Motor Mouth - Janet Evanovich [5]
“Be careful.”
“I’m trying,” Gobbles said, walking off toward media parking.
Fifteen minutes later, when it was obvious nothing illegal was going to turn up on the 69, I headed for the drivers’ lot.
I found Hooker’s motor coach, opened the door, and yelled to Hooker, “Are you decent?”
“Guess that’s a matter of opinion,” Hooker said.
Hooker was showered and dressed in jeans and a ratty T-shirt and was watching cartoons with Beans, his newly adopted Saint Bernard. Beans gave an excited woof when he saw me, launched himself off the couch, and caught me midchest with his two massive front paws. I went flat on my back with Beans on top, giving me lots of slurpy Saint Bernard kisses.
Hooker pulled Beans off and looked down at me. “Wish I’d had the guts to do that.”
“Don’t start. I’m not in a good mood.”
Hooker yanked me to my feet, I went straight to the refrigerator, and I got a Bud. I put it to my forehead and then I took a long pull. Every driver’s fridge is filled with Bud because first thing in the morning, the Bud beer fairy arrives and leaves a fresh delivery on the motor-coach doorstep. I stayed in an economy hotel six miles away with the rest of the crew and the Bud beer fairy didn’t go there.
“So,” Hooker said. “What’s up?”
“As far as I could see, they didn’t find anything illegal on the sixty-nine car.”
“And?”
“I don’t believe it. You can drive rings around Spanky, and you had a great car, and he got time on you in every corner.”
“Which would mean?”
“Traction control.”
In street cars, traction control is done by a computer that detects slip and then directs power to the appropriate wheel. In a race car, traction control really means speed control. A race-car driver learns to sense his wheels slipping and then gets off the gas to control engine power, which in turn slows the wheels and controls the slip. Computer-based electronic traction control duplicates this throttle management but much more efficiently and effectively. NASCAR thinks it takes some of the fun out of racing and has ruled it illegal. Still, if you want to take the risk, an average driver can pick up to a fifth of a second per lap using electronic traction control. And that could be enough to win a race.
Beans was sprawled in the middle of the floor, his head next to Hooker’s sneakered foot. Beans was white with a black face mask, floppy black ears, and a brown patch on his back that was shaped like a saddle. At 140 pounds, he sort of looked like a small hairy cow. He was a sweetie pie, but he wasn’t going to win any dog-show prizes. Maybe for drooling. He was a really good drooler. He opened a droopy Saint Bernard eye and gave me one of those looks, like what?
Hooker was giving me the exact same look. “Traction control is easy to spot,” he said. “You need a power source, wires, a switch.”
“I could put traction control on your car and no one would find it.”
Now I had Hooker’s attention. Hooker would use illegal technology on his car in a heartbeat if he thought he could get away with it. And the possibility of being able to efficiently power down to gain more control in a turn was driver mind candy.
“Then why don’t I have it on my car?” Hooker asked.
“For starters, I don’t like you enough to risk it.”
“Darlin’, that’s cold.”
“Plus, there are too many people around the cars when they’re being built. It’s the sort of thing that would need a closed shop. And a closed shop would attract attention. And then there’s the power source…”
Hooker raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve never actually put this on a car, but I think I could use a lithium watch battery as a power source and run the wires inside the frame. Maybe put the battery-powered computer chip in the roll bar. NASCAR wouldn’t tamper with the roll bar. Even better would be to use wireless technology and place the chip directly on the engine. It could be made to look like a flaw in the housing and would be so small it wouldn’t be noticed.”
“How small?”
“Smaller than a contact lens. And if this was the case, you wouldn’t need a closed