Read Online Checkered Flag Cheater by Will Weaver - Free Book Online Page B

straightaway it was the same story: Nelson came alongside but couldn’t make the pass, then lost ground in the corner. Each lap, the blue and orange Super Stocks powered down the straights as if welded side to side. This kept up for three laps, with Trace pushing Nelson slightly higher each time.
    On lap 4, Trace came up too fast on a white Super Stock, and made a split-second decision to go high—and pinch Nelson onto the marbles. Nelson knew enough to stay off the drier, pebbly rim of the track; he braked and knifed low, sliding by the white car on the inside. Then he squeezed the white car’s line—forcing him upward, toward Trace. Trace thought he was safely past the guy, but the white car’s nose clipped Trace’s rear quarter panel. Tin crunched—and knocked Trace loose. He cranked the wheel wildly right, then left to avoid spinning out, and by the time he found his line again, Nelson was out of sight ahead. Trace had fallen back several places and now ran in the last third of the pack. By the time he picked off some cars to reach the middle of the pack, it was already lap 10—which was when his engine came alive.
    Trace felt it. It was nothing obvious, like Beau Kim’s nitrous bottle kicking in, but more like what a near-miss crash did to the heart rate. His tach reading jumped 300 rpm; on the floor he suddenly had another half inch ofpedal. Something had let loose—probably one or more piston rings—and when this happened, the pistons ran freer in their cylinders: it was the surge just before the engine blew. Trace glanced behind, expecting a cloud of blue smoke—oil blowback—but there was only dust and stock cars. His instinct was to back off and save what was left of the motor, but that was last year talking. This year a fresh motor was ready to go in the Blu trailer. He kept the hammer down.
    The Super Stock engine found its sweet spot, and Trace pushed it to the limit. He took a high line for a couple of laps, pulling cars like they had fallen out of gear, then played down low, looking for daylight toward the front of the pack. Nelson’s orange tail, bright as a monkey’s butt bouncing through the jungle, came up quickly. He was running third.
    A spinout somewhere behind brought out the yellow flag, which positioned Trace on Nelson’s back bumper for the restart. Rather than play bumper cars, Trace gave Nelson a half-car length of breathing room.
    â€œTry me,” Trace said inside his helmet.
    Nelson fell for it: on the restart green, he faked an engine lag—a moment’s hesitation—that was really a tap on his brakes. Since there were no brake lights on race cars, who was to know? It was an old trick: sucker the driver behind into a rear-ender, and in the process make him slice a front tire or break a tie-rod. A yellow flag usually resulted. As in real-world driving, the race car thatrear-ended another was at fault—and got sent to the back or, worse, into the pits.
    But Trace was waiting for it. He swung low at the same moment that Nelson braked—and came past him on the inside as if pitched forward from a giant slingshot.
    â€œSucker!” Trace shouted as he broke through the dust into first place—where no one came close to him for the final five laps.
    After the race, Trace crossed the scales and then proceeded to the victory circle. Only the photographer waited. None of the other cars paused to salute him. Trace emerged backward through his window and pumped an arm to the stands. There was scattered clapping from this South Dakota crowd—Tasha cheered loudly—but also scattered boos and jeers from the cowboy hats.
    â€œCheater!” someone called. It was picked up by several other voices in the stands. “Cheater! Cheater!”
    The photographer, a fat guy with thick glasses and a pale face, handed Trace the checkered flag and knelt down for the photo. “Folks here don’t like you much,”