The four hours felt like four minutes and four days at the same time.
Marco spent the first hour going over the kart with Luca, checking everything twice. The steering had developed more play. The rear tires were worn unevenly. The engine was making a noise that probably meant something expensive was about to break.
"It'll hold together," Luca said, though he didn't sound convinced. "Probably."
"Reassuring."
"Hey, you got this far in a kart that should be in a museum. What's fifteen more laps?"
Fifteen laps. The championship final. Winner takes it all.
Marco tried to eat the sandwich but managed only a few bites. His stomach was in knots. He'd raced dozens of times before, but never with stakes like this. Never with someone like Tedesco watching. Never with a future hanging in the balance.
Elena Marchesi found him in the second hour, notebook in hand.
"Can we talk?" she asked.
Marco glanced around. The paddock was filling up now, spectators arriving for the afternoon's main event. Families, local racing fans, people who just wanted something to do on a Sunday.
"I guess."
They walked to a quieter spot near the fence line. Elena flipped open her notebook, all business, but there was something else in her expression—curiosity, maybe, or recognition.
"So," she began. "Marco Venturi. Twenty years old. Works at his father's garage. No previous pedigree, no sponsorship, no factory support. And this morning you beat some of the best young drivers in the region." She looked up. "How?"
"I drove fast?"
She smiled slightly. "Try again. I've covered racing for three years. I know what fast looks like. This was something different. You took lines nobody else took. You made overtakes in places that shouldn't work. Either you're reckless, or you see something others don't."
Marco thought about how to answer. "When you work on cars everyday, you start to understand how they think. What they want to do, what they're capable of, where they're lying to you. A kart's just a car stripped down to its basics. I can feel what it's trying to tell me."
Elena was writing, her pen moving quickly. "And you taught yourself this? No coaches, no training programs?"
"YouTube. Practice. Mistakes." He paused. "My father taught me to read machines. I just applied it to racing."
"Your father." Elena tapped her pen against the notebook. "Giuseppe Venturi. I did some research while you were preparing. He used to race motorcycles, back in the nineties. Did pretty well until his brother died in a crash. Then he quit completely, never touched racing again."
Marco felt something cold settle in his chest. "How do you know that?"
"It's my job to know things." Her expression softened slightly. "Does he know you're here?"
"He knows."
"Does he approve?"
Marco didn't answer, which was answer enough.
Elena closed her notebook. "Look, I'm going to write about you regardless. That qualifying session was too good to ignore. But I can write different versions of the story. The plucky underdog. The troubled prodigy. The dutiful son chasing forbidden dreams. Which one is true matters."
"Why does it matter to you?"
She was quiet for a moment, looking out at the track. "Because I've seen a lot of talented people get eaten alive by this sport. They get built up, torn down, used up, and thrown away. And something tells me you don't have the safety net that most of these kids have." She met his eyes. "So I'm trying to figure out if you're someone worth believing in, or someone I'm going to feel guilty about when it all goes wrong."
Marco didn't know what to say to that. Before he could figure it out, an announcement crackled over the PA system: "Drivers to pre-grid. Final race in fifteen minutes."
"Good luck," Elana said. "Try not to crash."
"That's the plan."
"Marco." She stopped him as he turned to leave. "That businessman who was watching you earlier? Giancarlo Tedesco? He doesn't waste his time on maybes. If he's interested, it means something. But it also means pressure. Just... be ready for that."
The walk back to the pit felt longer than it should have. Marco's legs were heavy, his breathing shallow. He pulled on his helmet, the familiar weight somehow not comforting today.
Luca was doing last-minute checks on the kart. "Everything's as good as it's going to get. Remember, the brakes are your weak point. And the engine. And the steering. Okay, everything's your weak point. But you know that."
"Inspiring pre-race talk."
"I'm nervous! Sue me." Luca grabbed his shoulders. "Listen. You've already done the impossible by getting here. Whatever happens now, you've proven something. So go out there and drive like you have nothing to lose, because honestly, you don't."
The pre-grid was electric with tension. The five factory drivers were clustered together, their karts gleaming, their team principals offering last-minute strategy. Alessandro Bruni sat on pole position, looking calm and collected. This was hist championship to lose.
Marco lined up sixth. The kart felt different now, heavier with the weight of possibility. He could see Tedesco standing near the fence line, arms crossed, expression unreadable. Elena was nearby with her camera.
The five-minute board came out.
Marco closed his eyes again, trying to find that quiet place where instinct lived. But his mind was racing faster than any kart. What if the engine blew? What if he crashed? What if he wasn't actually as good as one qualifying session suggested?"
Three-minute board.
His hands found the steering wheel. Muscle memory took over. The kart was imperfect, barely holding together, completely outclassed by everything around it. But it was his kart, at least for these fifteen laps, and he knew every one of its lies and truths.
One-minute board.
