Answering Megan's question, Lawson pulled a ridiculous face at her as the Dodge Viper blasted past the Dodge Challenger.
It was a face Megan would remember for the rest of her life — that incredibly handsome, mocking grin would probably haunt her dreams tonight.
The Viper's front wheel dropped straight into the drainage ditch on the inside of the corner. Lawson yanked the handbrake and initiated a perfect drift, forcing his way through the turn at an angle that defied physics.
The car was practically glued to the inside lane. At the closest point, you couldn't have fit a fist between the two vehicles.
Under that insane pressure, the driver ahead panicked, made a mistake, and clipped the car that had been trying to block the road. Both cars slammed hard into the guardrail.
Megan screamed again.
"Ahhh! I'm done! Franklin, let me out!"
"Shut up, Megan! You're messing with my focus!"
Franklin was sweating bullets but somehow kept the Challenger on the road.
The Viper ahead had already cleared the corner and was charging into the next one.
"Unbelievable! Incredible! Unimaginable!"
Bob, the live commentator, was running out of words. Relying on GPS trackers and a map simply wasn't enough to describe what he was seeing.
"I have no idea how the driver of the Dodge Viper just did that, but he successfully cleared the first corner of the consecutive hairpin section while the Toyota Supra and Honda NSX have both crashed out!"
"The Dodge Viper is still accelerating! He entered the second corner without slowing down at all! That is the most motherfucking insane driving I have ever seen! I wish I could watch this in person! Fuck! Why didn't we put cameras in the cars?!"
By now, both the crowd and Bob had completely shifted their attention to the purple Viper. Even Martin, Dom, and Johnny Tran in the lead pack couldn't help but get distracted by the commentary.
"The Dodge Viper is like a bolt of lightning, blowing past car after car! Fuck, I finally understand how he's doing it! A colleague just radioed me — he's dropping his front wheel into the drainage ditch to gain extra grip, letting him corner at maximum speed!"
"Absolute genius! I can't wait to see what he does next! I'm starting to think that twenty-second head start wasn't a mistake or a breakdown. He was literally giving everyone else a head start!"
That single comment instantly turned most of the other racers hostile toward the Viper.
For the crowd, giving everyone a twenty-second head start and still winning was the coolest thing ever.
For the racers, losing to a guy who spotted them twenty seconds was pure humiliation.
So the dirtier drivers started preparing to block him.
After all, this was an underground street race. How many boy scouts do you think were competing?
By this point the Viper had already climbed to 8th place and cleared the consecutive hairpin section.
Next came a relatively long, straight downhill stretch with only a few sweeping curves. Unfortunately the cars ahead had completely blocked the two-lane road.
No matter how fast the Viper was, there was no way past. Lawson had no choice but to tuck in behind the pack and wait for an opening.
Finally, after the straightaway, came a series of continuous U-turns.
"This is the spot!"
Lawson dropped his tire into the drainage ditch again, hit the nitrous, and threw the car into a full inertia drift.
His cornering speed was terrifyingly close to 180 mph.
Just listen to Bob:
"Holy shit! The Dodge Viper is taking corners at speeds that look like it's literally flying close to the ground! This is absolute madness! It feels like he's racing in a completely different dimension from everyone else!"
Another driver refused to back down and tried to block the Viper's line.
Unfortunately he didn't have Lawson's micro-control. He attempted a massive maneuver and barely missed the Viper.
The result? He lost control at high speed, smashed through the guardrail, and tumbled over the edge.
"Oh my god! A Mitsubishi 3000GT VR just went over the edge! God bless that poor bastard!"
The drop from the continuous U-turns was roughly 5,000 feet. Rolling a car down from that height meant you were lucky to leave a recognizable corpse.
The sudden tragedy shocked the crowd, but that was the brutal reality of underground street racing.
After seeing that horrific crash, the three drivers immediately ahead of Lawson suddenly behaved perfectly.
It was just a race. Nobody wanted to throw their life away.
So Lawson flawlessly cleared the continuous U-turns in the Viper and began steadily closing the gap on the leading pack.
Surprisingly, the second car to clear the U-turns was Franklin's Dodge Challenger — simply because the kid had copied Lawson's drainage-ditch drift technique.
Drifting definitely had downsides, but it was devastatingly effective on U-turns.
Franklin was an incredibly fast learner. Just watching Lawson take a few corners had been enough for him to replicate the move fairly well.
After the continuous U-turns came the final stretch. Tricky terrain — no long straights, but no tight consecutive corners either.
By now Lawson could see the taillights of the leading pack.
"The Dodge Viper is still a few miles behind the leaders, but with only about fifteen miles left in the race, can he actually pull off the win?"
Martin, Dom, and Johnny Tran were in the lead for a reason. Their driving skill and car performance were both top-tier.
Nobody wanted to become a footnote in Lawson's victory, so all three pushed their cars to the absolute limit and hit their nitrous systems at the same time.
As everyone knew, nitrous gave massive power but also put enormous stress on the engine. In real life, drivers saved it for critical moments.
And right now, it was the final sprint to the finish line.
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