At one in the afternoon, inside the simulator room.
The simulator room door was open, and the air conditioning was blasting cold air.
When Julian walked in, Dennis was already sitting inside one of the rigs.
His posture was perfect, back straight, hands resting on the steering wheel.
The massive screen displayed the first sector of the Bahrain International Circuit.
The engine roared from the speakers, a deep, guttural growl like a caged beast.
Sander led Julian to the number two simulator.
Julian climbed in obediently, fastened his harness with practiced efficiency, and adjusted the wheel and pedals.
Sander and Paul stood at the control console between the two rigs, watching the data flickering on the screens.
Dennis was setting consistent lap times, continuously refreshing his fastest lap of the day.
“Dennis is in great form today,” Paul said, crossing his arms.
“He is the top prospect of the Red Bull Junior Team, after all.
His talent is undeniable.”
Sander nodded, shifting his gaze to Julian’s screen.
“Let us see how Julian does.”
Julian had already started his rig and was running an out-lap to warm up the tires on the Bahrain track.
His rhythm was steady and his racing line precise, but his pace was not particularly fast.
He was clearly still adapting to the force feedback settings.
Dennis finished his training program and climbed out of the rig, wiping the sweat from his face.
Seeing Julian in the adjacent simulator, he gave a dismissive scoff and turned to leave.
“Hold on, Dennis,” Sander called out.
Dennis stopped and looked back, his face blank.
“What is it?”
“Since you are both here,” Sander said, exchanging a glance with Paul, “why not simulate a race scenario?
How about a head-to-head battle?”
Dennis raised an eyebrow.
He looked at the focused silhouette inside the number two rig, a mocking smirk playing on his lips.
“Him?”
“Yes,” Sander said.
“It is a good way to test Julian’s defensive driving.
Simple setup.
Dennis, you are on the soft tires, starting from P10.
Your job is to attack and overtake.
Julian, you are on the white hard tires, starting from P1.
Simulate the mid-race stint with long-run tire management.
Twenty laps.
If you can hold him off, you win.”
The setup heavily favored Dennis.
Soft tires had significantly more grip than hards, offering much faster launch and cornering speeds.
The only drawback was high degradation.
The white hard tires were the hardest compound available, with the least grip, theoretically only offering an advantage in long-run durability.
To Dennis, this was a completely one-sided match.
He figured it would take him at most five laps to catch and pass the rookie.
“No problem,” Dennis said casually, crossing his arms.
“I have nothing better to do anyway.
Might as well play with him.”
Julian poked his head out of the simulator and nodded obediently.
“Sounds good.”
Paul set the simulator parameters.
Twenty laps, Bahrain International Circuit, clear skies, track temperature forty degrees Celsius.
Dennis was on the red softs, and Julian was on the white hards.
There were ten cars in total.
Aside from Dennis and Julian, the rest were AI-controlled traffic.
The red lights illuminated one by one, then went out simultaneously.
The race began.
Julian’s start was clean, with zero wheelspin, and he crossed the start-finish line first. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Starting from P10, Dennis used the massive advantage of the soft tires to overtake two AI cars right off the line.
His overtakes were clinical.
Inside, outside, he switched lines effortlessly.
In just four laps, one lap faster than he expected, he had climbed from P10 to P2, sticking right to Julian’s gearbox.
“Here we go,” Paul murmured.
Sander leaned forward slightly, his eyes locked on the two screens.
The soft tires had caught the hards.
Dennis initiated his first attack.
Turn one at Bahrain was the best overtaking opportunity on the track.
It was a long straight followed by a heavy braking zone.
Entry speeds dropped from three hundred kilometers per hour to around eighty.
The timing of the braking point directly determined whether you could claim the inside line into the corner.
Dennis tucked into Julian’s slipstream on the main straight.
His speed jumped by about three kilometers per hour.
Then, he darted to the inside, braking nearly ten meters later than usual.
Julian saw the red car darting to the inside in his mirrors.
He made a move.
It was not a massive, track-blocking swerve.
It was a subtle adjustment, shifting less than half a meter.
He moved his racing line from the exact center of the track to a position slightly biased toward the inside third.
It was just enough to block Dennis’s inside overtaking window, without completely shutting the door on the outside.
This position forced the car behind into a dilemma.
If Dennis insisted on the inside, his entry angle would be horribly compromised, and his exit speed would suffer terribly.
If he switched to the outside at the last second, his entry speed would be too high, and the tires would lose grip.
Relying on the superior grip of his soft tires, Dennis chose the outside.
At the very last moment before the apex, he swung the car to the right, trying to use the extra lateral grip to complete a wide, sweeping overtake on the outside.
Julian saw his line choice in the mirror and then executed a move that made everyone in the room gasp.
