This one’s a racing driver boy meets girl story…

Another day, another signing queue.

A restless gaggle of boys with autograph books and teenage girls poised for selfies.

Every frickin’ time. The pits were empty. Trent stepped out, and they appeared. Like they beamed down from Starship Enterprise.

Fair enough on a race weekend, but where did they spring from on a private track day?

He signed a cap for a wide-eyed kid.

“There you go, mate.”

“Are you going to win next Saturday, Trent?”

“You bet, mate.”

Trent used the kid’s sharpie to sign a program shoved under his nose by a guy with a biker beard.

Rude bastard.

Trent forced a smile

There’d be no races without them.

And the team marketing insisted he loved the attention.

A curvy teenage girl shimmied past the kid. Two more, in equally tight Trackways Autosport Deacon 14 tee-shirts, stood back giggling with their hands over their mouths.

Trent raised the pen, eyebrows arched.

The curvy one tossed her hair and cupped a breast. “Sign here, Trent.”

He sighed inside. 

Overexcited on hormones, imagination and celebrity hype. Determined to convince her friends she was racy and wild.

He should knock her back. A nice guy would.

Humiliate the girl in front of her friends. 

Give the photographers pretending they weren’t watching everything their favourite story—rich sports star’s contempt for fans.

He’d live up to the manufactured image then—demon bad boy of motor racing.

He winked. “If that’s all you’ve got.”

“I’ve got tonnes more where that comes from.”

Oh, love.

She probably thought she wanted to be whisked to his trailer for wild sex. If it happened, she’d be scared out of her wits and hate herself for the rest of her life. She giggled as he dashed off a signature with as little contact as possible.

“Trent?” the publicity guy called. “The reporter’s ready.”

He handed the pen back to the kid, deliberately breaking eye contact with the girl—nothing but trouble there. “Thanks, mate.” 

Trent waved to the growing pack. “Sorry, guys. Duty calls.”

An interview and a fast lap. Promotion for a new sponsor.

Time wasting froth and bubble.

The glamorous life of a touring car champion.

“Who’d they send?”

He groaned.

A would-be model, cute as a button in racing overalls four sizes too big, tarting her hair in a mirror.

It was bad enough with testosterone-fuelled sports guys. The last thing he needed was a gushing weather girl. 

But the team bills must be paid.

She handed the mirror to an assistant as he swaggered to the camera crew.

“G’day, I’m Trent.”

She inspected his hand. Probably checking for grease under the nails.

“Sara Toombs. Interview first, then the lap.” She flicked a thumb at the lady with the mirror. “Jeanie will mike you up for the in-car footage. Might as well do it now, before the interview.”

“Whatever floats your boat.”

Her brow furrowed. “Look. Your team agreed to this.”

Trent recoiled. What did I do? 

She pursed her lips. “If you’d rather we interviewed someone else—Greg Allison, maybe?” She studied pit lane as if Greg might be hiding behind some tyres.

The reporter had done some research, at least. Give her credit for that, and she was damned attractive in a little girl lost, girl next-door sort of way.

He threw his arms wide. “Go for your life. You’ve got number one right here. If you’d rather number two…”

“Maybe I would,” she snapped. “Does he molest underage girls with felt-tip pens?”

So that was it. Or at least part of it.

Let her think what she liked. Sara Toombs be out of his life before lunch.

“I can sign yours if you like.” Now he looked, Sara had a quite promising swell under the suit she’d been loaned for the day. 

The promotions guy pushed in. “Ha, ha. He’s only joking, Sara. We’ve got the track for another twenty minutes. Perhaps we’d better…” He waved to the camera.

The two-faced bitch switched on a blazing smile when the camera rolled.

“We’re at Bathurst a week ahead of the great race with last year’s second-place finisher, Trent Deacon. Can you go one better this year, Trent?”

He clenched his teeth. “Sure.”

“You’re the current Australian Supercar Champion—a three-time title holder—but you’ve never won the year’s biggest race. How hard was it to see Greg Allison go past on the final lap last year?”

Trent’s heart clenched at the memory. The way it did every time they played TV footage of the most dramatic finish in the history of Australia’s premier motor race. “Thanks for reminding me, Sara. It’s a huge motivation.” And I wish everyone would shut up about it. Dad never did: ‘Don’t matter how much else you win, son. You won’t be a legend unless…’

Hold your temper, Trent. 

Sara’s eyes were sparkling, loving his discomfort.

Well, sod her. Trent Deacon could play the good sport when he tried.

“Greg drove an incredible race.” And got a safety car just when he needed it. “He’s certainly knows how to win around Mount Panorama.” Having done it twice, once as a co-driver before he got his own ride. Greg always had the luck. 

“You’re going to take me for a lap around the circuit. I rode around yesterday,” she told the viewers. “If you didn’t know, this is a public road when it’s not being used for racing. It’s quite an experience driving over the top of the mountain at the speed limit. Trent, what’s the difference between one of us, and a supercar driver?”

