99

Marianna POV

I sit on Table 3 in the empty treatment room and let that land for a while.

Sunday. Race day.

The shoulder tape goes on at six fifty AM, seventeen minutes earlier than Thursday because Duane's pre-race focus sharpens the schedule—he arrives earlier, moves through preparation faster, the entire system of him calibrating toward the start lights. McCartney does the primary work; I assist with the AC anchor strip, which requires a specific angle that's easier with two sets of hands.

We work in the efficient silence we've developed. McCartney assesses, I apply, Duane sits on the table and occasionally reports a sensation with the accuracy that has been consistent since Zandvoort. Eighty-seven percent today—he offers it unprompted when he comes in, before McCartney asks, which she notes in the file with what I've come to recognize as her version of being pleased.

"The 130R equivalent here is Parabolica," I tell him, while McCartney does the neck work. "Sustained lateral load into a long right-hander. You'll feel the AC joint through the exit."

"I know Parabolica."

"I'm telling you where the shoulder will feel it."

He meets my eyes in the mirror. The corner of his mouth moves. "You say that every circuit."

"Because it's true every circuit."

McCartney makes a small sound that might be a laugh. It's gone so fast I can't be certain.

Here's what happens at the start of the Italian Grand Prix:

Duane leads into Turn 1. This is straightforward—he's on pole, the Monza tarmac is dry, the 01 car launches cleanly.

Here's what happens on lap four:

Luca Ferrante, starting from P9, is in a battle with the second Alpine car through the Lesmo corners. The contact is minor—a wheel touching a front wing—and the resulting debris is smaller still, a fragment of carbon fiber that crosses the circuit in a way that affects exactly one car's left-rear tire.

The one car is not Luca's.

It's Duane's.

The tire doesn't fail catastrophically. It degrades—fast, uneven, impossible to manage—over the next three laps while Patrick's voice on the radio moves through the stages of a problem being diagnosed in real time. Confirm tire feel. Left rear, confirm. Box this lap. Box this lap, we're getting you in.

He boxes. The stop is clean. The damage is limited to the tire and a chunk of race time that drops him to P7 while the field cycles through their own stops.

In the Veloce garage, the atmosphere is the contained version of tense—engineers watching screens, the mechanic with red hair tracking the gap data with the focus of someone doing math they really need to come out right.

I'm behind the white line. My hands are not on the barrier this time. I've made a decision about the barrier.

"Debris incident," McCartney says, appearing beside me. "Not mechanical. Not the shoulder."

"I know," I say. "I was watching."

"He'll recover some positions on strategy," she says. "The team is good at this."

He recovers to P4. Not the result the pole position promised, not the championship points the morning deserved, but P4 on a day when a piece of someone else's car decided to interfere with his left rear.

Patrick will spend three days on the data.

Luca finishes P11.

The debris that came off his car is documented in the race incident report. It will be reviewed. Whether the review finds anything actionable is a question for the stewards and the team principals and the professional machinery that handles these things.

Whether it was deliberate is a question I keep not asking directly because I don't have an answer and the not-knowing is its own specific weight.

The debrief runs long. I know this because I've been in the hotel for two hours before Duane texts, which is a single line: Team principal conversation happened. Luca's situation is being managed. I'll explain tomorrow.

I stare at I'll explain tomorrow for a while. Tomorrow means he's not coming tonight, which is either because the debrief is still running or because the day has been long and heavy and full of the kind of professional fire-management that depletes something even in people who are very good at it.

Both things can be true.

I text back: Okay. How's the shoulder?

He responds: Fine.