“...And look, I know we’re talking about the established guys. Mostert, De Pasquale, Shane, but we have a couple wildcards in this fight too. AKV Motorsports, they showed a lot of pace in both qualifying and the races at Sydney, pole and podium for Viral, Akula was contending for a podium and he was fast here in practice. Yes, new team, new experience, there were some growing pains, but the track record those two have, only a matter of time before they start doing that every weekend."

The team was preparing the cars for second practice, well everyone but the two drivers who instead had their eyes on the broadcast monitor in their garage. Ambrose was accompanying Garth Tander and the pre-show host Jessica Yates, the trio discussing championship favorites like Mostert and Shane, but Ambrose made a point to look out for them. They hadn’t formally announced the Bathurst ride yet, it wasn’t put into place, but Viral could feel that Ambrose wanted it to work out. The pair smiled at each other, Viral shrugged, and Akula snickered at her mock ignorance.

“I think it’s time for you both to take a break from spectating and get back to work.” Classic Neon Shock banter as the engineer had been eyeing her driver and her teammate from the rear spoiler of the #24 Commodore.

The pair bumped hoofs and got into their respective cars just in time for the start of second practice. Same idea as the first, Akula out in front and Viral shadowing. The track was so short that by the time they had begun their first flying lap, the leading cars were already starting to finish up their first laps. Viral got her first lap in and snuck in behind Shane’s #97 to get an idea of what the defending champ was doing to be as fast as he was. Akula didn’t need that, he was already matching the front running pace. Chris Pither locked up at the second to last corner and stumbled into the dirt as the changeling slipped through.

He pushed on to stay up with the rest of the front runners, and Viral managed to find a good rhythm to her laps. She was running race trim fuel, practicing some consistent laps while running around other cars. It didn’t look good on the timing sheets, but it was practice she most certainly would make use of over the weekend. Akula however dove into the pits after a few laps to try and work on the car. Looking for that last bit of time that could be the difference at such a short track like Symmons Plains.

Scott Pye had a moment at turn 1 and crossed the sand to cut the track, while Lee Holdsworth did exactly what Viral had done in first practice almost perfectly. A couple minutes later and Will Davison put up a new fastest lap of the session with triple purples, not quite the pace he set the prior session but still fast nonetheless. This put Akula in a solid 5th, but just as he was readying to get back out on track Jake Kostecki of Tickford ran into some terminal electrical issues and brought out a session red flag, closing pit exit. It was a bit annoying, but not at all worrying with almost twenty minutes left to run. following some of the faster drivers, Viral had a much higher head than during first practice when she got back to the garage. She was feeling confident to start running a couple flying laps once the pit exit was opened again.

Once the red flag was cleared and practice continued, the teams really began to hone in on one lap pace. The session itself was quiet, with marginal improvements across the board up until every team brought their cars in with about five to six minutes left in the session. Teams put on brand new sets of Super Soft tires for the qualifying sim runs.

With about three minutes to go, cars started leaving pit lane, Viral left ahead of most of the field to grab some heat in her new tires, while Akula merged in behind the two fastest cars on circuit in Shane van Gisburgen and Will Davison. While Davison took an extra lap to get to pushing, Shane started them off proper and early. While Viral was also getting going onto her lap, she was being followed by Todd Hazelwood’s #35 as he sneaked his way to the fastest time, though it didn’t last very long. Heimgartner was the first car behind him with a new top time. Shane of course did one better, before Will and Akula began to see what they could do to match it.

Now that Viral had some confidence back, she attacked the circuit with a little more bravado. With a clean lap she snuck into the top ten very briefly. Shane pulled aside for Davison and Akula as both of them set equivalent first sector times. Davison could not improve on his second and third sectors, and being behind the Mustang hurt Akula’s lap, he wanted one more. Thankfully Will saw the Qantas Commodore closing rapidly in his mirrors into the hairpin and got off the line, allowing him to push on and throw up a new fastest first sector, and while his second sector was marginally off his personal best, his third sector was improved. His final lap slotted into third behind Shane and Heimgartner. Viral threw up her fastest lap at the end of the session too, her best all weekend, and it brought her up to 11th. With that, practice for the weekend was finished and qualifying would be soon to come. Perhaps this weekend could be the teams breakout effort.

Author's Note

Feels good to bring this one back, after all I love writing for you all and this project was one I had a lot of investment in.

I'm going through some things right now, so developments will be somewhat slow, but I'll try as hard as I can to get new chapters out for as many of my stories as I can, including this one.

Farewell, see you all again soon.