Leo’s neck muscles tightened against the load automatically, a physical reflex built across years of technical work around the cars and sharpened across two hundred laps of the pod.

Leo held the line.

He came off Turn 7 clean and hit the throttle and the engine barked behind his head.

Then he saw them.

Three cars. Sector 2. All on the same stretch of road.

Zhang Wei’s AIX car was first — sitting in the middle of the circuit after the Turn 9 complex, carrying maybe 60 percent pace, the driver clearly on a cool-down lap and using the road as if nobody else was on it. His rear wing was visible from 400 metres. The distance was closing at a rate that left almost no margin.

Victor Moreau was behind Zhang Wei and slightly to the left. His AIX car was moving faster than Zhang — a push lap, or what passed for one — but he had tucked into the wrong part of the track at the worst possible moment, the left side of the circuit, exactly where Leo needed to be for the Turn 10 entry.

That was exactly where Leo needed to be for the Turn 10 entry.

And between them, fifty metres back on the right side, Luca Moretti’s Trident was drifting wide on the exit of Turn 9.

Not intentionally. The Trident’s rear had stepped out slightly and the Italian rookie was catching it — a wobble that took his car across two-thirds of the track width before the correction came.

Three cars. One corner. One racing line.

Leo had 1.4 seconds to make a decision.

He quickly made a calculation and arrived at a plausible solution.

Zhang Wei was the problem. He was too slow, too central. Leo picked the gap to the right of the AIX car — the space between Zhang’s right sidepod and the white line at the edge of the track. It was narrow, but not dangerously narrow.

Narrow in the way that required confidence rather than courage, because confidence was built on measured information and courage was built on hope, and Leo did not operate on hope.

He moved right.

The Arcadia #24 slid through the gap between Zhang Wei and the track edge with twenty centimetres to spare on each side.

The turbulence off Zhang’s rear wing hit Leo’s front wing and he felt the nose lighten for a fraction of a second — a sudden, brief loss of downforce as the disrupted air rolled over the front bodywork.

He kept his foot on the throttle.

"That was— Leo, that was Zhang Wei’s lane," Elias said sharply.

"I was alongside," Leo said. "It was a racing move."

The radio went quiet for two seconds.

Then Victor Moreau.

The second AIX car was still on the left side of the track. Leo had cleared Zhang on the right, but now the circuit was compressing into the Turn 10 braking zone and Moreau was taking up the entry line that Leo needed to hit his apex.

The Frenchman wasn’t defending. He didn’t even know Leo was there. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time on a circuit that had too many cars and not enough road.

Leo braked four metres later than he had planned. It wasn’t ot a panic brake but a necessary recalculation.

He swept the Arcadia left, cutting across the inside of the Turn 10 entry on a line that was tighter than optimal but cleaner than the alternative. His right-rear passed within a metre of Moreau’s left-front. He felt the air displaced by the other car against his helmet.

He hit the apex.

He was through.

Moretti was behind him now. He had passed all three cars in one continuous movement without lifting, without hesitating, without making a single input that wasn’t planned before it happened.

The crowd noise rose from the grandstands as the screens showed the gap close and open again.

---

In the broadcast booth above the pit straight, the commentary feed was running.

"—and that is extraordinary from the Arcadia driver. He has just threaded through three backmarkers in Sector 2 without losing any appreciable time. We’re seeing something quite special from this young—"

"He hasn’t even reached the chicane yet. His Sector 1 was purple. If he can hold this through Sector 3—"

"Sector 2 is going to be the story of this session. That move on Zhang Wei alone—"

The co-commentator leaned forward in his chair.

"He passed three cars. In the middle of a hot lap. I have covered this series for nine years and I have not—"

"He’s at the chicane. Let’s see the Sector 2 split."

---

"Sector 2," Elias said. His voice was different. Tighter. The professional control still there but something working underneath it. "Sector 2 — 41.2. Purple. By three-tenths."

Three-tenths of a second. And through traffic. With a tighter line through Turn 10 that had cost him the optimal apex geometry.

Leo didn’t react to the number. He was in Sector 3.

The chicane complex arrived. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He hit the braking point for the first element exactly on his pre-planned marker. Fortunately, there was no traffic. The road ahead was clear — finally clear, the circuit opening up into the final sector with the kind of clean asphalt he had been promised when he left the garage and hadn’t found until now.

The front wing responded to the two-click addition from the pit stop. The entry to the first chicane element was sharper and more direct. The understeer that had pushed him wide on his first run wasn’t there now. He clipped the inside kerb and the car bounced once across the rumble strip and came back level.

He was on the exit like nothing just happened.

He hit the short straight.

"Tyre temp warning," Elias said, his brows furrowing in concern. "Front-left is at 94 degrees. We’re two degrees over the ceiling. The lap is almost done but the final corner — be careful on the throttle application."