Leo whispered it into the balaclava where no one could hear it. Not into the radio. Not for Anya. Not for Elias. Not for the paddock or the broadcast feed or the eighty-five thousand people filling the grandstands around the lake.
Just for the framework. Just for the thing that had been building since Silverstone at 3 AM.
"Time to release more."
The formation lap began.
---
The formation lap began with a sound that qualifying hadn't produced.
Not louder. Different. Twenty cars rolling through the pit lane at race pace produced a layered, overlapping noise that a ten-car qualifying field didn't have — the specific acoustic mass of engines harmonising and fighting at the same time, the sound bouncing off the pit lane barriers and compressing into the cockpit from both sides simultaneously.
Leo felt it through the seat before he heard it properly.
