Simple logic. Brutal logic.
This was the mindset of an elite driver. Marcus's shock slowly curdled into a complex respect. He realized that his attempts to scare the boy hadn't just failed—they had acted as high-octane fuel for an already roaring fire.
"Fine," Marcus said, exhaling slowly. He looked at Justin, intending to bring up the crushing financial reality, but Justin shut him down with a single, sharp look that said: Don't you dare talk to me about money.
Marcus turned back to the board. "Since you're so confident, let's talk about the real killer." He wrote a single word next to the pyramid: TIME.
"Verstappen was in F1 at seventeen. Norris at nineteen. They were in karts by age four," Marcus said, his gaze like a scalpel. "Roan, you're a high school student. You're sixteen? In the world of Formula racing, you're a dinosaur. You're an old man."
"Even if you move up one tier every single year, by the time you have the points for a Super License, you'll be in your twenties. Why would a team pick a twenty-something rookie over an eighteen-year-old freak of nature? Your window hasn't just closed; it's been boarded up."
The words "old man" felt absurd when applied to the teenager in the oversized school uniform, but in the arena of elite sports, it was the iron law.
"So, my recommendation..." Marcus drew a long horizontal line. "Two years in the CKC—the National Karting Championship. Build a foundation. Win a title. Prove your consistency. Then we see."
It was the safe path. The logical path. The path every driver in the country had taken.
"How many 'two years' do I have left?"
Roan interrupted. It was the first time he had cut Marcus off. He sat upright, the lethargic energy-saving mode replaced by a sharp, jagged aggression.
"Two years is too long."
Roan stood up and walked to the whiteboard. He picked up the red marker. His hand was still trembling slightly from the two-stroke vibrations, but his movement was resolute.
Screee—
The red tip shrieked against the board. He drew a circle around the "three-month" mark on the timeline. The circle was crooked, the ends barely meeting.
"Three months," Roan said, his voice as calm as a recorded message. "In three months, I'm entering F4."
The room went cold. Even Justin, who thrived on chaos, looked stunned. "Three months? From a karting rookie to a Formula car? You're insane. Your neck won't just hurt; it'll snap. You'll black out in the first high-speed sweeper."
Roan turned to face them. He tapped his temple with a steady finger. "The technique and the tracks... I've already run them a thousand times in here. The software is done. The bottleneck is the hardware—my body. If I upgrade the hardware, I can drive."
It was pure, unadulterated arrogance. If anyone else had said it, Marcus would have laughed them out of the paddock. But looking into Roan's eyes, he saw no heat, no bravado. Just a terrifying, non-human level of clinical calculation.
"Do you have any idea what that entails?" Marcus asked, his voice rising.
"I do," Roan replied, touching his neck. "Either I upgrade, or I scrap the machine."
Marcus burst into a grin—a sharp, bloodthirsty expression. This was the answer he had been waiting for. He pulled out an iPad, swiped through a few encrypted files, and handed it over. The cover read: Physical Conditioning Protocol: Hell Week.
"This is the training architecture for professional prospects," Marcus said. "If you think your brain is fast enough, let's see if your meat-suit can keep up. If you don't break, three months for an F4 entry is... theoretically possible."
Roan flipped through the pages. It was a dense catalog of misery: neck weight-loading, core anti-G drills, aerobic endurance, reaction-gate testing. The schedule started at 6:00 AM and ended at 10:00 PM. No gaps. No rest.
Roan's brow furrowed for the first time. Not because of the intensity, but because of the geography.
"I go to a boarding school," Roan said, the reality of his "day job" creeping in. "It's a closed-campus system. I can only leave on weekends. I don't have this equipment in the dorms, and I can't get out to a gym."
"A 'Lite' version?" Justin stepped forward, leaning against the wall with the effortless swagger of a man who owned the world. He plucked the iPad from Roan's hand. "In my dictionary, there is no 'Lite' version of anything."
Justin tapped the screen. "Don't worry about the school. You just worry about sweating tomorrow."
"They won't let me install a gym in the—"
"I'll make them let you," Justin interrupted, a 'this is what professional looks like' smirk playing on his lips. He pointed toward the ceiling. "My family happens to hold a significant stake in that school's board of directors."
Roan stared at him. For a moment, Justin's "capitalist bulldozer" persona actually looked charming. If Marcus was the architect of the road, Justin was the heavy machinery that flattened the mountains in the way.
"Deal," Roan said. He didn't ask further questions. If the obstacles were gone, only the work remained.
The group left the paddock as twilight bled into the horizon.
The sunset spilled through the glass, illuminating the empty rest area. Dust motes danced in the fading light, creating a scene that looked like the post-game summary screen of a high-end sim.
Only one thing remained active: the electronic leaderboard on the wall.
It displayed the all-time records for the Rotax DD2 category. The legendary ID that had sat at the top for five years—the phantom 'MV1'—had been silently bumped.
LUO — 0:49.055 MV1 — 0:49.155
Roan had beaten the "God" of the track by exactly 0.1 seconds on his very first day.
No one saw it. Not Justin, not Marcus, and certainly not Roan, who hadn't even looked back at the screen before he left. It was a silent passing of the torch. In the quiet of the dusk, a boy who had just touched a real steering wheel for the first time had completed his first conversation with a legend.
The first day was over. The legend—and the hell—were just beginning.