Leo nodded at the warning.

’Front-left at 94. Two degrees over. If I apply full throttle at the standard point through the final corner, the tyre will grain on the exit. If I delay the throttle by two-tenths of a second, I lose exit speed. If I—’

He adjusted his steering angle through the penultimate corner by three millimetres and shifted the load fractionally onto the front-right. The front-left temperature held.

He came to the final corner on full throttle. Exactly on his standard point.

The front-left held.

He crossed the line.

---

The timing screen updated before Elias spoke.

[2. L. Kaito (Arcadia) — 1:27.8★]

P2. A 1:27.8.

Two-tenths of a second faster than Rossi’s benchmark. Purple across all three sectors.

The grandstands registered it before the broadcast did. A sound rose from the crowd that was specific to moments when something happened that the audience hadn’t quite prepared for — not a cheer, not a roar.

A collective upward movement of noise, like a room full of people drawing breath at the same time.

In the broadcast booth, the senior commentator stopped mid-sentence.

The leaderboard had updated on every screen in the circuit.

1. L. Kaito (Arcadia) — 1:27.8★

2. A. Rossi (Prema) — 1:28.0

3. T. Moreau (Prema) — 1:28.5

4. O. Dubois (DAMS) — 1:28.9

5. R. Vega (ART) — 1:28.7

"He’s P1," the commentator said. The professional composure cracked at the edges. "Leo Kaito — the Arcadia rookie — is P1 overall in Q1. A 1:27.8. He’s two-tenths faster than Alessandro Rossi. He passed three backmarkers in Sector 2 on a hot lap and still went purple. I don’t — I genuinely don’t have a precedent for that."

"He’s a technician," the co-commentator said. "He worked on cars. He built setups. And now he’s—"

"He’s fastest."

---

On the pit wall, Anya stood completely still.

She was looking at the timing board. Her tablet was in her hand and she had forgotten it was there. Around her, the Arcadia engineers were making sounds — not shouting, not celebrating, the specific restrained noise of technical people who were surprised in a way they hadn’t given themselves permission to express yet.

She pressed her earpiece.

"Leo," she said. "P1. 1:27.8."

He was already in the cool-down lap. His voice came back flat and even.

"How long on the clock?" 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

She looked. "Six minutes, forty seconds."

"Rossi will respond," Leo said.

"He’s already in the pit lane. He’s going back out."

"I know," Leo said. "Let him."

Anya took the tablet from her side and pulled up the tyre data from the second run. The front-left had peaked at 94.3 degrees on the exit of the penultimate corner. It had dropped back to 91.8 by the final corner. The flat spot from run one was gone. The new compound had handled the load cleanly except for the one spike Elias had flagged.

The pace was real. It wasn’t a fluke of traffic or timing or a competitor having a bad lap. The sector splits were all purple. Every single one.

She looked at the leaderboard again.

His name at the top. Two-tenths clear of a driver who had been champion favourite since January.

She pulled up the radio.

"Leo. When you come in—" She stopped. Looked at the tyre data again. At the clock. At the field, where Rossi was already rolling out of the pit lane with fresh rubber and the specific purpose of a man who had just been knocked from P1 and planned to take it back.

"Don’t come in," she said. "We’re going to hold you out. If Rossi takes P1 back, we respond. If he doesn’t—"

"He will," Leo said. "Let him take it. We still make Q2."

"You’re comfortable with that?"

A pause. Not a long one.

"I’m P2 at worst," Leo said. "We’ve used one set of tyres today. The others are fresh. Save them."

Anya turned to Elias. He had already run the numbers on his tablet. He nodded once.

She made the call.

"We’re staying out, Leo. Cool-down pace. Watch Rossi’s time when it comes."

"Copy."

Leo drove the long back straight at eighty percent pace and watched the circuit around him. The session clock ticked down. Cars came and went in his mirrors.

The grandstands tracked him as he passed — thousands of phones lifted above the crowd, filming a car they hadn’t known to film two hours ago.

He let the Albert Park asphalt pass beneath him.

He felt the engine settle into its cool-down note. Quieter. Steadier. The rough, barking urgency of the hot lap replaced by something that was almost calm.

In the Prema garage, he knew Rossi was being strapped back in. Fresh tyres going on. Engineers crouching with torque guns. A team that had dominated this series for three years suddenly needing to respond to a car that had spent two seasons at the back of the grid.

He knew what came next. Rossi would go out and run a clean lap and the Italian’s time would improve. P1 would change hands. His name would drop to P2.

And when Q2 came, and the circuit was darker and the rubber was heavier and the pressure was higher — he would go again.

He crossed the line.

Q1 — 4:12 remaining.

He let the car breathe.

He had shown the paddock something on this lap. But not everything. Not the thing he had been holding back since the pit lane opened at the start of the session.

The thing the simulation had built across two hundred laps of Monaco and Suzuka. The thing that lived at the top of his Racing Instinct skill at 9.1% and had not yet been fully asked for.

P2 in Q1 was not the destination.

It was the last corner before the straight.

---

Four minutes and twelve seconds.

Leo read the clock and kept the Arcadia at cool-down pace through the back section of Albert Park.

The engine note was low and settled. The contrast to the hard-edged urgency of the flying lap was total — like a predator that had finished its sprint and was now moving at a walk, unhurried, reading the field around it.

He watched the timing screen on the bridge above Turn 9.

Rossi’s name was gone from the monitor feed. The Italian was in the pit lane getting fresh rubber. Leo knew because he had seen the Prema car parked on the jacks through the gap in the barriers as he came through the Turn 5 complex.

The scarlet car had four mechanics on it. The speed of the operation was precise and unhurried — the specific efficiency of a team that changed tyres under pressure so often it no longer felt like pressure.

Rossi was coming back.

Leo rode the cool-down lap and let him.