At the other end of the paddock rest area, the atmosphere had turned bizarre.
"Justin, you've got sharp eyes. Can you tell me how many lines you see here?"
Marcus was hunched over a laptop, his nose nearly touching the screen. He was looking at the telemetry data from the session that had just ended. On the screen, the velocity and throttle traces for the red #17 kart were displayed in a bright, jagged graph.
Justin leaned in, squinting at the colored waves. "What do you mean? It's just the trace for Roan's session, right? Looks like... one line."
"Exactly," Marcus whispered, his voice trembling with a mix of awe and terror. "It looks like one line. But this data represents five consecutive laps. Five."
He zoomed in on the braking zone for Turn 4. What appeared to be a single red stroke began to fracture into five microscopic threads, so tightly packed they were practically indistinguishable.
"His braking points, his pressure application, his throttle pickup... they don't just 'match.' They're carbon copies. He's hitting the same square centimeter of asphalt at the same millisecond, lap after lap."
Marcus sat back, his hands dropping to his lap. "In my entire career in the CTCC, I've only seen this kind of consistency from the top guys in the European leagues. This isn't a high schooler having fun. This is a metronome."
Justin looked over at the beanbag chair. Roan was still slumped there, nursing his Coke like a weary salaryman after a twelve-hour shift. The contrast was jarring—the kid looked like he'd struggle to finish a PE class, yet the data said he was a precision instrument.
"It's the simulator," Justin realized aloud. "He's been conditioned by an environment where 0.001 seconds is the difference between winning and losing. He doesn't drive by 'feel' alone; he drives by the numbers."
"It's more than that," Marcus countered. "Sim-racers often struggle when they hit real asphalt because they miss the 'seat-of-the-pants' feedback. But this kid? He didn't just adapt. He used the real-world feedback to sharpen his mental model. Did you see his line at the hairpin? He was taking a wider entry to avoid the bumps we didn't even tell him about. He felt them through the chassis and adjusted instantly."
Roan, meanwhile, was busy dealing with the consequences of his "D-rank" fitness.
His neck felt like it had been replaced by a stack of rusted springs. Every time he moved his head, a sharp, localized ache reminded him of the lateral G-forces he'd endured. Simulation was one thing—your eyes saw the turn, but your inner ear remained stationary. Here, his vestibular system had been screaming for twenty minutes as his brain fought to reconcile the visual data with the physical centrifugal pull.
"Real cars... are too sweet," Roan muttered, his voice muffled by the beanbag.
"Sweet? You look like you're about to meet your maker," Zack joked, though he was busy massaging his own aching forearms. "I'm the one who should be complaining. My arms are like lead. How are you not shaking?"
"I am shaking," Roan said, lifting a hand to show a faint, high-frequency tremor. "But it's worth it. The latency... Zack, you have no idea. On the G29, when the back end steps out, I have to wait for the motor to tell me, then my brain processes it, then I react. Here? My spine knows before the tires even start to smoke. It's like being plugged directly into the road."
Across the room, Justin made a decision. He snapped his laptop shut and walked toward the gear locker.
"Marcus, get the Birel RY30 ready," Justin commanded.
Marcus looked up, surprised. "The 2-stroke? You sure? He's already looking pretty cooked. That RY30 pulls nearly 3Gs in the high-speed sections. His neck might actually snap."
"He said he wanted to 'skip grades,'" Justin said, a challenge glinting in his eyes. He looked toward Roan. "If he's really a 6000 iRating legend, he's not going to be satisfied with a 60 km/h rental for long. Let's see what he does when the engine actually has enough power to scare him."
Roan heard the words "2-stroke" and "Birel."
The lethargy didn't vanish, but a sharp, predatory focus returned to his eyes. He slowly peeled himself out of the beanbag, the sound of his joints popping like small firecrackers.
"D-rank or not," Roan whispered, reaching for his helmet. "You don't say no to a Birel."