be the race and Balto's upcoming test session with Joest Racing at Germany's Hockenheimring. "I still can't believe you went in the Downing Atlanta garage and attacked Howard Katz like that," Jenna said in disbelief. She, like Boris, couldn't believe what she had witnessed. "What exactly were you thinking?" "Do you really think I was gonna let him get away with screwing up my race?!" Balto asked with conviction. "NO! I wasn't!" "Chill, man," Boris added. "No one here is saying you had to let him get away with what he did. But it wouldn't kill you to pick your battles a bit more carefully." "Hey, I picked my battle and I'm sticking with it!" Balto interjected. "I'm not gonna just lay over like a puppy and let other people push me around." "No one's telling you not to let other people bully you," Kyle said, finally deciding to add his two-sense. "Still, you can't do that every time this happens." Balto reluctantly had to agree with what his co-driver had just said. By now, he had found out about the oil slick that the Mazda Kudzu had hit. "So, when is the Hockenheim test, again?" asked Kyle. "Early next month," Balto replied. "And Mr. Joest expected you to just agree to do the test like that?" asked Jenna, trying to do a finger snap with her left front paw. "Hey, I agreed to do the test, Jenna," Balto responded. "There was no pressure on me." "Yet you still agreed to do it," Jenna added. "You know, you don't have to jump at the invitation every time you're asked to a test session, Balto." "This isn't just another test session, Jenna," Balto countered. "This is in preparation for Le Mans." "I know, Balto," Jenna put in. The tone of the conversation led Balto to suspect one of two things: Either Jenna was becoming resentful and feeling that she was taking a back seat to his racing, or that she was still concerned for his safety after his crash last year. He was nowhere near certain what the cause was. But he knew that if he didn't figure it out, things might go sour between them. Kyle and Boris had gotten up to give them some privacy. "What's wrong?" asked Balto. "Balto, you've seem to become a complete slave to your racing lately," said Jenna, who by now was sounding a little more laid back. "It's called dedication, Jenna," Balto countered. "Besides, this is Le Mans, and I can't take it lightly." "I'm not telling you to," said Jenna. "I just wish you weren't so hard on yourself." "Why can't I be?" Balto asked. Jenna struggled to find the words to say before she spoke again. "I just can't stand seeing you like that," she finally said. "Really?" Balto asked. "Yes," Jenna replied, trying to be as understanding as possible. "When you're stressed out like that, you're like a completely different person. I don't like it when you're that way." "Me neither," Balto put in. He sighed before speaking again. "You know what? You know how you've got that vacation period from work coming up after I get back from Hockenheim? Well, it's your turn to pick where we go this time." "I know," said Jenna. "You coming?" "Of course!" Balto replied. "Why wouldn't I?" Hearing that the private talk was over, Kyle and Boris eventually returned to the table. "You guys alright?" Boris asked. "Yeah," Balto answered. "We're okay." The foursome then picked up the menus they had been given and looked for something to eat.   Chapter 3: Shakedown Run @ Hockenheim   In no time at all, the Hockenheim test session had arrived. Balto had to wake up in the red eye hours to catch a flight to Cologne International Airport in Germany. He spent the night in the team's motorhome at the track. By mid-morning on the day of the test, Balto was already putting the Joest Racing 962C through its paces on this extremely fast German autodrome. "How's the car feeling, Balto?" Reinhold Joest asked over the radio. Because of the extremely fast layout of the full Hockenheimring, low downforce was used to maximize straight-line speed down the straights. This meant care needed to be exercised when negotiating the corners, particularly through the tight, stadium section at the end of the lap. "I'm all over the place here!" Balto exclaimed as the back end stepped out as he exited one of the chicanes on the long straights through the surrounding pine forest. "When the rear end's loose, car's fast," Reinhold responded to his driver's desperate attempt to hang on. "Loose is fast and on the edge you're out of control." Balto ran five more laps after that radio conversation before bringing the car into the pits. For the next hour and a half, while the car was being looked over and worked on, Rhinehold and Balto went up to the grandstands along the start/finish straight for a one-on-one pep talk. "Now, Balto, there