The Mustang Shelby's physics were working against it. All the weight of its iron-block V8 over the front axles made it fundamentally reluctant to turn. The symptom was terminal understeer.
Inside the cockpit, Matteo was fighting a losing battle against inertia. Sweat beaded on his forehead as the steering wheel went light and unresponsive in his hands. A strangled curse was cut short as the car refused to rotate, pushing straight toward the flowerbed at the corner's exit.
At the last moment, the tires found a shred of grip, wrenching the heavy car into a clumsy, destabilizing slide. The Mustang lurched through the corner, its momentum bleeding away. The engine's roar choked into a misfiring stutter, the sound of a starved air intake and timing thrown out of sync.
Konrad had calculated the understeer the moment he saw the Mustang's aggressive line. It was simple weight distribution.
He had held the inside line, his mind already calculating the throttle application for the exit. The instant his front tires cleared the apex, his right foot flattened the accelerator. The Mini's highly-strung four-cylinder screamed—a sharp, focused note that cleanly cut through the Shelby' deeper, faltering bellow.
The lightweight chassis responded with violent immediacy. The rear tires broke traction in a perfectly controlled slide, the car rotating on a precise axis. The arc placed its nose ahead of the Shelby's front bumper before Konrad caught the slide with a flick of counter-steer and unleashed the car down the straight.
He didn't just pull away. He deployed every ounce of the Mini's power-to-weight advantage, leaving Matteo staring at empty road.
In Cavour Square, the crowd's roar was pure shock. Forgotten were the bets; they were witnessing a systematic dismantling.
The sight in his rearview mirror short-circuited Matteo's judgment. Humiliation overrode reason. He stomped the accelerator, the engine backfiring with a violent pop. He manhandled the wobbling car back onto the line and charged, aiming to use the Mustang's mass as a battering ram against the Mini's rear.
Konrad registered the aggression in his mirror. His focus didn't waver. An emotional driver was a predictable one.
A tight right-hander approached, a bottleneck of stone. Konrad flicked the wheel left, inducing oversteer. The Mini drifted wide, its flank scraping the metal sign of a roadside café in a shriek of protesting metal. He modulated the throttle, balancing on the knife-edge of grip, but refused to brake, holding 80 km/h as the turn rushed toward him.
He waited. The Mustang's grille filled his mirror, its vibration a constant tremor through the Mini's chassis.
'Wait for it.'
The gap closed to less than a meter.
'Now.'
He stabbed the brake, a half-second later than the standard racing line. The nose dipped. He turned in.
Accelerator. Clutch. Brake.
In the tight alley, at a speed that defied physics, his inputs were a model of efficiency. The car pivoted on the outside line, its tail hanging out in a controlled four-wheel drift. The Mustang, committed to its brutal charge, found only empty space where it expected an impact.
Konrad was dictating the terms. He used the wider line to maintain a critical buffer, always staying just beyond reach. A sudden loss of rear grip was corrected with a sharp stab of throttle, the turbo spooling back up with a determined whine. The machine, operating at the very limit of its tolerances, obeyed. The navy-blue shape disappeared into the darkness.
It was a clinical demonstration.
But Konrad was acutely aware of the car's strain. A new, high-frequency vibration buzzed through the steering column. The front suspension felt soft, its travel nearly exhausted. The rear had developed a minute, unsettling shimmy mid-drift.
The brake pedal had lost its firmness, the smell of superheated discs and boiling fluid seeping into the cabin. The tires were past their optimal temperature, their howl a constant protest. He was calibrating every input against the machine's failure point.
He didn't miscalculate.
Matteo's mind was redlining. He was so close. He could see the individual details on the Mini's tail. But the short distance was an unbridgeable gap. He could not close it.
Then, the Mini vanished around the next bend.
Matteo yanked the steering wheel in a panicked, over-correcting jerk.
It was too late.
Understeer. Again.
This time, there was no recovery. The Mustang's rear snapped out at a hundred kilometers an hour, a physics-driven pendulum. It slammed broadside into a galvanized steel trash can with a sickening crash of buckling metal.
The car spun, a dead weight sliding across the damp cobblestones. The world became a disorienting carousel of stone and light. A dog barked frantically behind a closed door.
When the car shuddered to a halt, wedged against the curb, Matteo sat frozen. He stared at the empty street ahead. The Mini was gone. His mind was a blank, static-filled screen.
Back in Cavour Square, the crowd had fallen into a hushed silence, pressed against phone speakers.
Jean Todt got to his feet, all fatigue gone. His gaze was fixed toward the final challenge: the People's Square roundabout. Rain-slicked cobblestones. A wide, deceptive curve that punished any lapse in concentration. One error there would nullify every advantage earned by skill.
Then, a new sound emerged from the speakers. Not the crowd. Not a voice.
It was the precise screech of tires loading and unloading on wet stone. The steady, pressurized whine of a turbo at peak boost. The clean, linear rise of an engine hitting its power band without a single misfire.
It was the sound of perfect control. It was the sound of a problem solved.
The sounds faded, stretched by distance into silence.
The roundabout was behind him.
The race was over.