“About eighty Ks an hour through The Dipper.”

Her eyes shot wide for a moment, quickly controlled.

The fast lap might be fun after all.

Trent smothered his grin as best he could.

But she saw it. The glint in her eye turned to ice.

“Your father, Jim Deacon, was a legendary touring car racer. How’s that contributed to your success?”

Good question. The genes versus the weight of expectation.

“I learned a lot at the dinner table and Peter Brock being my godfather opened a few doors.”

Thought you’d get me with the silver spoon thing, didn’t you, Sara? No-one drives the car for me, love.

“Do you think the other drivers resent your advantages? You’ve been described as the most hated man in motorsport.”

Ouch. Bitch. “Have I? I must have missed that.”

Like hell he did. The Melbourne Truth. After he clipped Greg Allison at Phillip Island. A racing accident, cleared by the stewards, but the papers loved it. Mum gave him a hug. Dad laughed his head off. ‘Any publicity’s good publicity, son.’

“Rivalry’s great for the sport, Sara. It gives you guys something to talk about.”

“But does it make motor racing more dangerous? It is a dangerous sport, isn’t it?”

You reckon? Why do you think they’ve dressed you up in fireproof underdaks? To keep you warm down the back straight?

He clenched a fist behind his back. Trent understood the hypocrisy that made the media preach safety and outrage while it foamed at the mouth for crash vision—the more gory the better—but it made his blood boil. Those were his friends spiralling into the armco at two hundred and fifty kilometres per hour. 

But sod the press, including Sara where’s-my-mirror? Toombs. “Driving fast is foolish if you don’t know what you’re doing. We build safety into the cars and the tracks and you have to earn a racing licence.”

“Does the way you drive make it more dangerous?”

Another crack about Philip island? “I would think it makes it safer.”

She smirked.

Probably because she’d made him sound so pompous when his image demanded brainless larrikin. How did she get him riled so quickly?

“The Mount Panorama lap record is two minutes four seconds, Trent.”

Pay one more for the internet.

“How’s it possible to go that fast? What do you have that the regular motorist on the freeway doesn’t?”

“Instinct.”

She poked the microphone closer, demanding more.

Stuff her.

“It’s all thanks to my dad, don’t you think?”

She turned to the camera.

“Okay, let’s see how a supercar champion deals with Mount Panorama, Bathurst.”

A second’s pause.

Trent frowning.

Sara offering a toothy grin to the lens.

“Clear,” the cameraman said. “Nice one, Sara.”

“No problem, Doug. Trent made it easy.”

“Mr Deacon,” Doug pointed to the fast lap Chevrolet. “If you come this way, we’ll connect you.”

Trent clenched his teeth while the cameramen shot cutaways and two-shots for the dining, then stormed to the fast lap Chevrolet freshly painted with the new sponsor’s logo. Deacon-Toombs had been stencilled where the co-driver names went on the race car—very funny. 

As he hauled on the driver’s door, Trent’s boss, the Trackways Autosports Team Manager, Nev Pinnock, touched his elbow. “Easy tiger. It’s just an interview. Remember, this is a road car, not your race car.”

A fair point. This one had a passenger seat for a start. Nothing else recognisable from the showroom model, barring the dash. The interior had been stripped and re-fitted for the ‘authentic Supercar experience’.

Sara climbed in through the roll cage, clipped the five-point harness, and fiddled with her full-face helmet.

The TV guy attached the microphone to a trailing wire, while Trent searched for something to complain about. He found nothing. The extra wires were taped down. The miniature camera on the dash looked secure.

He gave it a shake.

“We used the standard bracket they use for race day in-car coverage,” the cameraman said. “You’ll hear Sara in your helmet. That second camera’s pointed at her.”

Excellent. Payback time?

She looked up at the mention of her name. “Do you really go eighty kilometres an hour faster than regular drivers?” Her grin had become a little stretched.

“No,” he said. “Much quicker. That lap record is an average a hundred-and-eighty kilometres per hour.”

She blanched.

Oh, yes. 

Trent leaned across and pulled Sara’s harness so tight she gasped.

“Can’t have you bumping around at nine G through The Chase.”

He had no real idea what G-force was generated in the bend at the end of Conrod Straight, but it was a lot. 

The reporter had her moment in her own domain. Now she was in his.

They put on their helmets.

“Ready?” he asked. 

Wide eyes said anything but, so he gunned the modified V8 for a throaty rumble amplified by performance mufflers attached to impress the punters, dropped the clutch and spun the rear wheels out of the pits onto Mountain Straight.

Sara’s heart hammered.

She clung onto the flimsy fibreglass under her butt with both hands, holding her breath. 

Acceleration slammed her. Crushed her ribs. Overwhelmed her senses. A metallic taste. Petrol, dust, rubber and, weirdly, leather in her nostrils. Alien, raw male odours drowned by an ear-splitting thunder of tyres and thumping pistons. Barely muffled by the helmet padding squeezing her cheeks. Barbaric in a shuddering aluminium shell devoid of upholstery.

