Cobalt Fury

When a door rolls sideways

At six in the morning Mateo Rusk is lying on his back beneath a stationary mill door in Latchford. The rollers have turned so far to one side that someone has written the word WIND on a slip of paper and stuck it to the guide. The slip is indoors. He drops it in his pocket, walks both rails and starts again from the corner farthest from the dock. There he can see a slight shine in the place where a guide has moved out of line. The floor supervisor acts surprised when Mateo says it ought to go back. He pays Mateo to tell him what happened. He gets the extra information about the weather report in the form of the slip, folded very small.

By lunchtime Mateo can be an impossible man to share a work truck with. He is equally certain about where to go for bread and who shouldn't be allowed to put water in the soup. His wife Nora hears the account of his day over dinner. When he remembers to ask about hers, she generally has a better ending.

The closed course

A bent clip at DGM gave him a chance to hear his own voice for longer than he liked. He'd taken the Renault Sport R.S. 01 along a practice lane, felt it move off his chosen path at a joint and asked what the crew meant him to do with that. He tried the same approach again and added weather to his list of possible causes. The bay door was closed. Somebody handed him a canvas bag, asked him to collect the clips on that section and went away for coffee. He found one with a bent lip, which he'd missed from every angle he had inspected from a standing position.

Nora cut down an old apron for a bag he could keep. He put the bad clip in there. It's remained the only thing inside because she found it very funny when he said it was waiting for company. Gar Samu-el has heard him tell that story once without the word wind in it.

Back with the Renault

When Cobalt Fury returned for Race 3 after Race 2, Mateo liked having the Alpine Assault BMW and Lime Venom Aston Martin where he could see them in the transport queue. He had learned enough about the wait to carry a light meal and not open it before they'd finished unloading. There were strong opinions in each crew and great patience in the line, a combination he found strange until he heard himself offer somebody else the shady place by the truck. He remembers calling out when his own turn came and giving the bag with the clip to somebody else to hold. He had to go looking for it later.

He's quick with the first input as soon as he can see where to put the Renault. In practice he's working on letting the car come off that input straight, even where he'd like to correct all the way to the next marker.

A second callout

The old loading door has been repaired again by somebody else. Mateo saw their van. The loudest bit of his own workshop today is a coiled spring where he can't reach it, so he's waiting for a colleague. His next practice booking is written on a receipt by the kettle. He wants to build enough trust in one stretch of course to take a longer line than usual and let another driver have a go before he tells them what he felt.