Final Lap

by Andrew Holmes

Genres: Sports; Women's Fiction; Thrillers

Synopsis

Fast cars. Dark secrets. One woman racing against more than just time.

Ellie Harrier is making history as the first full-time female Formula 1 driver in thirty years. But as engines roar and cameras flash, she's not just battling for pole position - she's chasing the truth behind a fatal crash that rocked the racing world.

Her predecessor, Alastair Adams, died in a fiery wreck just moments from winning the championship. Some call it a tragic accident. Ellie calls it a warning.

Whispers of a buried exposé, a corrupt billionaire, and a cover-up at the highest levels of the sport haunt every turn of the track. With rivals on her tail, secrets in her team, and a target on her back, Ellie must risk everything to expose a conspiracy - and survive the season.

In the cutthroat world of Formula 1, victory is everything. But this time, losing could cost her life.

Perfect for fans of Drive to Survive, this turbo-charged thriller will leave you breathless.

Release date: June 10, 2026

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 432

Sample

Barcelona for pre-season testing. And as Ellie Harrier sat waiting for the first drive of her weekend, the memories came flooding back.

How five years ago she’d been on this very rooftop with what in those days she called her ‘squad’, the five of them glammed up and shouting rude things at the crew in the pit lane below, well in the mood for what was always sure to be a wild weekend.

Barcelona testing had been an annual stop on her social calendar back then – deluxe enough to make it worth inviting the girls but not so high stakes that they had to behave themselves.

So they hadn’t.

Ellie wished she could remember the sun and bubbles and the drip of coke at the back of her throat with fondness and nostalgia instead of cringe, but you can’t have everything. They were memories that came with a side-order of shame and regret, because they were a by-product of her addict days, but for other reasons too: because like that photograph in Back to the Future, there were those who had faded from view.

Well, one.

Tara.

Tara in heels and something clingy. ‘Show us yer bollocks!’ she’d yelled that day. The benefits of a Roedean education there.

They’d been screaming with laughter. No member of security had asked Ellie and Tara to keep a lid on their disruptive friends because no member of security was going to risk upsetting the girls whose fathers, Harry Harrier and Hugo Delevingne, were the HH in HH Racing.

A year after that, Tara was dead. But she hadn’t faded out like the McFly family. She’d been obliterated. Beauty and promise snuffed out by twisted metal.

Now, Ellie looked heavenward and wondered if her best friend – her sister from another mister – was looking down and saying, ‘You go, girl.’

Because today, she finally had something to go for.

As part of the driving staff at HH, Ellie was the test and development driver, the one who logged the hours, ran the data, and made sure the race-day cars were sharp enough to draw blood. Actual racing was usually someone else’s job.

But not today. Yesterday, Jules Escoffier had gone down with the flu – properly, not just man-flu – and Ellie, in Barcelona mainly for what she called BAH (Being a Harrier) duties, had been told to get ready. The crew had worked through the night to correlate her sim data with real-world parameters, tweaking the set-up to match her preferences as closely as possible, and today, she’d be putting the new HP4-X through its paces.

‘Given your lack of track time, we’re focusing on data gathering – fuel runs, tyre degradation, set-up refinement. No need to chase lap times,’ she’d been told.

To which Ellie had thought fuck that. She’d been hammering the HP4 in the simulator. But if she mentioned the small detail that her times regularly outstripped those of the two race drivers, she’d be told that ‘quick in the sim is one thing. Real pace is about managing tyres, handling traffic, keeping the car on the limit lap after lap. It’s about race smarts.’

In other words, You can do it in the simulator, but can you do it on the track?

She thought so. But there was only one way to find out.

No need to chase lap times?

We’d see about that.

Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her cargo pants. She fished it out to see that a text had arrived.

Can we talk?

Maybe it was the unknown number. Or maybe the words themselves. Either way, Ellie felt a chill, despite a mid-morning February sun that warmed the terrace.

Who’s this?

Freelance journalist.

How did you get this number?

Three pulsing dots. She watched them until a message appeared.

Alistair said you might talk to me.

She blinked. Alistair. Really? Alistair ‘the press are bottom-feeding scumbags’ Adams.

Three more dots.

And I’d like to meet.

She typed, ‘Sorry. If you want an interview, you’ll need to go through the media team,’ then sent it, and allowed herself a moment of hope. Maybe it was just another routine sit-down. The familiar story of how she beat her demons and embraced the Harrier family legacy. Her ascent through the driving ranks in pursuit of her ultimate goal: race driver. Merit versus nepotism. Misogyny under scrutiny. The whole enchilada. The kind of interview she could do in her sleep.

