeping curve wasn’t a continuous arc; rather, it had two somewhat ambiguous apexes. How a driver handled this section would directly impact their lap time on the short straightaway that followed. Verstappen perfectly matched the racing line, maintaining high speed as he charged onto the straight before effortlessly clearing the subsequent right-angle bend.

WHOOSH! 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

His entire run was as smooth and natural as a master calligrapher wielding a brush over the finest rice paper. Watching his son’s driving style, Jos couldn’t help but nod in approval. There were no excessive steering corrections, which signified absolute control over the kart, minimizing any loss of time.

SWISH!

43.551.

After one lap, the time flashed onto the display screens.

"So fast!"

"My god! How did he do that?"

Amidst a timing tower filled with 45s, 46s, and even lap times stretching into the high 50s and full minutes, this time truly stunned the crowd.

Wu Shi, who had held back at the rear, was just rounding the penultimate hairpin corner. He glanced at the timing tower. He didn’t see Albon’s time, but he did spot Verstappen’s. He wondered how Verstappen had managed to break into the 43s. Well, it didn’t matter how Albon drove or how fast he was anymore. If Wu Shi didn’t go all out, there was no way he could consistently clock a faster time. He locked into the zone almost instantly.

WHOOSH!

He slammed the throttle so hard it felt like it would punch through the fuel tank. Approaching the final hairpin, he braked violently. The moment his speed dropped to the maximum allowable entry speed, he released the brakes completely. After a slight slide, he carried the throttle into the corner. This series of seemingly redundant inputs was actually an extreme exploitation of the tires’ grip, all aimed at maximizing his exit speed!

VROOM!

The moment he cleared the hairpin, the kart accelerated ferociously, capitalizing on the "slow in, fast out" advantage. By the time he crossed the checkered line, his top speed was marginally faster than normal. Although the kart quickly maxed out its top speed, those extra few kilometers per hour at the end of the straight secured a thousandth-of-a-second advantage. Racing was all about accumulating these minuscule advantages until victory was assured. An advantage of this scale was completely imperceptible to the naked eye; only the telemetry equipment could calculate it.

SWISH!

Wu Shi quickly arrived at Turn 1, entering the corner almost identically to Verstappen. No, it was Verstappen whose corner entry was almost identical to his. This corner demanded a slow entry and a fast exit, but Wu Shi’s refinement was to make the "slow entry" just a little bit faster, squeezing every last drop out of his lap time.

Pushed to its absolute limits, the kart endured tremendous stress. The screech of the tires and the harsh grinding of the brake discs were ear-piercing. Yet, in stark contrast to the auditory struggle, the chassis glided through the corner with silky smoothness, as if drifting to overcome its shifting center of gravity.

WHOOSH!

47.518.

This was Albon’s time. It seemed he had completely dropped the ball.

WHOOSH!

Several more karts flashed across the line.

44.872.

58.120.

45.824.

The karts crossed the line one after another, posting a mix of fast and slow times. But none of them even came close to a low-44-second lap.

"Verstappen. Jos’s kid really knows how to drive. For his rookie year, pulling off a lap time like that is impressive," a team principal remarked. Realizing the person next to him remained silent, he looked over in confusion.

"There’s another guy who’s even faster."

"How is that possible?"

"Weren’t you at the last stop?"

"I had some things to deal with, so I couldn’t make it. Are you saying the winner of the last race is going to be faster? Brother, one race victory doesn’t mean anything. You’ve been watching karting for years; you should know that almost no kart driver can completely dominate. Maybe that winner just made fewer mistakes at the last stop..."

SWISH!

Wu Shi crossed the line, and his time popped up on the screen.

41.081.

The speaker froze, utterly dumbstruck. His mouth hung open for a long while before he finally snapped it shut. Gathering his thoughts, he managed to say, "There has to be something wrong with his kart, right?"

"People thought the same thing at the last stop." The team principal wanted to light a cigarette, but mindful of the public setting, he could only roll the unlit cigarette between his index and middle fingers.

A brief silence fell over the circuit, followed immediately by an explosive eruption of noise. The entire venue descended into uproar.

"Too strong," muttered a spectator wearing sunglasses. Standing beside him was a woman with off-white hair. It was Martina.

"Well? If he keeps up this kind of form, can you offer him a 2016 seat?" Martina raised an eyebrow.

"You mean let him drive in F1 when he’s just eighteen? That’s insane." The man in sunglasses shook his head.

"If we can’t reach an agreement here, I’ll go look for other teams. Whether it’s Red Bull or Mercedes-Benz, I’m sure they’d be more than happy to recruit him into their youth academy." Martina smiled. The older and more massive an organization was, the more conservative its decision-making tended to be. If she weren’t from Rafa, she wouldn’t have even bothered contacting the team in advance like this.

"Ahem. You know this is karting, not formula racing. No matter how much of a prodigy a kart driver is, they might not necessarily adapt to formula cars. Secondly, I’m not the team principal, nor am I the boss. I can only report what I’ve seen here honestly. I can’t promise an F1 seat, but I can guarantee an opportunity to enter the Rafa Racing Academy."

"Alright. I hope that when he continues to show his talent in the junior formula categories, you’ll be able to present an attractive offer," Martina said before turning and leaving the track.

As Wu Shi walked off the track, his head was still spinning slightly. If establishing total sensory connection with a chassis as small as a go-kart was this physically exhausting, what would it be like in a much larger open-wheel race car? Would he drop dead from mental exhaustion before even finishing a single lap?

"Wu Shi! How did you do that?!!!" Jos grabbed him by both arms.

"Wait, sir! He needs to be weighed first!" a nearby track marshal shouted.

"Sorry, I got too excited," Jos apologized. It was indeed a highly inappropriate action—one that could have potentially invalidated Wu Shi’s lap time entirely.