is something else," said Reinhold as he put down a plastic sport-cap type water bottle. "Tires are what a wins a race. If you can't keep the tires up under the car, you're not gonna go very fast for very long. Even on the hard compound tires, you're still burning them up rather quickly. You can't do that and expect to do well come Le Mans." Hard compound tires don't have the grip of soft compound tires, but they are far more durable and last longer. Conversely, soft tires grip better than hard tires, but don't last as long. Hard tires are best used in hot weather, whereas soft tires are better suited to cooler conditions. "You just wanna change the way I drive, don't you," said Balto, albeit not exactly in the form of a question. "Well, maybe," Reinhold answered. "Either that, or we have to find a way so you can run your usual pace without melting the tires." "I don't know," Balto put in, sounding a little uneasy. He then asked, "How are we gonna pull that off?" "I'll tell you what," Reinhold replied. "You run a full fuel stint however you like. Then run that same distance the way I'd like you to. Give me an honest run, and if you do I might even beat you." This sounded a little daunting for Balto. But he knew he had to do it. The good of his team depended on it. After work on the car was completed, Balto got back in and began his first of two full fuel runs. After completing a warmup lap, the first run began. The full Hockenheimring as of 1989 was a bit of a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde type of circuit. It had two very different characters. Around the stadium complex the corners were slow and tight. But most of the circuit was a series of long, high-speed straights punctuated by chicanes. A lap of the Hockenheimring circa 1989 began with the run from the start/finish line to the Nordkurve ("North Curve" in German). This corner could be taken at about 110 mph when approached from a flying lap. Following that was first 200+mph blast into the pine forests. It ended with the first of three chicanes positioned out in the flat out forest section. It was called the Clark Kurve, after the late Jimmy Clark, who was killed in a crash at that point in a minor league Formula 2 race on April 7, 1968. During the first of two heats, the Scot's Lotus 49 slid off the rain-soaked track and crashed into the trees. There were no guardrails back then. Clark was 32 years old. Following the Clark Kurve was another 200+mph blast down to the Ostkurve (German for "East Curve"). This used to be a fast right hander, but after Frenchman Patrick Depailler was killed there during practice for the 1980 German Grand Prix (his Alfa Romeo suffered a major mechanical failure), a chicane was put in to slow cars down. The tricky part about the Ostkurve is that the road slopes away in mid-corner, which can make the going tricky. Another long straightaway followed, ending at the third and final chicane of the lap. Unlike the first two chicanes, which went right-left-right, this one went left-right-left. Afterwards was the run to the stadium section, so named because of the massive, permanent, stadium-style grandstands. The first corner of the stadium section was the right-handed Agip Kurve. Following a short straight was the left-handed hairpin known as the Sachskurve. A pair of minor kinks - one left, one right - followed. The lap ended with the right-handed, double-apex Opel Kurve, named after the German car manufacturer Opel. Once Balto finished his first full fuel run, he pulled into the pits for refueling and a set of four fresh tires. Reinhold opened the cockpit door and leaned in to have a talk with his driver. "Alright, now we're gonna do this fuel run my way," he yelled, as he had to raise his voice so Balto could hear him over all the noise around them. "Now, when you're racing these cars back in the States, you don't have the fuel consumption limits, so you don't have to save the tires as much. Now here, you do have the fuel restrictions, which means you have to save fuel early on in the race, so you can't afford to be quite as hard on the tires. With a full fuel load, the car is at its heaviest. That puts more wear into the tires. When you run the car too hard on a full tank of fuel, or at any other time, you wear the tires out faster. When they wear out, they overheat, they get greasy, you slip, you slide, and you're out of control. Try not to run the car so hard this time!" Balto nodded as Reinhold shut the door. The car was lowered from the jacks and went straight back out onto the track.   Later that day, after Balto had finished his second full fuel run, the cars were being worked on

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