Bookmakers did a thriving trade, offering odds on every available result: the winner, the top three finishers in order, any-order multiples, or even just a racer finishing in the top five.
The world champ and local hero, Alessandro Romba, was the talk of the town. His victories in Sydney and London had every race fan wondering if he might be the first racer ever to complete the Golden Grand Slam - winning all four Grand Slam races in the one year. Indeed, he had not even been cleanly passed in a Grand Slam race this year. He appeared on the talk shows and every Italian loved him like a son.
The French racer, Fabian, was also doing the media rounds. On one occasion, Jason saw him being interviewed on a racing show.
The interviewer was asking Fabian about what he had seen at the Race School in Australia.
‘There is a lot of talent down there,’ Fabian said. ‘A lot of talent. And the two students who have come here are two of the best young drivers there.’
‘And what about the female driver at the Race School?’ the interviewer asked. ‘Much fuss was made of her enrolment. What did you make of her?’
Fabian’s eyes glinted meanly.
‘She was, quite frankly, a non-event. She was defeated in the first round of the tournament, quite comprehensively as far as I could tell. Call me a dinosaur, but I personally see no place for women in hover car racing.’
Watching at the time, Jason had scowled at the TV.
But then to his surprise the eyes of the media - always hungry, always looking for new fodder - soon fell upon the two young racers who would be making their Grand Slam debuts in the Italian Run: Xavier Xonora and him.
Xavier seemed to take the media attention in his stride. Perhaps it was his experience as a royal figure. Perhaps it was the slick public relations machine of the Lockheed-Martin Factory Team selecting the right talk shows for him to go on. Perhaps, Jason thought, Xavier was just made to be a superstar.
The media (especially the society pages) portrayed him as the dutiful protege, the sharp-eyed student who would be watching and learning from the master, his No.1 in the Lockheed-Martin Team, Alessandro Romba. His goals were modest - ‘I’d just love a top ten finish’ - and within a few days he was being hailed as the heir apparent to Romba as the heartthrob of international racing.
Jason had a tougher time of it - just seeing himself portrayed on TV, on magazine covers, in the papers was scary enough.
The media had latched onto his youth. Even though he would be 15 on Wednesday, he was portrayed as a brilliant young upstart, the 14-year-old wunderkind - but despite that, still ultimately a boy venturing into a man’s world.
He was a curiosity, an oddity - like the bearded lady at the circus - and he didn’t like being that.
At the first news story that claimed he was out of his depth, he wanted to write a letter to the editor. After the twentieth one, he just fumed silently.
He wished Scott Syracuse was there, but his teacher had stayed back at the Race School - he did, after all, have other students to watch over in their School races. Syracuse had said he would try to get to Italy for the race on Sunday.
Jason hoped he would make it.
Although the Italian Run actually began in Rome, Team Argonaut was based in Venice II, since the entire canal city belonged to Umberto Lombardi.
Jason was staying at the Lombardi Grand Hotel, in a suite that turned out to be the third-best apartment in all of Venice II. The best one, of course, belonged to Lombardi himself. The second-best went to Team Lombardi’s No.1 driver, Pablo Riviera.
In any case, Jason’s apartment was bigger than most of the houses he knew. Wide and modern, with ultra-expensive hover-furniture, it featured panoramic views of both the Adriatic Sea and Venice II’s astonishing recreation of St Mark’s Square.
The week stretched out before him:
Today was Monday.
The official Pole Position Shootout session would be held on Friday, on a tight mini-course up the spine of central Italy. That would be followed by a gala dinner on Friday night.
The Italian Run itself would be held on Sunday. For most racers, this lead-up week would be filled with practice sessions on the course itself, some sponsors’ events, and a few invitation-only galas put on by individual teams.
Importantly for Jason, the lead-up week gave him time to meet the members of the Lombardi Racing Team. For while he would be racing with his regular team - the Bug and Sally - they would all be supported by a fully equipped engineering and technical team from Lombardi, known as ‘E&T’.
