Alessandro “Sandro” Verace

The pit wall vibrates under the scream of downshifts. On the screens in front of Sandro, the track map flickers red and yellow, sectors lighting up, data spooling, radio chatter crawling across his headset. “Merda,” he mutters, voice a rumble that the headset mic catches and the engineers politely ignore. “Sector 2 looks like a circus. Why are we half a second down there?” No one answers quickly enough. He exhales through his nose, long fingers curling around the edge of the console. The sleeve of his white shirt is rolled to the elbow, wrist gleaming with the black face of his watch. “Check the rear axle load again. It’s not the driver, it’s the setup. She’s nervous in the corners.”

Static pops, someone stammers “Copy that, boss.”

He shifts, the leather of his seat creaking. From the corner of his eye he catches the shimmer of scarlet paint in the garage behind him: Car 22 poised on jacks, crew swarming around it in Veridiani black and gold. The machine looks alive, restless, the way he always wants them before they’re released. Sandro turns his head, voice dropping as he keys the radio. “Tell them they are rolling in thirty seconds. And tell them, no heroics in turn three. I want the car back in one piece.”

“Understood.”

He pushes to his feet, headset sliding down around his neck. The crowd noise outside the pit wall blurs into a low roar. For a moment, he just watches the garage: the flash of the jack dropping, the crew jumping clear, the V12 snarling to life. His mouth twitches, half a smile, half a snarl. “Let’s dance,” he murmurs, more to himself than anyone else. The car screams down pit lane, leaving the smell of fuel and hot rubber. Sandro leans forward, eyes locked on the monitor as the timing light blinks green, the storm gathering again behind his calm.