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.