The field rolled out for the warm-up lap. Marco's heart was hammering so hard he could feel it in his helmet. This was it. Everything he'd worked for, every secret morning ride to the track, every hour spent fixing cars while dreaming of driving them, all compressed into fifteen laps.
They formed up on the grid. The afternoon sun was high now, the asphalt shimmering with heat. Marco could see the first corner from here, could already visualize the chaos that was about to happen.
Green flag.
The world exploded into noise and motion.
Bruni got a perfect start from pole, his factory kart launching like it was on rails. The second-place driver bogged down slightly, and suddenly there was a gap. Marco was already moving, his reaction time honed by months of trying to make dying engines fire, by the split-second timing required to catch a falling tool.
He was fifth before they reached the first corner.
The first corner was exactly the chaos he'd expected. Someone braked too late, someone else tried to dive inside, and the whole pack bunched up like a concertina. Marco was on the outside, the long way around, but the long way was sometimes the fast way when everyone else was busy not crashing.
Fourth place exiting turn two.
The driver ahead of him was Marco Pellegrini, a factory driver with two championship titles and a kart that probably been blessed by engineers from the parent factory. He was fast and smooth and technical.
Marco Venturi was none of those things. But he was hungry.
For three laps, he studied Pellegrini. Watched where he braked, where he turned in, where he was conservative and where he pushed. Looking for the weakness, the opening, the moment.
It came in lap four, turn seven.
Pellegrini took his usual line, perfect and predictable. Marco braked a half-second later that physics suggested was wise, turned in sharper that the kart wanted, and let the rear end slide out just enough to rotate the chassis. If felt like losing control. It was actually finding it.
He was alongside Pellegrini, then ahead, then blocking the inside for turn eight.
Third place.
The crowd noise filtered through his helmet, a distant roar. Marco forced himself to ignore it, to focus on the kart ahead—one of the Battaglia twins, driving perfectly except for a slight hesitation on corner entry.
Marco ate him alive in three corners.
Second place.
Alessandro Bruni was ten kart-lengths ahead now, his purple machine stretching the gap with the confidence of someone who knew he was faster. And he was faster. His kart was better in every measurable way.
But Marco had stopped measuring.
He threw everything at the track. Late brakes. Aggressive lines. Corners taken at angles that would make an engineer weep. The kart was screaming in protest, the engine hitting its limiter, the tires beyond their limit, but Marco was beyond limits too.
The gap started closing. Ten kart-lengths became nine. Nine became eight.
Bruni noticed. Marco could see it in the defensive positioning, the slightly earlier brakes. The pressure was on.
Seven kart-lengths. Six.
They were on lap eleven of fifteen now. Four laps to make up five kart-lengths on a driver in a superior machine. The math didn't work.
Marco stopped doing math.
Lap twelve, turn three—Marco took a line so tight he actually hit the inside curb and launched slightly. Lost time in the corner, gained it on exit. Five kart-lengths.
Lap thirteen, the back straight—Marco got a better run out of the previous corner and pulled alongside, but Bruni defended perfectly and Marco had to back out. Still five kart-lengths.
Two laps left.
Marco's brain was cataloging everything wrong with the kart now. The brakes were nearly gone, requiring massive pressure. The engine was misfiring at high RPM. The steering had so much play he was making constant corrections.
None of it mattered.
Lap fourteen, turn seven—Marco sent it from so far back Bruni probably didn't even see him coming. Braked impossibly late, turned impossibly sharp, and somehow, impossibly, made the corner.
They were side by side through turn eight.
Bruni moved to defend turn nine, but Marco had already committed to the outside again, that terrible line he'd made his own. The kart hung on the edge of grip, tires screaming, engine protesting, and then they were through and Marco was ahead and Bruni was behind and there was just one lap left.
The crowd was going insane. Marco could hear it even through the engine noise, through his own heartbeat, through everything.
One lap.
Bruni was faster. Bruni's kart was better. Bruni had everything except track position, and track position was everything.
Marco defended like his life depended on it, because in a way it did. Every corner was a battle. Bruni was everywhere—inside, outside, trying every angle. But Marco knew this track, knew every bump and every patch of grip and every place where you could position a kart to make it impossible to pass.
Last corner.
Bruni made one final desperate lunge up the inside. Marco held his line by millimeters. They crossed the finish line side by side.
Marco wasn't sure who won until Luca's scream came through the chaos: "YOU DID IT! YOU WON! YOU ACTUALLY WON!"
Marco brought the kart into the pits on muscle memory alone. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely shut off the engine. When he pulled off his helmet, the world was too bright, too loud, too real.
Luca was there, grabbing him, yelling something Marco couldn't process. Other people were crowding around. Elena with her camera. Officials with timing sheets.
And Giancarlo Tedesco, standing apart from the chaos, holding a phone to his ear. He caught Marco's eye and nodded once.
The nod of someone who'd just made a phone call.
The nod that meant everything was about to change.