Cameras catch everything. She doesn’t mind. She’s too amped.
“I scream, you brake, right?” she teases as he starts the car and revs the engine.
“Look, I scream, you let me drive, yeah?” Reece shoots back, grin sharp, and she laughs.
They’re starting from the track and the car has street tires, so Reece pulls away from the crew and stomps on the accelerator.
He flies down the straight with the kind of fearless control that builds over a lifetime of racing.
Maiken? She has the kind of fearlessness some people are born with. She laughs and screams and throws her hands in the air like she’s on a roller coaster. “Go faster!”
Reece grins. There’s nothing better than this, except sharing it with her.
He takes her challenge personally. They hit the next corner with surgical precision, the tires kissing the apex, the g-forces pushing them around in their seats.
“Oh my god!” She’s having so much fun, laughing and shrieking. “This is insane!”
He downshifts and powers through the next apex. “You love it.”
“I really fucking do!”
Every flick of the wheel is second nature. He calls out a few data points just to show off. “That was two hundred thirty kilometers per hour.”
She yells, “That’s all?”
He laughs and indulges his wife. Full throttle. Precision braking. Controlled chaos as he drifts through corners. Drifting is fun. He can’t drift in an F1 car.
They near the end of the lap and Reece glances sideways. “We go again?”
“Floor it, RP!”
He does.
“I can’t believe you do this every weekend!” she shouts over the roar of the engine.
“Top speed’s three hundred forty-one km/h down the straight. You want to feel it?”
“Hell. Yes.”
He obliges.
She raises her arms. “Wheeeee!”
Reece maxes out, then brakes hard and takes the car through the final sector's long curves before whipping it into a controlled donut at the end of the lap. Smoke coils around them. Maiken laughs and claps. Her glee is pure and infectious.
When they finally roll back to the starting grid, he climbs out and opens her door. The cameras are waiting, PR coordinated to counter all the crap Graham’s throwing their way. Her helmet comes off, blonde hair wild, cheeks flushed.
“That was fucking amazing!” She’s giddy and so beautiful she leaves Reece far more breathless than any drive could.
He offers his hand. “Sooo you liked it?”
She grins, grabbing it. “I want ten more laps and a permanent pit pass.”
“For you, honeybee? Anything.”
Two hours later, it’s FP2 and Reece is back on the track and absolutely flying.
The PNW Nitro car responds like it’s wired into his nervous system. Every flick of his wrist, every featherlight press of thethrottle translates into raw velocity. He roars through sector 2, DRS wide open on the long straight.