Maybe just that.

This is best done face-to-face

I repeat. You need to go through the media team.

Again the chill. But this time, she blocked the number.

As Ellie looked up from her phone, she glanced into the terrace restaurant where liveried staff were setting up the tables. Weaving her way out was the team physio, Bev Trencher, also Ellie’s best friend at the team, and the first person she’d told she’d been called up. ‘I’m getting a drive. I need Bevving.’

‘Beverage incoming,’ had come the reply.

That morning they’d gone through a routine first put into place the previous season, when HH had been running Ellie in FP1 sessions at Spa and Monza, fulfilling their obligations to develop new drivers. Bev had appeared at her hotel room armed with a morning coffee, a smile, and a can-do attitude and they’d gone for a short run. Afterwards, Ellie had changed into her morning uniform of team polo and cargo pants and Bev into her HH jumpsuit. In the hotel breakfast room, the pair of them had sat and tried to listen in on the chat from the American Montrose overnight crew, who were enjoying champagne with their breakfast prior to hitting the hay ready for the next shift.

Breakfast over, and with an overheard intel score of precisely zero, they’d piled into a waiting SUV for the drive to the circuit.

There, Ellie had gone into a strategy meeting with the engineers. Tyre wear, brake temperatures, telemetry.

‘We’re focusing on high-fuel runs after lunch,’ announced Leo, the chief engineer. Leo was posh, highly strung and almost too thin for comfort – a direct contrast to Ellie’s race engineer, Vic, who was very London, almost barrow boy, and liked a bacon sandwich or four.

‘Ellie, we’ll need consistent laps, nothing fancy,’ Leo had said, looking his usual intense self. ‘After that, we’ll adjust the set-up for soft tyres and shorter stints.’

She’d nodded, knowing what lay ahead: precision, patience, and a feedback loop of engineers tinkering, adjusting, and then tinkering again. One thing she knew not to do was whinge about the waiting involved.

People should be like cars: high speed, low drag.

Which was one of her dad’s sayings. And nobody knew Formula One like Harry Harrier.

After the pep talk Ellie could finally take a little time to herself, as was her pre-race custom. She had escaped to the rooftop, where she was now and where her thoughts had gone to the girls.

‘You done?’ called Bev as she stepped from the sliding glass doors of the restaurant, holding Ellie’s helmet. Bev had no idea why Ellie had wanted time on the terrace, but since it didn’t interfere with the job of keeping her in peak condition for the drive, she didn’t especially care.

Ellie nodded, shoving her phone into her pocket.

‘Then it’s time to meet the sponsors.’ Bev stopped. ‘There’ll be questions about your dad. Are you up for that?’

Questions like, Why is Harry Harrier absent? Everyone knew Harry didn’t miss testing. Hell, Harry hadn’t missed testing since Moses was a boy.

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,’ she said.

For a moment they simply remained on the terrace, enjoying the sound of the engines, a sound that to anyone schooled and steeped in the sport was like a choir of angels. Then Bev handed Ellie her helmet, they rolled their eyes at what they knew was an affectation purely for the benefit of the money men, and together descended the stairs to the paddock below.

Here, teams were arranged in a specific order based on the previous season’s Constructors’ Championship standings. At the far end, in the garage closest to race control and pit exit – and thus in the best strategic position – were Montrose; next to them, Nova, then Blackwood, and beside them HH Racing.

Having the best position in the pit lane was just one of the many benefits of success in F1. Awaiting the winning team was upwards of $140m in prize money, a queue of backers, and the pick of the drivers – all of which added up to a head start when it came to winning next time.

And for the poor dudes in tenth? More like $60m in prize money – barely enough to pay the coffee bill in F1 terms – money men stampeding in the opposite direction, and conversations about whether they could possibly bear the ignominy of Viagra sponsorship. The answer being, of course, even though it might be hard.

Then there was mid-table, where HH had been stuck for the past few seasons. A legacy team, HH still received a special slice of the prize pot from the FIA – less than before, but enough to keep the lights on. But a team that had once dominated, winning seven titles in the 1980s, and that had built its empire on genius engineers, star drivers, and state-of-the-art factories was always going to be expensive to run. Nostalgia didn’t pay the bills. When the trophies in the admittedly vast floor-to-ceiling cabinet had lost their lustre and there were no new ones to replace them; when the slice of the prize pot was in the tens rather than hundreds of millions; when the sponsors started making noises about their presence on the car being worth less, and the drivers wanted to go somewhere else – somewhere they might actually win something – well, that was mid-table for you.

