Free Driven by Toby Vintcent Page A

was quickly up behind the Red Bull’s gearbox. Withsome distance to run before the ninety-degree left-hander of Tabac, Barrantes, frustrated by his lack of opportunity to overtake, pulled out sharply and lunged down the inside. Relative to each other, it seemed like slow motion, even though they were both travelling at well over one hundred and twenty miles an hour.
    Slowly, Barrantes’s front wheel managed to pass the other’s rear axle. Then the front wheel pulled level with the other driver. Barrantes was still gaining when the Red Bull started moving over to claim the racing line.
    Was Barrantes alongside far enough? Did Barrantes now have a right to the line? Except at that speed, it was almost too quick for rational judgement.
    As the Red Bull started to set itself up for the corner, Barrantes realized his space was disappearing. Bottling out, he lifted off and jabbed at the brake.
    And that’s when it all went wrong.
    Barrantes’s front left rolled over some white line markings on the normally public road. As he braked, that tyre was on shiny white paint rather than the rough, grippy surface of the track. It was no help in slowing him down. The skid started right there. Instinctively, Barrantes yanked the steering wheel to the left, trying to correct the resultant understeer, but the car simply continued straight on.
    Adi Barrantes’s Massarella would not respond. It was streaking across the circuit. And there was no way out.
    No run-off.
    It could only slam into the Armco on the outside of Tabac. Luckily, the angle was slight – more of a glancing blow. Even so, at that speed of impact, the front wing and carbon-fibre nosecone crumpled and splintered, as it was designed to. The front wheel hit the barrier. Again, the shock was absorbed in the car’s construction, this time in the wishbones. Fragments of carbon fibre exploded outward from the impact. The car scraped its broken front end some distance along the bottom of the barriers before its kinetic energy was finally dissipated.
    Barrantes came to a stop. He waved a hand immediately to indicate that he was conscious and not hurt.
    From around that section of the circuit, race marshals jumped into action, waving yellow flags and radioing to the operator of the hydraulic crane, a short distance along the Armco.
    Right behind the stricken Massarella, Formula One cars were still belting past only a matter of feet away. A lethal situation. Barrantes looked over his shoulder, hurriedly yanked off the steering wheel, pulled himself up out of the cockpit, and jumped up and over the steel barrier to safety.
    In a matter of seconds, with extraordinary Monégasque efficiency, the marshals managed to hook the car to a crane and lift the dangling and broken Massarella clear of the track. The race was continuing, but under yellow flags.
    Next to Straker in the headquarters truck, the Ptarmigan team members were animated – particularly Oliver Treadwell, the Strategy Director. ‘Get a shot of Tabac,’ he commanded, ‘quick!’
    Treadwell was soon able to study the CCTV image. ‘Is that oil?’ he asked the room.
    ‘Looks like it,’ replied one of the team.
    ‘All stations, all stations: possible safety car.’
    Straker heard the radio traffic buzz in both ears as the pit lane spoke to Sabatino. This was absolutely crucial. Tactically, the team had a huge call to make.
    Was the safety car about to be called?
    If so, Ptarmigan could take a punt and call their driver in immediately, and maybe grab a “cheap” pit stop. At full race speed, taking the twenty-five seconds out of the race to make a pit stop – when the field was travelling at one hundred and fifty miles an hour – was always expensive in time and distance. But to make a pit stop now – with the chance that the entire field might soon be bunched up and slowed to seventy miles an hour behind the safety car – would cost them a lot less time. Sabatino could dart in, pit, change tyres, refuel, and be out