He would still have to stay intensely focused for the second half.
Bzz, bzz.
Static came through his headset. It was probably an internal transmission with some important track information.
"Attention, all competitors. Attention, all competitors."
"On the Bottom of the Valley route, just past the service station, 236 meters from the merge zone, the driver in position nine has tipped sideways and retired."
It was normal for cars to have accidents and retire, but the T2 Expansion Race deserved some praise: they had covered such a long distance before the first driver retired.
How much farther was it to the merge point now...
Shen Qi could not tell, and the organizers had not provided its exact location.
The first service station was at 210 kilometers, and the second at 320 kilometers, so the merge point lay somewhere between those two distances.
Gradually, Shen Qi had grown numb even to how far he had traveled since leaving the service station.
On long straights, he could exceed 300 kilometers per hour. On troublesome low-speed corners where he could not use "Magnet Rise," he had to slow to fifty or sixty.
With his speed constantly rising and falling and the terrain so bizarre, he had truly lost all sense of distance.
Shen Qi could only exchange a few words with his Pokémon from time to time to keep prolonged tension from leaving him numb and careless.
At last, a temporary road sign appeared ahead. The current route turned right, with a warning that traffic would merge.
"They knew the merge point would be dangerous, and they still put such a difficult obstacle here!"
Shen Qi could not help complaining.
The right turn ahead sat precisely in a narrow gap between two mountains. The howling mountain wind was compressed by the narrow terrain,