Still, nobody entered the Formula One season expecting to lose, and the mood within HH was one of cautious optimism. The new car, the HP4-X, had shown promise on the simulator. There was talk of podiums. What’s more, the strong rumour in the paddock was that last season’s champions, Montrose, were struggling. What was the saying: it’s not enough to succeed; others must fail? It wasn’t just true for motorsport; it was a necessary element of victory.

The scene that greeted Ellie and Bev in the paddock was one of pure movement and industry. On their left, the garages; on their right, hospitality areas, the Lego-brick buildings that served as offices and control centres. Beyond, the motorhomes so loved by the drivers, each one a status symbol in its own right. And everywhere, giving the paddock its hive-like buzz, were the denizens of Formula One, moving to a soundtrack of pneumatic wheel guns, bursts of engine ignition, and the low drone of team chatter over radios: pit crew in helmets, engineers neck-braced by headsets, prowling camera crews, lucky backstage kids hunting for selfies, and harried clipboard-wielding women – most of them drowning in lanyards while speaking on the phone at the same time.

But her favourite part of the whole shebang was the smell. A scent that was its own language – rubber, hot oil, ozone. You didn’t breathe the air in the paddock. You absorbed it.

As they strolled along the rear of the garages, Ellie and Bev peeked inside rival teams, greeting familiar faces, some of whom had known Ellie since she was a kid and had seen her going through the choppier phases of her adolescence, always hoping she’d eventually sober up. She waved at David Kowalski, Stratus’s veteran, who once had a drive at HH and was a favourite of her father. They all called him just ‘Kowalski’, because it sounded cooler.

‘Hey, Kowalski,’ she said. Still sounded great.

‘Ellie,’ he called back, sidestepping two guys pulling a handcart weighed down with tyres. ‘Where’s the old man? I haven’t seen him yet.’

‘Oh, I’m sure he’ll make his presence felt,’ laughed Ellie, lying through her teeth.

As they moved on, Bev spoke from the corner of her mouth. ‘That was crossing the bridge, was it?’

‘What?’

‘If that’s the best you can do, I think you might want to prepare something before you get to the next bridge.’

‘Fair enough,’ she conceded.

On they went. More waves. Shouted greetings. Word had got round that she was driving in Jules’s place, so the well-wishing came thick and fast.

Her phone pinged. Toby – the team principal, Harry’s only son, and her stepbrother.

Official line is that Harry has the flu.

She showed it to Bev. ‘Problem solved. He’s got the flu.’

‘But Jules has got the flu.’

‘There you go. It’s going round.’

As they spoke and walked, they passed the garage of Old Iron, a new team who’d entered the sport three seasons ago, owned by the scrap-metal millionaire Mickey Brass. Old Iron was a strange paddock anomaly that didn’t seem to belong. Their boss, Mr Mickey Brass himself, had quickly gained a reputation for barging into other teams’ garages unannounced, as well as for making grand pronouncements on TV about how F1 needed shaking up – the implication being that he was the man to do it.

Regarding the barging, the FIA had had a word. The pronouncements had continued, though. At the same time, Old Iron results had begun to improve, as had the general demeanour of the team, who, while still revelling in their outsider status, had started behaving like they were here to win – or at least take the odd podium. Last season’s respectable seventh suggested they might not be entirely deluded on that score.

Ellie glanced into their garage now, seeing nobody she knew among the flight containers and garage frames, but catching a glimpse of the car. She thought of Harry and Hugo, both particularly scathing of Mickey Brass. Think what you want, gents, she thought; chances are Old Iron should not be underestimated.

By now, she and Bev had reached the meet-and-greet. All the main teams hosted these sponsor events, less opulent than race-day but still dripping with gloss. Like most events in F1, it was attended by money men who wanted to meet race drivers, Alistair and Jules in the case of HH. However, Ellie’s surname and profile made her a draw, which was why she was often called upon for BAH duties.

As they approached, she cast a critical eye over the area. This consisted of a large trailer, awning and a quaint fenced-off area. It looked sumptuous, and even at this distance she could see the champagne in full flow. She wasn’t privy to the inner financial workings of HH, but if HH had tightened belts in the off-season, the hospitality department hadn’t got the memo. They walked in, no credentials necessary, and the enclosure seemed to readjust to their presence.

‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ she said, owning her nerves as she greeted the first sponsor with a moist handshake. ‘High-pressure day.’

The guy, a representative from a watch manufacturer, didn’t seem to care. He offered her a good luck for the upcoming drive but was more interested in asking after Harry, her . . .

‘Dad,’ she finished for him. ‘I call him that.’

‘Of course,’ said the sponsor, colouring. That weird awkwardness that always seemed to appear around the fact that she was adopted. ‘Is he here?’

‘Sadly not. He seems to be struck down by the same thing as Jules.’

‘Oh.’ His face fell.

Before she could reply, a figure swept in, smooth and unhurried.

Sanjeev Sankey, known to everyone as Sanj, had materialised at her side with perfect timing. HH Racing’s longtime Communications Director, he was as crisply dressed as ever, all tailored linen and pocket-square confidence. There was something truly calming about him – like a long bath, or a stiff drink after a crisis.

He offered a gracious smile, already steering the conversation away from awkwardness.

‘So good of you to join us, Ellie,’ he said. ‘We needn’t take up too much of your time. Big day for you, I know.’

She gave him a sidelong glance. ‘Looking smooth, Sanj. Hope you’re in name-supplying mode.’

‘As always.’

Sure enough, he introduced her to various figures with whom she had to make nice. Talk was of Harry, the day ahead, how competitive HH would be during the coming season.

And it was fine. No problem. A hangover from her tabloid-friendly wild-child era was an ability to charm the birds out of the trees. The same skill she’d once used on doormen, concierges, suitors and drug dealers came in handy in the commercial world of Formula One. The art and craft of BAH.

The guests kept quaffing champagne, it being gone midday. As she mingled, she glanced to the far side of the enclosure and saw Toby, holding court. Next to him, Hugo, the other H in HH Racing. Hugo, was tall, almost freakishly so, and Ellie wondered if Toby felt a little overshadowed: shorter, with the beginnings of a premature bald patch, and despite being team principal, very much in the shadow of his father’s business partner. Still, at least there was no sign of his mother, Paloma. She was Harry’s fiery ex-wife and officially ‘Team Ambassador’, a role she had won in the divorce. Her control of Toby was matched only by her loathing for Ellie. No doubt she was around somewhere.

The bubbly sparkled temptingly, and Ellie was about to request a fizzy water when one was pressed into her hand. ‘You look like you could do with this.’

It was Alistair.

And just seeing him was a soothing balm for the soul.

Alistair Adams. After a childhood in Scotland, his family had relocated to Big Sur, California. As a result, he was the ultimate mix of Scot and Californian: accent like a lazy Sunday afternoon and a demeanour dripping with easy, lived-in confidence. Add to that, his tousled hair, a permanent three o’clock shadow – these days flecked with grey – and a smile built for mischief. No doubt about it, he definitely looked the part.

However, what distinguished him from the rest of the team was that, apart from Harry, he was the first one who’d spoken to Ellie like a professional driver – not just the boss’s slightly wayward daughter. He’d taken her sim feedback seriously, walked her through tyre data without condescension. And he did it with a casual sincerity not forced or performative – just an earnestness that was disarming and reassuring in equal measure.

Alistair had joined the team two seasons ago and, as was the HH way, had been introduced with a staff meeting on the factory floor in Kent. Ellie had stood there with Bev, necks craned to look up at the mezzanine where the bigwigs stood, and when Alistair was ushered forward, Bev had whispered, ‘Have him washed and brought to my tent.’

Ellie hadn’t seen him like that. She’d said as much to Bev, who’d looked at her like she was mad. But it was the truth. The season before joining HH, Alistair had won the World Championship with Montrose. He had a reputation as a wet-weather specialist, with almost uncanny levels of anticipation, and – Ellie had seen the data – his reaction times were off the charts.

He was good-looking. Mama Adams didn’t raise no ugly bug. But Ellie saw the results and the data. She saw the driver, not the cover star.

As it would turn out, the feeling was mutual.

Master and apprentice. Mentor and protégé. Teacher and pupil. He was the big brother Ellie could never find in Toby. But most of all, he was her best mate – even more so now that she was stepping out from under his wing, proving herself in the simulator and, soon, in the car.

Best mate, usually.

