The Arcadia #24 was one metre and ninety centimetres wide at the bodywork.
He went left.
The gap opened by exactly the margin the skill had predicted. Vega's ART car passed his right sidepod by seventeen centimetres.
The turbulence from the other car's rear wing hit him like a flat hand — a sudden, firm pressure across the front of the chassis that pushed the nose fractionally wide.
Leo caught it with five millimetres of steering input. Not a correction, but a conversation with the car.
He kept the throttle open.
"That was close," Elias said, his voice carrying the sharp quality of a man who had seen the data spike on his monitor.
"It was fine," Leo said.
He didn't mean it dismissively. He meant it precisely. It had been fine. The gap had been measured and the gap had been there and the car had gone through it and the tyre loads were still within the window.
He came through Turn 9 two-tenths faster than any lap this session.