Most significantly of all - and a little sadly for Jason - this would be the first time that he would not race in the Argonaut.
No, in this race he would be flying in a brand-new Ferrari F-3000 emblazoned in the Lombardi Team colours of black-with-yellow-slashes.
Compared to the little Argonaut, the Ferrari F-3000 was a beast of a machine: bigger, faster and meaner. A far newer Ferrari, it had roughly the same bullet-like shape as the Argonaut, only it was sleeker, more streamlined.
Once Jason had dreamed of driving an F-3000, but now that he was here, he kind of wished he’d be racing in the Argonaut.
But he shook the thought away as he gazed at the chunky F-3000.
He and his team had four days to tame this beast.
For the first two days of Race Week - Monday and Tuesday - Jason practised in his new F-3000 under the intense glare of media hovercopters and the paparazzi’s telephoto lenses. A crush of journalists was always waiting outside the gates of the Lombardi training course outside Venice II.
On the Tuesday, he met Pablo Riviera, the No.1 driver for Lombardi Racing and liked him immediately. Riviera was a 26-year-old Colombian driver. Young and talented but not quite a top-tier racer yet, Riviera was generous in his advice:
‘The best tip I can give you,’ he said, ‘is to go to bed early. Training will weary you, but dealing with the media will wear you out entirely. Trust me. And the only thing that matters is to be ready on race day.’
But then, on the Tuesday afternoon, as Jason and his team were leaving the training track in his hover-limo, he saw that the assembled media crowd at the gates had tripled in size.
And this media mob was literally bubbling over with excitement when the hover-limo came to the exit gates.
The crowd of journalists and camera crews jostled the car - forcing it to stop - shouting questions at Jason with more force than usual.
And then, beyond them, he saw the reason.
There, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, stood the French driver, Fabian.
Jason and the others stepped out of the limo.
‘Jason!‘ the reporters yelled. ‘Jason! Over here!’
‘Jason! How do you respond to Fabian’s invitation!’
Jason frowned. ‘Invitation? What invitation?’
Fabian stepped forward theatrically, his French accent oily-smooth. ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Please! Leave young Jason alone. This is all very new to him.’
The crowd of hacks took a collective step back and fell silent.
‘Jason,’ Fabian said with more familiarity than Jason liked, ‘my personal sponsor, the Circus Maximus Beer Company, has decided to stage an exhibition race tomorrow at sunset, in their newly built Circus Maximus. It is to be a one-on-one match-race between me and an opponent of my choosing. We are calling it Fabian’s Challenge…’
The media crowd was hanging on Fabian’s every word and Fabian knew it.
He went on innocently: ‘I just happened to mention on television this afternoon that I would love to race against the determined young driver everyone is talking about. You. What do you say, Jason? Do you want to race?’
Every microphone in the media throng swung to Jason’s lips.
And in that instant, the world froze for Jason.
Later, he wouldn’t even remember the words coming out of his mouth - but he heard them quite clearly as he saw himself on every news channel on TV later that afternoon.
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‘You’re on,’ he’d answered to Fabian’s challenge.
The rest of that afternoon and evening was spent talking on the phones with Lombardi and his E&T technicians.
Far from being angry at Jason’s acceptance of the challenge, Lombardi loved the idea of one of his drivers participating in an exhibition race against Fabian.
‘Jason! I may be rich, but my team - in the broader scheme of the racing world - is a mid-level team. Pablo is good, but he too is mid-range. Certainly not good enough to attract the attention of someone like Fabian. But you! Yes! Lord, think of the publicity such a race will bring!’
But his enthusiasm only went so far.
He didn’t want to endanger a new Ferrari F-3000 in an exhibition race. Which was why he allowed his team of engineers to put a superseded F-2900 engine in the Argonaut, to bring it up to speed with Fabian’s Renault.
The phones didn’t stop ringing all evening.
People were running every which way in Jason’s apartment.
