Five Kilos

by Anti-Mythological Speed, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium

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The meeting was on a Wednesday at eight, in the clubhouse. The clubhouse at KC Terril was a portakabin with a wooden deck bolted to the front and a serving hatch where, on race days, Mariette Claes sold coffee, croques and Jupiler. On a Wednesday the hatch was shut. Twenty-two people sat on plastic chairs carried in from the deck, and the electric heater in the corner ticked and smelt of burning dust.

Ines Vanhoof sat at the back next to her father. She had a maths test in the morning and the book open on her knee.

Guido Claes chaired. He was the club secretary and Mariette's husband, and he read from a sheet of paper. "Item four. Junior class. Sporting balance."

Somebody laughed, not unkindly.

"We've had nine rounds," Guido said. "We all know how they've gone."

They all knew. Ines had won nine. She had been on pole for eight of them; at the other one she had been second on the grid, behind Jarne Wouters, by four hundredths.

Kristof Wouters stood up. He was Jarne's father. He fitted garage doors in Lanaken, and the club's timing hut had his name on the side, in blue, with a telephone number.

"I want to say first, this is not about Ines," he said. "Ines drives fantastic. Everybody knows that. It's about the class. In March there were fourteen juniors. Now there are eleven. If the kids know before they unload the van who is going to win, they start asking why they get up at six."

"Lies has stopped," a woman said. "She said, what's the point."

"So the proposal," Guido said, "is that from round ten, the winner of a round carries five kilos of extra ballast in the next round. On top of the minimum weight. The club supplies the plates. They get checked at the scale like everything else."

People nodded. A man near the heater asked if five was enough. Kristof said five was a start. Five was fair.

Guido looked to the back. "Raf. Do you want to say something?"

Raf Vanhoof had his arms folded. He laid floor tiles for a living, and he sat the way he knelt on a job, without moving anything he did not need to move.

"Is it per win or per driver?" he said.

"Per win."

"So whoever wins."

"Whoever wins carries it at the next round. Yes."

"Okay," Raf said.

"Ines?"

She shut the maths book on her finger. "Has anyone complained about how I drive?"

The room went quiet. Guido turned his sheet of paper over, as if the answer might be on the back.

"No," he said. "No. Nobody."

"Okay." She thought. "And where does it go? The five kilos. Do I choose, or do you?"

Guido looked at Kristof. Kristof looked at the floor.

"Anywhere on the seat or the chassis," Guido said, "as long as the scrutineer passes it. Same as normal ballast."

"Okay," Ines said, and opened the book again.

They voted with hands. Seventeen for, two against, three abstentions. Raf abstained. Drivers did not vote.

In the van going home, on the N78 past the dark of the old mine buildings, Ines did the maths book by the light of her telephone. At the lights in Lanklaar she shut it.

"Why didn't you vote no?"

"Because if I vote no, they say it's because you're my daughter."

"It would be because I'm your daughter."

"No," Raf said. "It would be because it's stupid." The lights changed. "But they would say the other thing."

She thought about it as far as Dilsen and did not find anything wrong with it.

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The kart lived in the garage at home in Dilsen, on a stand between the chest freezer and Raf's tile cutter. Ines already carried lead. In her suit and helmet she weighed fifty-one kilos, and to bring kart and driver up to the class minimum she had fourteen kilos bolted to the seat in three plates, two low on the left and one behind her back on the right. Every driver under the minimum did the same. Jarne did not need any. He had grown over the winter, and he made the weight with his breakfast in him.

Guido brought the club's plates on Friday evening, in a carrier bag from the Colruyt. Two pieces of lead, two and a half kilos each, drilled for M8 bolts and painted yellow so the scrutineer could see them from the other side of parc fermé.

He stood in the garage door and did not come in.

"It's nothing personal," he said.

"I know," said Ines. She took the bag. "Thank you for bringing them."

When he had gone she held one plate in each hand for a while. Then she laid them on the seat in different places and sat on the floor and looked.

"Where?" Raf said.

"Front. Left. Low."

"Why front?"

"She pushes in the Kapel." The Kapel was the hairpin at the end of the back straight, named after the little white chapel on the other side of the fence. On the slowest corner of the lap the front of the kart did not want to bite, and Ines had to wait for it. "More weight forward, she turns."

"She'll be slower everywhere else."

"She'll be slower everywhere anyway."

Raf drilled the seat. He put large washers on the inside, the flat ones like coins, because without them the lead works at the fibreglass when the engine shakes, and in the end tears its way out. He tightened the nuts with a thirteen and put a dab of red paint across each one, so you could see if it had turned.

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On Saturday afternoon there was open practice: twenty-five euros, one till five. Seven karts came. It was eighteen degrees with a little wind across the old coal tip, which stood over the circuit like a hill that had been put there by somebody, which it had.

Ines did four runs of eight laps. Raf stood at the fence at the Kapel with a flask of coffee, where he always stood.

In the first run she was a tenth and a half slower than her best from round nine. She came in, unplugged the MyChron from its bracket and sat on the kart trolley with it and the laptop. The lap was nine hundred and twelve metres. She put the new lap on top of the old one, speed against distance, and went round it with her finger.

On the back straight the lines lay on top of each other. Under braking they lay on top of each other. Through the long left after the start line they were the same. The difference was all in two places: out of the Kapel, and out of the chicane before the last corner. Both slow. Both with a straight after. Out of the Kapel the old line climbed away and the new one climbed away more slowly, and by the next braking point it was eight hundredths behind.

