Erica took great pleasure in speeding past MacGrath when her rival hit the rubble, heightened reflexes allowing her to dodge around the dust and debris; well, that was the price for not paying attention when it mattered, especially as they were coming up to the trickiest part in the course, or at least, the corners that cost the most lives. Still, that did not stop the more daring or morbid spectators from crowding the pits and stands there; some even had bets on who would die. When Erica had first started out, she had seen her name on those bets plenty of times for all sorts of tracks, but she did not let it bother her anymore.

The sudden blast of the horn first made her flinch, but secondly infuriated her; she shook her head, knowing that a lack of concentration was exactly what MacGrath wanted. Still, the horn continued to blare, gnawing away at Erica's patience like a rabid animal; a glance in the wing mirror told her that the other woman was hot on her tail, most likely with a smug look on her face under that visor. At least on the corners, Erica could let up a bit on the acceleration to give her poor bike a break; hundreds of scorch marks and broken walls told her that not everyone had slowed up in the past.
On and on the horn went, loud and obnoxious - [i]"Christ! Is she ever gonna let up?"[/i] Erica was inches away from losing her temper, so close in fact that she completely missed a deep pothole in the road that caused her hoverbike to briefly hit the ground, sending up sparks and shaking the entire frame.

Bracing, Erica hung on and steadied her bike, managing to maintain some amount of speed to be neck-and-neck with MacGrath as they swerved around the corners. Unfortunately now, her steering had been knocked a little off by the pothole, making all the deaths on this set of corners suddenly seem very real. Especially now that they were fast approaching the worst corner of them all - a complete hairpin charmingly named Last Rites, which had claimed no fewer than 200 lives since the track had been set up. Not only that, it was on a steep decline - all the more difficult. However, it was the last difficult corner before the easiest stretch of the race - if anyone could nail this corner, they would have a far simpler time winning. 

Critics had argued that the rivalry was getting out of hand; perhaps it was, but there was no denying that in that rivalry there was respect, so she was not about to do anything drastic. Just a little something to get MacGrath back for the horn thing, mainly because Erica was still seething with anger. Her bike only had one weapon, a little ion blast that was useless at long range; but at short range, it could disrupt electronics - just enough to temporarily cause a few minor problems, not to take someone out of the race entirely. 
So Erica deliberately slowed up a bit as if her bike was overheating (which it was, a little) and scanned MacGrath's bike before taking aim and firing the ion blast.

In hindsight, this was never going to be a good move.