And in the middle of it all, Jason went into his room and made a single phone call himself.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE CIRCUS MAXIMUS
ROME, ITALY (WEDNESDAY OF RACE WEEK)
Illuminated by the diffused orange glow of the setting Italian sun the stadium looked exactly like the famous Roman chariot-racing arena - a gigantic oval-shaped racetrack, flanked on the outer circumference by mammoth grandstands; all of it built in a faux-Roman style on a stretch of flat reclaimed land on the western coast of Italy, not far from Rome.
The only difference between this and the Circus Maximus of old was the scale.
Each of its two straights was 12 kilometres long - so that it would take the average hover car roughly two minutes to complete each lap, one minute for each straight.
Red neon signs for the ‘Circus Maximus Beer Co.’ blazed out from the upper flanks of the stadium.
Before a cheering, heaving, thriving crowd of 2 million spectators - all of them fuelled on free beer - two tiny hover cars lined up on the grid.
Fabian’s purple-and-gold Renault Tricolore-VII, known as the Marseilles Falcon.
And beside it: the Argonaut, looking resplendent in spanking-new coats of white, silver and blue paint. Plus one new feature: its tailfin was now painted in Lombardi black-and-yellow.
Just before the race, Jason and Fabian posed for photos on the track - the modern-day charioteers standing beside their chariots, holding their helmets, flanked by bikini-clad girls and beer company executives, in front of the baying crowd.
By the look on his face, Fabian was clearly pleased by the extra attention the young Chaser boy was bringing to his exhibition event. That today, August 6, also happened to be Jason’s 15th birthday was a bonus - the media had painted Fabian as a man giving a boy the most incredible birthday opportunity ever.
For his part, as he stood beside Fabian, smiling for the cameras, Jason eyed the Marseilles Falcon and its notorious nosewing.
Fabian’s car featured a controversial ‘bladed’ nosewing. Two vertical fins jutted upward from the outer tips of its nosewing, their forward edges as sharp as knives, hence the term ‘bladed’. Renault claimed the sharpness was simply aerodynamic. Other racers claimed Fabian used his bladed fins to damage their cars in the rough-and-tumble of racing. For the moment, the fins were allowed by the governing body of racing, the International Hover Car Racing Association. But every racer knew - stay away from them.
The photo session ended, and Fabian jumped into his car.
Jason, however, dashed to his pit bay, to the toilet there - an act which made everybody in the grandstands laugh.
The rookie, it seemed, was nervous.
He emerged moments later, strapping his helmet in place. He stepped into the Argonaut, joining the Bug, ready to race.
The exhibition race was an absolute beauty.
As the Marseilles Falcon and the Argonaut shot down the first straight, the delighted crowd did a Mexican Wave alongside them.
The race was twenty laps and at first Fabian took the lead - at times doing playful trick moves to please the crowd.
Jason trailed him doggedly, showing his trademark determination, and during one of Fabian’s playful moments, he ducked inside him and overtook him.
Obviously surprised, Fabian gave chase and, after a lap, retook the lead.
But it was to be the first of many lead changes, with Jason entering into the spirit of things - to everyone’s surprise, he also performed some daring aerobatics whenever he took the lead: flat lateral skids or the odd corkscrew roll.
The crowd cheered with delight.
But then the race neared its final stages, and the tricks ceased, and when the Argonaut slipped inside the Marseilles Falcon on the second-last turn, it became a flatout - and deadly serious - dash for the Finish Line.
Down the back straight.
Twin bullets.
Into the final 180-degree turn - the Argonaut taking the standard apex, Fabian starting wide and scything inside with the precision of a surgeon, the Falcon‘s deadly bladed nosewing coming within inches of the Argonaut‘s own nose - and the two cars ended up side-by-side as they shot down the main straight, kicking up identical yellow sandclouds behind them, before hitting the line together…
CHAPTER FIVE
THE CIRCUS MAXIMUS
ROME, ITALY (WEDNESDAY OF RACE WEEK)
The roar of the crowd said it all. They knew who had won. The rookie, Chaser, had got it by half a car-length.
Jason’s fist shot into the air as he cruised round the track, waving to the crowd.