He did not swing over to block the inside.
Instead, he left the inside line completely open.
But on the exit, he used an incredibly unusual throttle technique.
Instead of the usual linear application, he blipped the throttle to about seventy percent.
This caused the rear end to step out slightly.
Using the resulting yaw angle to point the nose toward the shortest path onto the following straight, he then pinned the throttle completely.
This cost him about a tenth of a second on the exit, but as they hit the acceleration zone, his car was perfectly positioned in the exact middle of the track.
Dennis swung wide on the outside.
His exit speed was higher, but his racing line was longer.
The two factors canceled each other out.
By the time they reached the straight, Dennis’s front wing was exactly parallel to Julian’s rear wing.
Then, he saw the front car’s steering wheel twitch.
It was a movement to the right, so minuscule that only eyes trained by thousands of simulator hours could detect it.
But that tiny movement shifted the front car about thirty centimeters to the right.
Thirty centimeters.
It compressed the remaining width of the track to a degree that sent a chill down Dennis’s spine.
His left tires were already hovering on the edge of the white line.
Less than twenty centimeters further right lay the gravel trap of the runoff area.
He had two choices.
Pin the throttle and force his way through.
With both cars side-by-side and no room on the left, his left front tire would clip the grass.
Grip would instantly drop to zero, the rear would step out, and he would either spin on his own or take the red car in front of him with him, sending them both into the gravel and out of the race.
Or, lift off the throttle.
Drop back behind Julian and wait for the next opportunity.
Dennis’s right toe froze on the throttle pedal.
He could feel his heart hammering against his ribs through his race suit.
As the top prospect of the Red Bull Junior Team and the number one driver for MP Motorsport, he was being forced into a corner by a seventeen-year-old rookie who was still using the yellow beginner resistance band that morning.
Ultimately, he chose to lift and back off.
The engine revs dropped slowly.
He faintly heard a frustrated click escaping from between his clenched teeth.
The red car ahead slid past his left field of vision.
Its rear wing flashed in front of his eyes, and then the car completely reclaimed his forward view.
Blocked again.
At the control console, Paul stared at the big screen with wide eyes.
Did that actually just work?
Dennis took a deep breath, pushing down the sour feeling rising in his stomach.
He still had grip on the softs.
He still had a chance.
That was just the first attack.
He would keep pushing and show the kid what he was really made of.
Lap two, Dennis tried again at Turn four.
It was a high-speed right-hander with entry speeds exceeding two hundred kilometers per hour.
The soft tires had the maximum advantage here.
He tucked tightly into Julian’s slipstream on the straight, the gap between the two cars no more than twenty centimeters.
The moment the fifty-meter braking board flashed in his peripheral vision, Dennis darted to the inside.
This time, he chose the inside line.
Late braking, a shorter entry path, using the superior braking performance of the soft tires to force a dive-bomb.
Then, he saw Julian’s braking point.
The moment Dennis pulled out to overtake, the brake lights on the car in front did not illuminate.
It was not a malfunction.
Julian simply was not braking at that marker.
His braking point was even later than Dennis had imagined.
He was braking later on the white hard tires than Dennis was on the softs.
Dennis’s pupils contracted.
That was impossible.
Hard tires had a lower grip coefficient than softs.
Under the same braking force, the stopping distance was longer.
Braking later meant a higher entry speed.
A higher entry speed meant understeer.
Understeer meant running wide and crashing into the barriers.
But the red car did not understeer.
Dennis saw Julian’s steering input turn slightly more than normal, accompanied by an incredibly subtle, almost imperceptible flick of the rear end.
The red car glided through the apex, the right tires kissing the curb with absolute precision.
Then the throttle was pinned.
The car rocketed out of the corner and reappeared right in front of him.
Julian was like a shadow he could not shake.
No matter which direction Dennis attacked, or how late he braked, Julian read it perfectly.
His defense had zero wasted movements.
Every lane change, every braking point was executed with flawless timing.
He was as cold and calculated as a machine.
Sitting inside the simulator, Julian was no longer the shy, obedient teenager from the cafeteria.
His eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s.
His back was straight, and his hands gripped the wheel with absolute stability.
It was as if the entire world had shrunk to just the asphalt ahead and the car relentlessly chasing him.
Gritting his teeth, Dennis tried another late-braking dive at Turn ten.
Once again, Julian shut the door with a racing line that practically scraped the curb.
He had never felt this suffocated in his life.
He had won countless F3 races and defeated every genius driver in his age group.
Yet now, he was being completely shut out by a rookie who had not even raced in F4.
And Julian was doing it on the hardest, grippiest compound on the track.
It made absolutely no sense.
His breathing grew heavier.
Sweat dripped from his forehead, sliding down his cheeks and splashing onto the steering wheel.