Did Not Finish

Lap Four

I spent Sunday stripping my Formula Ford down to its component parts. I raced a two-year-old Van Diemen. Although the car had gone less than fifteen hundred miles during the season, the punishment racing put on every component was a hundred fold greater than what a street car experiences. After tossing out bent bolts and worn out bearings, I checked the chassis for cracks and found none. I removed the engine for Steve to overhaul. On the whole, things looked good. It would take a lot of work to rebuild everything, but I wasn’t looking at much more than a couple of grand to get the car back into race condition.

I worked alone. It helped me decompress. Unscrewing bolts and disconnecting cables made order out of a chaotic weekend. There is no ambiguity in machinery. It does what it’s designed to do and nothing more. The distributor feeds electricity to the spark plugs. The fuel pump pumps petrol to the engine. Components don’t suddenly decide to kill a person because they don’t get what they want.

I had a decision to make: sell or keep the car. There’s no love lost on racecars. They’re tools, and disposable ones at that. In a few months, when next year’s improved cars came out, my trusty steed would be one step closer to obsolescence. Excluding wear and tear, a new car was going to lap half a second faster than my two-year-old Van Diemen. If I wanted to make a bid for the British Formula Ford National Championship next season, then I needed a brand new car. I could only pull it off if I could squeeze some extra money out of my sponsor and save every penny I could between now and next March. I knew Steve would help me out if I got close. He’d done the same with Dad.

I didn’t mind using Steve’s expertise, but I was reluctant to take his money. I knew the financial burden Dad had put on him. Despite winning a Formula One contract, Dad hadn’t lived long enough to be paid and he’d died broke. It almost bankrupted Steve.

I called it a day around nine p.m. I flicked on Steve’s computer in the crow’s nest and looked up the latest news on Alex’s death on the web. The death of a minor racecar driver had failed to make it as a national story. Its newsworthiness certainly hadn’t stretched as far as Windsor.

On the BBC Bristol website, I found RACECAR DRIVER’S DEATH INVESTIGATED and clicked the link. The story outlined yesterday’s events and mentioned that Alex crashed after contact with Derek’s car.

The story featured a quote from Myles. ‘Motorsport is a very safe sport and these tragedies happen very infrequently. My thoughts and prayers go out to Alex’s friends and family.’

Myles’s comment didn’t surprise me. It wasn’t like he was going to admit he could have prevented the crash if he’d expelled Derek from the race for making a death threat.

I read the rest of the article hoping to see what charges they were bringing against Derek. Instead, the police spokesman talked in terms of an accident investigation. Why weren’t they calling it a murder enquiry?

Like most drivers in the lower echelons of motorsport, racing isn’t a full time job for me. It’s something I have to squeeze in around a day job, so I was back at work on Monday. I’m a design draughtsman for a firm in Slough that manufactures industrial mixers. I don’t care much for the job. It isn’t a passion like racing is. It’s just something I do to pay the bills and give me the money I need to race. But the job isn’t without its perks. After hours, I use their CAD software to design my own replacement parts for my Van Diemen and get the parts fabricated for free by a local fabrication shop in exchange for some ad space on the side of the car.

The management cuts me a lot of slack when it comes to racing by being flexible with my working hours. Now that the season was over, they expected me to make up for their generosity.

On Tuesday, I received an email from Myles Beecham with the news that Alex’s funeral was going to be on Friday morning. The email had gone out to all the Formula Ford drivers. I looked for Derek’s name amongst the distribution list, but didn’t see it. It wasn’t much of a surprise. I doubted Derek even had an email address.

I put in a time off request for Friday with my boss. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t refuse.

After work, I drove over to Dylan’s. On the way over, I stopped in at a florist to order a wreath. The place unsettled me. Flowers marking every kind of celebration surrounded me. When I told the woman I wanted a funeral wreath, she brought out a sample book from under a counter as if death couldn’t be looked in the eye. I picked something out and she handed me a card to go with the wreath. I froze with the pen poised over the untouched card. What was the right thing to say? Best wishes? Condolences? All of it seemed so trite.

‘Most people write “sorry for your loss.”’

I nodded, wrote the words, and signed the card.

