He’d suspected that coming back to the Nürburgring for the first time since Uncle Zikki’s funeral just over two months ago would be emotional, not only because of his memories of Uncle Zikki’s funeral, but also because of the fact that it was his first ever single-seater race at the Nürburgring — an occasion he had hoped Uncle Zikki would be alive and present to see — and he had so many other memories of Uncle Zikki and the Nürburgring.
His first-ever live race had been at the Nürburgring. He’d gone with Opa, who had told him to pay attention to the number twenty nine car. He, with Opa, had cheered it to a podium finish before Opa had taken him to the pit lane, and particularly to the spot where the podium finishers parked their cars.
To his shock and delight, when the number twenty nine car’s driver had removed his helmet, it had revealed the familiar face of Uncle Zikki — whom Tor hadn’t previously known to be a racing driver — which had filled Tor with the desire to become a racing driver too, and had led to his being enrolled in karting for the following season.
That day had hardly been a decade ago, but Tor remembered it as clearly as if it had happened hours ago. As if he were still a six-year-old sitting on the shoulders of one of Uncle Zikki’s mechanics to have a better view of the podium ceremony, getting sprinkled with droplets of champagne.
There was also Uncle Zikki’s first — and, unfortunately, only — appearance at the Nürburgring as an F1 driver a few years later, where he’d managed to drag his underfunded back-marker car to a P15 finish that had been considered something of a remarkable feat, as prior to that juncture the only driver he’d been racing against had been his teammate.
Uncle Zikki had also managed to appear at the Hockenheimring once before the team had folded, leaving him without a seat in F1, even if he’d been able to get a last-minute deal to be a test driver for a back-of-the-midfield team, which had been renewed a couple times before Uncle Zikki had made the decision to move to IndyCar. A fatal decision, Tor felt now.
He knew everyone on the grid pitied him — well, except probably Marius and Valerio, but he suspected even Gaëtan pitied him a little bit — and was sympathetic toward him; he’d been showered with reassuring pats and comments that were verging on cliché already since the moment he’d arrived, but it wasn’t doing anything beneficial whatsoever, as far as Tor was concerned.
Of course, Tor didn’t have any more of an idea how to make the pain he was feeling go away, and since those around him weren’t feeling anything near to comparable pain for themselves — a fact of which he was very confident — he was very doubtful that they had ideas either, much less better ones.
They probably didn’t even realise how deep the pain was that he was feeling, how constant the assaults of memories were on him, how deeply he yearned to have Uncle Zikki appear and prove that everything had just been a massive nightmare.
Pronunciations:
Nürburgring: nuhrbuhrgring
Nordschleife: nohrdshlaefuh
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