Checkered Flag by Chris Fabry

Author:Chris Fabry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUVENILE FICTION / Religious / Christian
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2013-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Air Box

IT TOOK ALL Jamie had to talk with Tim. He looked so alone up on the screen, and he looked even more forlorn standing near the wall. After she spoke to him, she had to walk away because her eyes filled.

The Talladega track was huge—a 2.66-mile tri-oval—with seats for nearly 150,000 and enough camping for thousands more. The grounds were a living, moving organism that came alive during race week, and as the Chase unfolded, Jamie couldn’t help but picture herself racing here, taking the lead on the straightaway and leading one of the trains.

Her dad had explained drafting to her when she was little and even showed her what it felt like by driving close to an 18-wheeler on the interstate, but there was no way she could understand it until she saw it up close. A car going at such a high speed would be sucked into the air of another car in front of it and propelled around the track. It was discovered in the late 1950s at Daytona when a driver followed other cars around the track, using their speed to make him go faster. He won the race and the secret was out.

“I got a problem,” Jamie’s dad said on the radio. “Air box is gone.”

T.J. went back and forth with him about the box, but it was clear it wasn’t working.

Kellen came up behind her. “What happens if he doesn’t have an air box?”

“That’s the way he stays cool,” Jamie yelled. “He loses that and he’ll cook inside there for 500 miles.”

“I’m real sorry about that, Dale,” T.J. radioed back. “From what we can tell, the wires are fried in the box. You’re just going to have to tough it out.”

“Can’t he get some air through the window?” Kellen said.

“Going that fast, you don’t get any air at all,” Jamie said.

“Looks like I’m going to lose a little weight in here,” Dale said.

Jamie shook her head. It was a blistering day in Alabama. Her dad was tough, but enough laps driving in 130-degree heat and it would begin working on his brain. Fatigue would set in. There has to be something we can do, she thought.

She turned to look for Tim, but he wasn’t near the pits. “Where did Tim go?” she said to Kellen.

He shrugged. “Wasn’t my day to watch him.”

The #14 car was in the middle of a pack of cars going three wide when her dad spoke again. “I feel like a turkey on Thanksgiving Day. T.J., you gotta check this thing next time before the race. How did it get past you?”

She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times her dad had spoken harshly on the radio. It was clear he was in a difficult situation that was only going to get worse as the day wore on.

“I’m real sorry about that,” T.J. said. “I feel your pain.”

“First pit stop, I want a bucket of ice dumped in here. You got me?”

T.J. laughed. “Maybe I can just get you a Coca-Cola truck to drive.

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