I arrived at Dylan’s flat in Maidenhead a few minutes before Redline began. Redline is a satellite TV show that rounds up the highlights of the weekly European race scene.

‘C’mon in. It’s about to start.’

He slipped an arm around my shoulders and ushered me inside. If Steve is my surrogate father, then Dylan is my surrogate brother. He’s five years older than me and several sizes bigger thanks to a life spent working as a bricklayer on building sites. Our friendship grew out of Dylan’s love of cars. When Dad was still racing, our family rated as minor celebrities. The local papers kept up with Dad’s progress and even did a profile on him and Steve. Locals knew where Archway was located and Dylan used to hang around outside to catch a glimpse of one of Dad’s cars or one of Steve’s restoration projects. When Dylan was thirteen, Steve caught him sneaking into the workshop. Instead of kicking him out, Steve asked what he wanted. Dylan answered that he wanted to learn about cars. Steve told Dylan that cars couldn’t be understood from afar, then tossed him a rag and gave him a job on the spot. I was only eight at the time, but I was already helping out at Archway. At the beginning, we only got to sweep up and put tools away. Despite our age difference, we became tight. Dylan had given me my first misappropriated beer and cigarette and set me up on my first and only blind date. I wasn’t thankful for everything.

I followed Dylan into his living room as the show was starting. I dropped into an armchair as the opening credits, a montage of races, filled the screen.

‘You want something to drink?’

I shook my head. I just wanted to see what I’d missed on Saturday. I needed to witness Derek’s crime spread across the airwaves of Europe. Then, he’d never escape what he’d done.

The show’s host talked over snippets of the night’s show. ‘It’s an end of season bonanza this week on Redline. We’ve got action from the final rounds of the Benelux Formula Ford Championship, British Touring Cars at Silverstone, the French Formula Renault Championship and the Clark Paints Formula Ford Championship at Stowe Park. First up, Formula Three action from Hockenheim.’

Hearing Stowe Park mentioned raised gooseflesh. It was going to be hard to watch this. Obviously, Dylan felt the same way since he’d reached for his sunflower seeds.

It was an agonizing forty minutes before Redline got to the Stowe Park race. I went cold when the coverage switched to aerial shots of the circuit. I had an unenviable advantage over all the viewers in their homes. I knew what was about to happen. I wanted to look away when the crash came, but I knew I wouldn’t.

Dylan picked up the remote and pressed record on his digital TV recorder. I wondered if Alex’s family was doing the same. Then more darkly, I wondered if Derek was recording his handiwork for posterity.

‘It’s tight at the top going into the twelfth and final round of the Clark Paints Formula Ford Championship. Alex Fanning holds a two point advantage over nine time champion and local fan favourite, Derek Deacon. Here’s how they shape up for the start of this hotly contested series. On pole, we’ve got nine-time champion, Derek Deacon, giving his championship hopes a much needed boost. Alongside Deacon is Graham Linden in the number two slot.’

‘What?’ Dylan said and shot me a glance.

The commentator continued to read out the starting line-up as a computer graphic scrolled up the screen showing the drivers’ names and race numbers. It became clear what was happening before the commentator said my name.

‘They’re not showing the race from the beginning,’ I said. ‘They’re showing it from the restart.’

The commentator ran through the complete grid and didn’t mention Alex’s absence.

‘This is bullshit,’ Dylan said. ‘They have to say something. They can’t pretend nothing happened.’

Can’t they? I thought. I didn’t like where this was going. ‘Maybe they’re going to say something at the end.’

The race played out from the restart. When it finished, the image cut to Derek shrugging himself from his car and bowing his head to take the winner’s wreath and a bottle of champagne from Myles Beecham. Derek didn’t show a flicker of remorse for what he’d done. The sight of him basking in his moment of murderous glory made me want to punch a hole through the TV.

I waited for the commentator to mention Alex’s death, but nothing was mentioned. As soon as the race ended, the show went to an ad break.

The stink of a cover up radiated from the TV. The sanitized coverage deceived the public, dishonoured Alex, and robbed the police investigation of vital proof.

‘What the hell was that?’ Dylan said.

‘It looks like everyone wants to pretend nothing happened.’