But not today, because having spent a moment being soothed by his mere presence, she remembered herself.

‘We need to talk,’ she hissed, and as their chaperones melted into the background, she steered him towards a quiet corner where, framed by HH Racing’s quintessentially English branding, stood a white picket fence and a neatly potted Home Counties conifer.

‘Everything all right?’ said Alistair, seemingly taken aback.

‘Al, did you give my number to a reporter?’

‘Oh God.’ Alistair pulled a face. ‘I am sorry. I am so sorry. He wasn’t supposed to jump the gun like that.’

‘What do you mean? What gun?’

‘I told him to wait,’ insisted Alistair, ‘that I needed to speak to you first.’

She glanced to her right and saw guests averting their eyes. ‘Speak to me about what?’

His eyes darted. ‘There’s something I need to show you.’

‘Go on then. No time like the present.’

He shook his head. ‘It’s back at base.’

‘Al, come on,’ Ellie muttered impatiently. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You’ll see,’ he insisted. ‘But not here. Too delicate. Too important.’

At that moment, Sanj appeared to herd them back to the sponsors. ‘Look, don’t give my number out again,’ she hissed to Alistair, knowing even as she walked away to work the enclosure that she’d forgive him.

That was the thing. He got under your skin, not by being loud or brilliant or magnetic – though he was prone to being at least two of those three – but by being quietly decent. One of the few who didn’t treat the whole thing like a circus. Alistair made her feel like she had a place.

She was mad at him then, but she wouldn’t stay mad for long.

A lunch of chicken breast, quinoa, and dark greens was the calm before the storm. Bev cracked wise but Ellie barely heard, thoughts elsewhere.

‘Nervous?’ Bev asked, handing her a bottle of water.

‘Excited,’ she corrected.

After, she changed into her gear: fireproof long johns, top, and a suit covered in sponsor logos. She zipped it halfway, pulled on her boots, and made her way to the massage room where Bev waited. Their Beyoncé playlist blared from a Bluetooth speaker. Big, empowering, go-get-’em-girl anthems personally curated by Bev.

Warm-up and stretches completed, they made their entrance in the HH garage. There, behind the closed shutter that screened them from the pit lane, engineers in headsets swarmed the HP4, adjusting, calibrating, fine-tuning. It gleamed beneath the lights, sleek and resplendent in the HH racing green.

But was it her imagination, or were there more bodies than usual in the garage? Most were familiar faces, guys she knew well, some for years. Among them were several unfamiliar faces, too. Towards the back of the garage, she spotted a mechanic who seemed to be watching her. He caught her looking and turned his head, revealing a chain tattoo that crept up from the collar of his team polo shirt to behind his ear.

‘Ready?’ asked Leo, the chief engineer.

‘Sure.’

Leo, rarely her point of contact – Vic, her race engineer, handled that – had studied the data. ‘Jules prefers a planted rear end,’ he said in public school tones. ‘You like it loose and lively – so that’s what you’ve got. Providing you catch the slides, it should be right up your street. You like braking late. Steering’s set up for that.’

‘Great.’

‘You know the circuit. Done it in the sim. It’s got a bit of everything. Should suit you fine.’

She nodded.

‘This is about handling feedback and data retrieval, not lap times,’ he added, pushing his glasses up his nose.

She nodded. Yeah, yeah.

‘Vic will talk you through lap calls, tell you what we need.’

For a second she almost felt sorry for Vic. Did they really think she was going to take it easy? If they’d put their founder, Harry Harrier, in a new-season car, say, forty years ago, and told him to take it easy, would he have complied?

Even so, she nodded and collected her gear: earplugs that doubled as radios and G-force sensors, balaclava and gloves. Wired up, her helmet went on and she was insulated from the activity of the garage, the process of transforming herself into an extension of the car almost complete.

This was the part no one really understood – not the engineers, not the press, maybe not even Bev: that this wasn’t just a job, or even a dream. It was reclamation. Each time she got behind the wheel she was proving a point to the team, to Harry, even to herself.

Sim sessions, meet-and-greets, even the title of ‘development driver’ – they were all placeholders. But this? This was real. And if she couldn’t turn real into a full-time race seat, then what the hell had any of it been for?

She slid into the cockpit, adjusting herself against the airbox on the way in. There were those who insisted on climbing in from the same side each time. Not Ellie. Her superstition was that she didn’t have superstitions, because one thing she knew: life was random. So was death.

