Chapter 13

Strangers in the Night: 13.

Things were just fine for four races on the WRC ... until I caught a rival manager messing with the rebuild set up.

Every race the girls and I replaced shocks and shock housings, bushings, seals and gaskets, any dented or damaged body parts and all the glass and mirrors.

Every stage of every race, the brake rotors and pads get changed out. Constant velocity housings, driveshaft universal joints and the shafts themselves get banged and dented and all that gets replaced with either rebuilt or new.

Hinges wallow out, windshields get pitted, snow isn't as soft as it looks, the sounds of metallic ceramic brake pads on steel ventilated rotors let the driver and the fans know that wear and tear is happening.

A night race has glowing rotors and calipers that let a body know that heat buildup is causing brake fluid to vaporize and a trip through a stream crossing can anneal metal ... or harden it so the first heavy pedal application can shatter a rotor and there goes the brakes. And that, my friends is no fun.

A pebble pitted windscreen loses 90% of its safety rating ... following too close can destroy a windshield and being hit in the throat by a fast moving projectile is no fun at all ... even if it is rock. Rocks killed people long before bullets.

Everything broken or damaged needs to be replaced as soon as possible. Sometimes it's just not possible ... that days stages are too close together and there just isn't time.

Every thousand kilometers the engine is pulled and another one is dropped in, bolted up and the used one it torn down and rebuilt. The factory teams get blueprinted engines. We are stuck with making do.

At the beginning of each season, Dal forks over and the team gets four new engines ... by the time the season is over those four have been refitted, rebored, reseated, revalved, restemmed, rebearinged, and generally poked and prodded to uselessness. Cylinder sleeves have been banged one too many times, connecting rod big ends are oval, bolt holes have been rethreaded until the block cracks and sewn up and it's just plain junk ... but we try.

So it's just not cool to catch the manager ... or hired thug ... of an opposing team messing with the boring bar micrometer or the rod hone ... or even something as simple as switching rod bearings in their factory boxes.

That's my now 16 year old sister behind the wheel of a 300+ horsepower, almost guaranteed to kill you or your co-driver or both if everything is right, car; messing with the parts is past shitty. It bespeaks murder ... and Finns don't like the rest of the world that much.