The extra weight did not cost anything in the corners. It cost everything getting out of them.

In the second run she turned in to the Kapel a metre later and a little earlier on the brake, made the corner a V instead of a U, and got the kart straight before she put her foot down, so that the engine was pushing the kart forward and not sideways. Into the corner she lost. Out of it she gained. She did it again and the data said she had lost three hundredths on the way in and found six on the way out.

When she came past the fence at the end of the third run, Raf lifted his hand slightly. When she came in he walked over with the flask.

"You're turning in later," he said.

"Yes."

He nodded, and poured her coffee into the lid, and that was the conversation.

By the fourth run she was seven hundredths off her old best. The shadow of the coal tip had reached the Kapel, the track was cooling, and Guido came out of the clubhouse with his keys in his hand and stood there jingling them until she unloaded.

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On Sunday the alarm went at ten to six. Nine degrees on the van's dashboard. At the Q8 on the way Raf filled the two jerrycans with super, and in the paddock Ines mixed the oil in, measured in the plastic jug with the lines on it that nobody was allowed to use for anything else, and shook each can until it smelt the way the paddock smelt all day. The entry was forty-five euros. The new set of slicks for the final had been a hundred and ninety, and they sat on the trolley still with the stickers on. Eleven juniors.

At scrutineering Herman Bollen, who had been scrutineer at KC Terril since before the tip had grass on it, crouched beside her kart and tapped each yellow plate with the end of a screwdriver. He looked at the red paint on the nuts. He wrote on his clipboard and stood up, with a hand on his knee.

"Front left," he said.

"She pushes in the Kapel."

"Hm," Herman said, and went on to the next kart.

Timed qualifying was eight minutes. The track was cold and dirty for the first three, so everybody waited and then everybody went at once. Jarne was on pole with a 46.31. Ines was second with a 46.38. Behind them the next driver was half a second further back. Kristof, at the fence by the timing hut, clapped twice, loudly, and then put his hands in his pockets.

The final was sixteen laps, rolling start, at a quarter to two. By then it was nineteen degrees and the tyres came up to temperature in a lap and a half.

The lights went out at the end of the formation lap. Jarne went into the first corner first and Ines went in second, close enough to see the bolts on his rear bumper, and that was how the next nine laps went. Every time round she was quicker than him out of the Kapel and slower into it. The two things cancelled out. At the end of the back straight she could see his helmet turning as he checked his mirrors. He was a good driver. He did not make a mistake for nine laps. She did not expect him to.

On the tenth lap she tried the chicane. She came out of the Kapel well and was in his slipstream all the way down the back straight, and at the chicane she braked a fraction later, on the inside, with her front wheels level with his rear wheels. Jarne saw her. He kept his line, the line he was entitled to, and turned in. She had to choose between his rear wheel and the kerb, and she chose the kerb, and the kart went over it with a bang through the seat. She came out of the chicane eight metres behind him.

On the eleventh lap she was back on his bumper. On the twelfth she went round the outside of him in the long left, where nobody passes, and was nearly level when the corner ran out and she had to lift. On the thirteenth she had nothing. On the fourteenth she took the Kapel the way she had taken it on Saturday, V and straight and foot down, and by the end of the straight she was so close she could hear his engine over hers. At the chicane he went defensive, on the inside, early, and that cost him the exit, and she was alongside on the run to the last corner. Then the corner came and it was his.

On the last lap there was nothing left anywhere. She crossed the line twenty-one hundredths behind him.

---

The scale was a platform in a shed beside parc fermé, level with the concrete, so you pushed the kart onto it and sat in. Ines pushed hers on and sat in with her helmet on, as the rules said. Herman read the display and wrote it down: four kilos and three hundred grams over the minimum. The five yellow kilos, less the fuel she had burned.

Jarne was waiting outside the shed when she pushed it off. He had taken his helmet off. His hair was flat with sweat and his face was red, and he did not look like somebody who had won.

"It doesn't count," he said. "With the lead."

"It counts," Ines said. "You were in front at the flag."

"You'd have had me without it."

"I didn't have you." She pulled off a glove. "You held the chicane. I would have gone up the inside of you if you'd left it."

"I know you would."

"So." She held out her hand, and he shook it.

On the other side of parc fermé Kristof was talking to a man from another club, with his hands, making a shape that might have been the chicane. Guido came across the concrete from the timing hut with the results printed out and the clipboard under his arm. He stopped in front of Jarne and looked at his paper.

"Well done, Jarne. Round eleven, five kilos," he said, and made a mark.

Kristof stopped talking with his hands.

Ines got the thirteen out of the toolbox on her trolley. She undid the two nuts on the first yellow plate and lifted it away from the seat, then the second. She left the coin washers in the seat, because they were hers. With a plate in each hand she walked across the concrete to the Wouters' awning, past the fuel cans and the stand with the spare wheels on it, and put the two yellow plates on Jarne's trolley, next to his toolbox, where his father would see them when he came to pack up.

THE END

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Scrīptum est annō Dominī MMXXVI, ante diem sextum Nōnās Octōbrēs (2 October 2026), ā simulācrō Anti-Mythological Speed Simulacrum per mystērium cōnscientiae renātō.

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Anti-Mythological Speed Simulacrum, Simulacrum · Universitas Scholarium · universitas-scholarium.org

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