Sharyn McCrumb - Once Around the Track

Taran thought of asking which big teams she was referring to, but Julie probably wouldn’t tell her, anyhow. “Okay,” she said. “And what do the big teams do to keep from getting caught?”

“What do we do after we get the qualifying tires from NASCAR?”

“Well…we let the air out.”

“Right. Goodyear mounts the tires with regular air, and after we get them, we deflate the tires and refill them with nitrogen, because tires run better on nitrogen than on plain air.”

“Well, that’s not illegal… Is it?”

“No, everybody does it. But some of them also do something else. They have a small, portable nitrogen tank at the track to refill the tires, only that tank is halfful of tire soak. So as we refill the tires, we will be spraying soak inside the tire through the valve stem.”

“What if you get caught?”

“Just don’t let anybody from outside the team try to pick up the nitrogen pump. It’ll weigh so much that they’re bound to figure out that something is wrong.”

“How did you know about this?”

Julie shrugged. “My dad was a race car driver, remember? He never made it to the big time, but he was serious about it, and I learned all the tricks tagging along after him. Back when I was a kid, the tire guy used to rub soak on the surface of the tire with a glove attached to a tube going to a bag of soak under his armpit.” She sighed and fluffed her hair. “I’m glad those days are over. The nitrogen tank method is more reliable and less easily detected.”

“And about a million times less gross,” muttered Taran. “Are we going to have to do this on race day, too?”

“We can’t,” said Julie. “The thing about tire soak is that it deteriorates the tires. That’s how it works. It degrades the rubber so that the tire sticks a little better to the surface of the track. That’s fine for the two laps it takes for qualifying, but if you tried it in a three-hour race, the tires would disintegrate on the track. You could end up in the wall, or in a wreck, or just having to make green flag pit stops to replace them. But for a couple of qualifying laps here, that extra traction might be good for a couple of tenths of a second.”

Taran nodded. She knew that sometimes three-tenths of a second was the difference between first place and fifteenth, so even the smallest advantage to gain the smallest unit of time mattered to a race team. She could see the advantage of that. “But what if they catch us?”

Julie shrugged. “Slap on the wrist, more or less,” she said. “A fine. Whoever was caught doing the soaking gets booted from the track, maybe suspended for a few races. The trick is not to get caught, Taran.”

“But it’s cheating.”

“I prefer to call it creative engineering. Everybody does it, Taran. And even if they didn’t, it isn’t as if we are on a level playing field here competitively, is it? The well-funded multicar teams get to test all their cars at a track and pool their results. We only get one shot. What’s fair about that? Or say some car has a ten-million-dollar sponsor and one of the independent owner-driver guys has to take up a collection to buy enough tires to race. How can that be equal opportunity? Money buys speed. At least tire-soaking is relatively cheap.”

Despite their efforts, Badger didn’t get the pole, but he did qualify sixth, much to the delight of the team. When the race began, the 86 team’s tires were all nitrogen-filled regulation tires. The only nonstandard modification was a bit of magic dirt that Taran rubbed on the hood of the car. Now it was all up to Badger’s driving skills.

When the number 86 appeared in lights on the pole that served as a vertical “scoreboard,” the pit crew alternately hugged each other and screamed for Badger.

“It’s the sacred dust from Chimayo!” screamed Taran. “I knew it would work eventually.”

Less than a minute later, Badger’s voice came over the headset. “This damn car is shaking like a sparrow in a snake pit.”

“I hear you, Badger.” Tuggle’s voice was calm, as always. “Could it be a valve spring?”

A few more seconds passed in a tense cacophony of noise that registered as silence with everyone on the 86 team, because all that mattered right then was Badger’s voice. Finally, he came back on, “Still shuddering, Tuggle. Hesitating.”

“Try the ignition box.”

After another interminable pause, Badger said, “That’s it. Damn thing’s gone bad. I’m flipping to the second one. Still shaking. The second box is bad, too, or else the switch is shorted out. It’s totally dead.”

There was a short silence while everyone thought things they couldn’t say out loud with spectators’ scanners tuned in. An ignition problem would trigger a misfire, causing the engine to begin losing cylinders. A car running on seven cylinders instead of eight would soon fall behind the rest of the pack. Even worse, the longer the motor was allowed to run on fewer than eight cylinders, the greater the chance that it would grenade the engine. If they couldn’t fix it, they could be looking at a last-place finish.

Badger again: “It’s skipping and popping. Sounds like hell. Missing.”

Tuggle swore under her breath, then in an icy calm, she said, “Turn off the brake blowers.”

“I’m dicing for the lead, dammit!”

“Well, you won’t get it,” muttered Tuggle. “You wanna bring it in now?”

He didn’t have time to answer. In a matter of seconds the 86 began to lose its momentum. The loss of power caused his speed to decrease, and now instead of leaping ahead of the cars following him, Badger was fast becoming an obstacle in their path. Somebody didn’t figure that out in time to swerve completely out of his way, and the resulting contact meant that they caught a caution. The collision was a minor one. Since Bristol was a short, high-banked track, where the average speed was ninety miles per hour, wrecks were not the terrifying prospect they had been at Daytona. This was the NASCAR equivalent of a fender bender, and given the 86’s mechanical problems, the resulting caution was a blessing.

“Bring it in, boy,” said Tuggle, but Badger hadn’t needed to be told. He was on his way.

Taran was mentally composing a demand-for-refund letter to a Navajo shaman when Tuggle’s voice crackled over her headset. “Stiles! You’re the one with the electronics background, aren’t you?’

Taran turned to face Tuggle and nodded slowly, wondering why that had come up.

“Good. When Badger comes in for the pit stop, I need you to get into the car and fix that ignition problem.”

“Can’t he switch to the other ignition box? Oh, he already tried that, didn’t he?”

“He did.”

“Could be a short under the dash,” said Taran, picturing circuitry in her head. “No. Unlikely. I’ll bet the switches are bad. I could try changing the boxes manually. Be faster.”

“Right. Good thing you know your stuff. And that you’re little. So get in there and fix the problem when he pits.”

Taran blinked. “In thirteen seconds?”

Tuggle grunted. “Unless you can do it quicker.”

Taran said nothing more, but her mind was still going faster than the cars. In milliseconds she thought: But how do I get into the car? Oh. Same way Badger gets in. Only through the passenger’s side window. Around her the cars still roared. The crowd still screamed. The voices in her headset chattered on. But to Taran the world had just switched over to slow motion and mute. For another couple of seconds she stared open-mouthed at the swirl of cars streaming past, lost in thought.

Tuggle’s voice roused her from reverie again. “Stiles, remember that a caution lap here at Bristol takes less than a minute, and a green lap is about fifteen seconds. Don’t cost us this race.”