Chapter 168 Hold On!
“Hold your line,” Jo was saying next to her as Truitt was saying the same thing in her ear.
Andrea could see what Sarah was doing. She was not holding her line. She was squeezing Andrea up the race track to the outside wall. Andrea backed off the gas slightly to fall back in line behind Sarah so she didn’t hit the other car or the wall. “What do I do?” she asked Jo, forgetting everyone else could hear her, too.
“She’s taking your line away,” Jo said. “You’re going to have to go around her on the inside.”
“I haven’t been down there at all,” Andrea reminded him.
“I know, but you got it. We’re going into turn to. Instead of arching up the track like you have been, try swinging low. You should be able to get your nose underneath her, between her and the line she’s been running on the low side. When you nudge it in there, she’ll have to give you the line.”
“Yeah, or send me into the inside wall,” Andrea reminded him.
“She won’t do that. This is a charity race.”
She wanted to tell him that the woman had done worse—allegedly. Or that even if Sarah wanted to play fair, Whiskey had it out for her. But she didn’t. With any luck, he’d be right, and she’d make it around the other car.
They entered the turn, and Andrea did exactly what Jo had suggested. Rather than pounding on the gas pedal, she gave it a slight bit more fuel than she would’ve in the turn and headed to the bottom of the racetrack. She was able to get the nose of her car between and the line she’d been following all night, which took that line away from Sarah.
Her half-sister had few choices now. She could ease up and let Andrea go—which is what any normal person who saw a car better than there car passing them in a charity race would do. She could keep on the gas and force Andrea to back off. Or she could bring her car down and either hit Andrea or force her to take the grass.
Sarah took that last choice, and Andrea wasn’t too surprised to see it happening, but she only had moments to react. “What the hell?” she screeched as she saw the car coming straight of her. It was about to hit her car in the side, which could potentially spin them both out of control and make them both wreck, and Andrea wasn’t planning on getting in an ambulance today, not even for a visit to the infield care center.
With limited choices and limited time to make them, she decided to hold her line as long as she could. She heard the advice everyone was giving her, none of it registering until it was too late. Back out of the gas—no longer an option. Swing around her to the top—too late, already committed to the bottom.
Sarah was giving her no choice but to go below the white line around the inside of the racetrack. On some speedways, this was out of bounds, but not at Pocono. Even when she was driving on what was essentially the shoulder, Sarah kept coming lower, and then Andrea found herself driving through the grass.
The car was clearly not meant for off-roading. Her hands were vibrating so hard, she thought they might fall off, but Andrea held onto the steering wheel, powering the car through the rough surface and then back onto the track with a bump that shook her so hard, she hit her head on the roll cage above her. “Thank God for helmets,” she muttered.
Once she was back on the track, she was clear of Sarah and kept going—until she heard Truitt say, “Caution is out, caution is out!”
“Why is caution out?” Andrea asked Jo, slowing her car down. She glanced over at him to see his eyes bulging out of his head.
“Uh… cause Sarah just bit it. Hard into the outside wall. Once you got out of her way, she overcorrected and went flying back up the track.”
Andrea looked in her mirror and saw her half-sister’s car sitting sideways on the track, smashed up really badly in front. “Shit,” Andrea muttered. “I hope she’s okay.”
“She’s okay. Madder than a hornet,” Brad assured her. “She’s out of the car, helmet off, cussing and screaming at Whiskey.”
Andrea couldn’t help but laugh. She wondered if Sarah even had control of the car as it came barreling toward her or if Whiskey had reached over and grabbed the wheel. Either way, it hadn’t worked. Her car seemed fine, though she imagined there was some grass in the front. Sarah was out of her way. She was in third place, and when they started racing again, there would be about eight laps to go. Maybe she really could win this thing after all.
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