[b][center][h2]Joel Nicolosi[/h2] [/center][/b]

They had a few different tire compounds to try out and Joel wasn’t as keen on testing them all on the coarse airport tarmac. The runway surface was nowhere near what they would encounter on the winding, undulating stage of the Isle of Man and testing on the Parkway near Mount Atlas would be an affair he didn’t know that they would have time to figure out with the state park service. Their small test course crossed over aged concrete and beaten runway that was never designed for cars or slick racing tires. Still, they needed data. With the car on its jacks, he zipped off one wheel with the airgun and examined the wear on the rubber looking for consistent patterns and signs of poor contact that would require more adjustments to the suspension. Lou likewise did the same on the other side and the whirling sound of a pneumatic gun broke through the music and the whistling of an aircraft APU in the distance. Carefully, he ran his hand over the contact patch and rotated the tire slowly in front of him as he sat on the ground looking, almost without blinking, just over the top of the tire, at the profile, as he moved it. Somewhere Tommy had once bought a very expensive laser-scan machine that would do the job much faster, but Joel didn’t like it. Even since he raced carts as a kid, he always checked his own tires by hand.

The gun howled again as Lou put on two new hard slicks and the quick sound likewise transitioned into a fast, mechanical ratcheting as the wheel-nut was seated on the spindle. Joel set the tire in front of him aside and picked the gun up off ground as Lou slid it under the car, grabbing the new tire set next to him and spinning it on, just the same. He was scooting his way towards the back of the car when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. Taking it out, he set the call to speaker and with a grin, made sure the sound of the gun greeted Siobhan as the lines connected. He pulled the wheel off and turned it gingerly in his hand to examine, talking as he scanned. “Hey chicka, what’s up?”

[@Almalthia]