She settled in, the seat a snug cocoon, moulded to her exact shape, another Jules-to-Ellie miracle pulled off overnight. Mechanics strapped her in. The six-point harness clicked into place. Headrest locked into position. The steering wheel slotted in next. Last came her gloves.

The car roared to life, the noise of it blasting around the walls of the garage, a deafening symphony that obliterated thought. For a moment, Ellie closed her eyes to better feel its vibrations. Peace was what she felt. Dark thoughts of the past faded, and in the chaos of sound, she found stillness.

The pit shutter rolled up, bright sunlight spilling into the garage. Ahead lay the pit lane and beyond it, the Circuit de Catalunya – all crisp lines and promise. Barcelona.

‘Go,’ came Vic’s voice over the radio.

Ellie eased out, the pit-lane limiter holding her at a steady 80 km/h. She snapped down her visor. Her world narrowed.

The sim came close – in layout, response, even G-force approximation – but it could never match this. The weight of the machine, the rawness of the grip, the knowledge that any mistake had consequences beyond a restart. Ellie had missed this.

Given the all-clear, she swung out of the pit lane and onto the track. It was time.

Testing laps tended not to be high on adrenalised thrills and glamour. Sure enough, Ellie’s first stint was on high fuel, making the car heavy and unresponsive. As she took it easy on the circuit, slaloming at first to warm the tyres, she tuned in to every bump, every quirk of the set-up, not losing sight of her canary in a coal mine status. Not yet anyway.

Turn by turn, she relayed feedback over the radio: understeer in turn three, rear instability in high-speed corners, a faint vibration in the left front tyre. Each sector was checked for telemetry data.

‘Clear in turn six?’ asked Vic.

‘Clear,’ Ellie replied. As the laps racked up, she began to feel the rhythm of the car. She’d liked it in the sim, but at the end of the day the sim was a glorified videogame. This was the real world, and in the real world the car felt good – better than back at the factory, better than she’d expected. Maybe even . . .

Competitive?

Dragging off her helmet she caught the eye of Sir Ian Masters, the team’s Chief Technical Officer. He’d be expecting a full debrief later; in the meantime, however, she bowed to him and watched him blush in response. ‘My compliments to the chef,’ she said, and his blush deepened. Fair play. He and his team had done a wonderful job. The envy she already felt for Alistair and Jules went up a notch.

As she made her way out of the garage, she glanced over to where a different set of mechanics worked on Alistair’s car and briefly saw the guy with the chain tattoo again as he ducked down behind a wheel. Wonder if Bev knows who that guy is?

Afternoon. Lighter fuel, fresh tyres. The car danced on the edge – nimble, demanding. Ellie grinned. This was it. As she opened it up, Vic’s voice faded into the background and instructions became white noise. By now her focus was absolute. She felt alive, at peace, at home. And as she took the laps the speed crept up.

Ahead of her was Alistair. He’d been taking things easier. In testing conditions an overtake was strictly forbidden, but even so, she could push him. She sneaked up on his tail.

Crackle in her ear. Vic was already cheesed off with her, she could tell. ‘Caution, Ellie, maintain distance . . .’

Alistair, aware of her in his mirrors, increased his speed, just a little, enough to act as an invitation. No, she wasn’t going to overtake him, but the competitor in her needed to let him know that she could, if she wanted to. Maybe.

She gave it a little more throttle.

‘Old lead foot.’ That was what Harry used to say, teaching her. Not teaching her to drive – that was something she’d done almost instinctively the second she clambered into the old Ford Escort they called ‘The Nail’.

No, teaching her to race, because as she feathered the throttle again, she knew she wasn’t here to play nice. She wanted them to know what a mistake it would be to put her back on the bench.

The gap between her and Alistair closed. She saw him raise a hand, giving her the V sign, and grinned in her helmet. She wondered what he felt, up ahead, with her in his mirrors, and she hoped it was pride.

And then it happened.

She would run the moment over in her mind, again and again, as though combing internal footage for clues, trying to make sense of what had happened, whether she had a part to play, if there was anything she could have done.

And when she reviewed that footage, she saw the upraised fingers. She could swear she caught a flash of teeth too – a grin, just visible inside his helmet – though she wondered if that was just her imagination playing tricks on her, wanting that image of Alistair to be the last memory she had of him.

What was certain was this: coming out of turn nine, Ellie saw a flicker. A glint – something sharp from beneath Alistair’s rear wing, . . .