heavier big-thruster cars to gather any straight-line speed. Where they gained a slight advantage was on the short

straight leading down to Liberty's Elbow.

And that was where things got hairy.

LAP: 17 OF 40.

On Lap 17, Liberty's Elbow claimed her first victim.

Kamiko Ideki, running on worn mags at the back of the field and hoping to pit at the end of that lap, lost control taking the notorious left-hand hairpin.

He lost it wide, understeering badly, and pushing his struggling mags to the max, he blew them and flipped - and rolled wildly - tumbling out of the turn, heading at phenomenal speed toward one of the giant horseshoe-shaped hover grandstands that lined the corner, before he was caught - abruptly, instantly - like a fly in a spider's web in the protective Dead Zone enveloping the Elbow.

Out of the race, Kamiko would now automatically be eliminated.

LAP: 32 OF 40.

Into the pits. Frantic activity everywhere.

And Sally did well, very well, sending Jason out ahead of two racers who'd actually entered the pits before him - Raul Ha.s.san, the No.2 driver for the Lockheed-Martin Team, and Jason's Lombardi team-mate, Pablo Riviera - the in-pit overtaking manoeuvre elevating Jason to 12th.

He felt a little relieved - with Ideki already out, so long as he didn't come 13th, 14th or 15th, he'd be returning for Race 2.

But as the race entered its final stages, things were about to get nasty.

LAP: 35 OF 40.

Raul Ha.s.san in his Lockheed tried to overtake Jason at the Elbow.

After Jason's in-pit overtaking on Lap 32, Ha.s.san had hounded him for the next three laps, snapping at Jason's heels - so that when they hit the Elbow on Lap 35, they hit it almost together.

The two cars banked sharply, side-by-side, Jason on the inside, Ha.s.san on the outside.

Jason felt the immense G-forces of the turn a.s.saulting his body. He gripped his steering wheel for dear life, as if it were the only thing holding him inside the Argonaut.

The G-force meter on his dashboard ticked upwards: 6.2...

7.1...

8.0...

And then - just as Ha.s.san had planned - it happened.

For the briefest of instants, as his car hit 8-Gs, Jason blacked out.

A squeal from the Bug roused him - and he decelerated, wrestling with his steering wheel, and caught the Argonaut just before it hit the Dead Zone - but not before Ha.s.san, Riviera and a third driver, Carlo Martinez in a Boeing-Ford, all snuck past Jason.

It was a costly mistake.

Suddenly the Argonaut was in 15th place.

Suddenly Jason was coming last.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

LAP: 36 OF 40.

The last four laps of the race went by in a blur.

Jason raced as though his life depended on it, zigging and zagging through the tight New York streets. Yet his error at the Elbow had hurt him - on every lap, he took it ever more gingerly...and he gradually fell further behind the others.

But he kept on driving anyway, keeping them in sight, staying close.

Something could happen. Anything could happen.

So long as you were there at the end, you always had a chance.

This was Henry Chaser's 'Bradbury Principle', in reference to that time at the Winter Olympics when the Australian short-track speed-skater, Steven Bradbury, had dropped back behind the leaders, only to see them all fall - taking each other out in a spectacular crash - on the final turn of the race.

As all the lead skaters lay splayed everywhere on the ice, Bradbury had simply skated past them and won the gold, incidentally the first gold medal Australia had ever won at a Winter Olympic Games.

The Bradbury Principle: stay alive and you never knew. And in Masters racing, it had particular relevance: year after year, the final laps of each race saw some of the most downright dangerous driving ever, as racers sought to avoid elimination at any cost. This reckless driving was so common, it had a name: Masters Madness.

LAP: 40 OF 40.

Into the last lap, and Jason was lagging behind the next five racers by about six car-lengths.

Raul Ha.s.san had moved up through the field, as had Pablo Riviera, both now well clear of the bottom three.

Immediately in front of Jason were:

In 12th (and thus safe from elimination): Helmut Reitze, the German driver from the Porsche Team.

In 13th: Carlo Martinez, in his Boeing-Ford.

In 14th: Brock Peters, from the General Motors Team.

And then Jason.

Whipping through the financial district, but he couldn't haul them in.

Down to the Elbow, and still no decent gain.

And then it was back up through the city, bending and banking furiously, before he crossed Central Park for the last time and came to the final few corners of the course.

Jason kicked himself for his earlier mistake, but strangely, he was happy.

He'd made it to the Masters.

And that in itself was an extraordinary achievement. He'd be back in future years, he was sure, but he'd be older then, wiser, a better racer. He was, after all, only 15.

And then, as the racers in front of him hit the final lefthand turn of the race he saw - spectacularly, gloriously - the Bradbury Principle in action.

It was largely the fault of the 13th-placed racer, Carlo Martinez, as he tried to avoid elimination by overtaking the 12th-placed driver, Helmut Reitze, in his Porsche.

By any reckoning, there was no room to move, but Martinez tried anyway - Masters Madness - thrusting his Boeing inside Reitze's silver Porsche on the final turn.

The result was as tragic as it was spectacular.

Martinez collected Reitze - and the two cars rolled together, but not before the car immediately behind them, the GM of Brock Peters, slammed fully into the back of them. Peters and his navigator ejected an instant before their car disappeared in a billowing explosion of flames.

All three cars crashed to the roadway, their charred remains littering the final turn on both the left and right.

At which point, the Argonaut - left for dead in last place - just cruised by them, banking round into Fifth Avenue, slicing past the dark columns of smoke rising from the a.s.sembled wreckage, before it zoomed across the Finish Line, the last car to cross the Line in Race 1, but safely in 12th place.

By sheer good fortune, by just hanging in there when all seemed lost, Jason was through to Race 2!

CHAPTER NINE.

NEW YORK CITY, USA (THURSDAY) AFTER LIBERTY SUPERSPRINT.

As soon as the Liberty Supersprint was over, gigantic scoreboards sprang to life across New York City: above the Start-Finish Line on Fifth Avenue, in Times Square, on the Brooklyn Bridge and in hundreds of other locations.

The leaderboard looked like this: LIBERTY MANHATTAN THE THE TOTAL.

DRIVER CAR SUPERSPRINT GATE RACE PURSUIT QUEST POINTS.

1. ROMBA, A (1) 10 10.

Lockheed-Martin Racing 2. FABIAN (17) 9 9.

Team Renault 3. TROUVEAU, E - (40) 8 8.

Team Renault 4. CARVER, A (24) 7 7.

USAF Racing 5. LEWICKI, D (23) 6 6.

USAF Racing 6. SKAIFE, M (102) 5 5.

GM Factory Team 7. Ha.s.sAN, R (2) 4 4.

Lockheed-Martin Racing 8. REIN, D (45) 3 3.

Boeing-Ford Team 9. CHOW, A (38) 2 2.

China State Racing 10. REITZE, R (51) 1 1.

Porsche Racing 11. RIVIERA, P (12) 0 0.

Lombardi Racing Team 12. CHASER, J (55) 0 0.

Lombardi Racing Team 13. REITZE, H (50) DNF.

Porsche Racing 14. MARTINEZ, C (44) DNF.

Boeing-Ford Team 15. PETERS, B (05) DNF.

GM Factory Team 16. IDEKI, K (11) DNF.

Yamaha Racing Team While Jason had been struggling at the back of the field, a fierce battle had been going on up front - between Alessandro Romba and the two Renault Team drivers: Fabian and Etienne Trouveau. In the end, Romba had held out the two Frenchmen and won, claiming 10 points and inching one step closer to the Golden Grand Slam.

The last four drivers - all of them having crashed out during the race - were blocked out in red, eliminated.