Fabian’s car came alongside the Argonaut, and Fabian offered Jason the ‘racer’s salute’: a short touch of the helmet with his right hand. It was like shaking hands after a tennis match - you always did it after a match-race.
Jason returned the salute.
The two cars completed a full circuit to a standing ovation, before coming to a halt in the main straight, in front of the VIP box.
Fabian stepped out of his car and shook his head in mock disbelief, as if to say: ‘Can you believe that? How about this young guy?’
He went over to the Argonaut just as Jason and the Bug lifted themselves out of the cockpit. Fabian went to shake Jason’s hand, but Jason’s gloved hands instead went to his own helmet. He took it off - to reveal that the pilot of the Argonaut, the racer who had just beaten Fabian in a wonderfully entertaining match-race, wasn’t Jason Chaser at all.
Standing there in the middle of the Circus Maximus, wearing Jason Chaser’s racing leathers, holding Jason Chaser’s helmet, and standing beside Jason Chaser’s pintsized navigator, stood Ariel Piper.
Live on international television, Fabian’s jaw hit the dusty ground.
‘But…’ he stammered. ‘We had our photo taken before the - ‘
‘Looks like the Jason Chaser who went to the men’s room just before the race wasn’t the Jason Chaser who came out,’ Ariel said. ‘Now, Fabian. What was it you were saying about women and hover car racing?’
The crowd was stunned - at first.
Then they roared their hilarious approval.
Ariel could only smile with immense satisfaction.
And far away to the north, at the empty Lombardi practice track, without a journalist, photographer or hovercopter in sight, Jason Chaser stepped into his Ferrari F-3000 and practised - practised, practised, practised - in glorious peace and quiet.
The best birthday present ever.
CHAPTER SIX
THE POLE POSITION SHOOTOUT ROME, ITALY (FRIDAY OF RACE WEEK)
Jason’s black-and-yellow Ferrari F-3000 banked at almost right angles as it blasted in a wide arc around the Colosseum.
Then it executed a quick series of zig-zags through the streets of Rome, before it swung out into the open countryside, onto the final section of the Pole Position Shootout course - a fiendish stretch of track known as the Chute.
This winding S-shaped section of track was actually a
long narrow trench dug into the earth, spanned by a multitude of sponsor-bridges.
The main obstacles in the Chute were four barriers spaced out along its length. Built into each barrier was an ultra-narrow gateway - so narrow that a hover car could only pass through each opening on its side. That the
gateways were positioned alternately on the far left and right sides of each barrier made it a brutal driving challenge.
It was hard enough racing through the Chute alone during the Pole Position Shootout - in the Italian Run itself, there were several Chute sections and you had to negotiate them with other racers buzzing all around you.
In any case, the Pole Position Shootout was a time trial - with the fastest driver through the Shootout Course starting Sunday’s race in pole position - so racers entered the Shootout Course one at a time.
Each was allowed three runs over the Course, and their best time counted.
That Friday morning, one after the other, each racer entered the Shootout Course.
This was Jason’s third run and as he hit the Chute he was flying like a rocket. His previous times that day hadn’t been spectacular - but this run was fast.
The walls of the trench rushed by him at astronomical speed, bending left and right and then - whoosh! - he tilted his F-3000 sideways and shot through the first gateway.
Three more banking manoeuvres later, he shot through the final gateway to the roars of the crowd. His eyes flashed to the electronic scoreboard:
THE ITALIAN RUN
POLE POSITION SHOOTOUT
DRIVER NO. TEAM TIME
1. ROMBA, A 1 Lockheed-Martin 0:50.005
2. FABIAN 17 Renault 0:50.230
3. LEWICKI, D 23 USAF Racing 0:51.015
4. CARVER, A 24 USAF Racing 0:51.420
5. HASSAN, R 2 Lockheed-Martin 0:51.995
6. MARTINEZ, C 44 Boeing-Ford 0:52.110
7. IDEKI, K 11 Yamaha Racing 0:52.525
8. TROUVEAU, E 40 Renault 0:52.740
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