The Chevrolet quivered like an unleashed stallion as it roared up the steep incline.

“Have you tried that winery?” Trent asked.

“What?” 

The vineyard whipped by.

Christ. Deacon had one hand on the wheel, waving the other vaguely, and the trees behind whatever they called the damned corner were hurtling at the windscreen.

Sara raised her knees and hands to ward off the blow.

Tyre treads wailed in protest as the Chevrolet slid for the wall.

“Their reds are nice,” Trent said.

Sara got a little breath back on the next stretch—cursing herself for grabbing at the helmet to protect her head as they went through the corner. They’d love that in the edit suite.

Stone walls flashed by her shoulder and they burst through the cutting that gave access to the top of Mountain Panorama.

A sweeping left hander, another steep stretch with the engine grinding and they launched into sunshine a hundred-and-seventy-four metres above the city of Bathurst.

The Chevrolet howled delight, released from its fight against gravity.

“Whoopee.” 

Sara heard herself say it clearly and was proud, although her voice shook a little.

Car parks, barbecues and playground equipment among the trees of McPhillamy Park blurred either side while Sara struggled to remember a clever line she’d memorised for the moment. Relieved she could think at all, because they were descending now, a slight gradient, but the car had come loose. Flying, detached from the tarmac, careening into another corner. 

“Whoops,” Trent said.

Sara slammed left and right, descending rapidly through The Esses where so many racers hit the concrete walls protecting a sheer drop. 

The harness straps bit into her shoulders. The bastard had been right about getting them tight.

A wide, glorious vista of New South Wales farmland flashed before Sara’s eyes and disappeared as her stomach left her body. 

The Dipper.

The Chevrolet plunged like an otter, to certain death and destruction.

Deacon had blown it.

Killed them both with his egomaniac urge to prove his masculinity.

But the rubber screeched again, and they were alive.

Sara would have screamed louder than the tyres, but terror paralysed her vocal chords.

Trent chuckled. “I love that bit.”

A gut-wrenching drop from a fierce right-hand curve into a left. So steep it would be a black diamond ski run. Doug had edged through in second gear the day before, standing on the van’s brakes.

But they were through, and slowing rapidly. The forces required to stop her catapulting through the windscreen squashed Sara’s breasts and chest. The engine protested, choking down through the gears for Forrest’s Elbow hairpin onto iconic Conrod Straight.

Two more corners and the lap would be done.

You can do it. Keep your eyes open for the camera.

Supercars reached three hundred kilometres an hour lunging downhill to The Chase, a kink in the track added to force drivers to slow for the final turn onto Pit Straight.

Doug, the cameraman, had barely kept the van on the road at thirty kilometres an hour.

Deacon was doing his darnedest to get to three hundred. If the engine went any harder, it would climb out the bonnet.

The roll cage shook like they’d hit an earthquake.

And Deacon hadn’t touched the brakes.

Sara flailed for his thigh, fighting the acceleration surge. “Brake,” she said. “Brake!”

She screamed that time.

Trent cruised under the pedestrian bridge, job done.

The reporter gasped for breath in the passenger seat.

He waved to fans pressed to the wall by the National Motor Racing Museum and drove back to the Trackways pit at a leisurely sixty.

Sara threw open the passenger door and wobbled out, white-faced through the visor, tripping on the roll cage pipes. A curse, a grab at the door. Then she straightened and shook herself back into reporter mode.

“Fanks, Trenth.” The helmet muffled her words comically with the microphone disengaged. “I fink we got good pictures.”

He leaned into the angle between his door and the windscreen, took off his headgear and winked. “Any time.”

She struggled with her helmet strap.

Fingers a little shaky there?

Tossed her hair, wiped her face with her palm and fronted the camera for post lap reactions.

He’d done what he wanted. Put the woman in her place. Retaliated for the probing questions he hadn’t expected or wanted in a promotional puff piece, and now he felt like a childish dick.

No wonder they hate you.

Where did that thought come from?

The swirling in his gut. Self-disgust, and damn it, despite all his best efforts, admiration. 

Some gloried in the thrill of excessive speed—girls and guys—hooted all the way around like a fairground ride.

Others fell apart, begging him to stop in the first corner. Even folk who’d saved for months for a bucket list fast lap.

Trent had never seen anyone more thoroughly spooked than Sara Toombs.

As she should have been with his clowning, edging the street-legal Chevy beyond its envelope through The Esses and The Dipper. Nev would kill him. The tyres would be shredded.

But Trent had to take The Chase at near-race speed to break Sara Toombs’ professional cool.

Warmth swelled in his chest.

‘Any time,’ he said, and Trent meant it. Sara Coombs was a woman worth getting to know, not that she’d have a bar of him now.

End of Part One… Part two next month, if I finish it.

For an idea what it’s really like driving around Mount Panorama Bathurst, here’s a YouTube video. For the record, it doesn’t do justice to The Dipper and The Chase.