Ahead, a slower car.
Backmarker. Wrong place. Wrong time.
Hank Rice.
But Rice had raced exceptionally well in this race, so what happened?
Unfortunately, the tragedy of Hank Rice wasn't that he had become slow; it was that the world had simply become too fast.
Once, Hank was the apex predator of the grid, a man whose name was synonymous with the word success. But the legends he had traded paint with were all gone, retired to history, leaving him as a solitary relic in a sea of agile hyenas.
Now he's in a slow Audi, and everyone else is faster. Also, his youth had faded, which meant the drive to win and conquer would, too.
He was still the master of the game, his hands moving with a rhythmic, veteran precision that younger drivers hadn't lived long enough to learn.
But racecraft is a whetstone for sharpening, not the sword itself.
