Francorchamps

"Three lights...four lights...five lights..." Jarno could almost hear the unmistakeable voice of Murray Walker in his ear as he watched the lights go on. Or tried to. It was hard enough to see the lights from thirteenth on the grid as it was, but in the torrential rain, with your crash helmet on? It was almost impossible.

But, "GO!!!"...suddenly the lights were off, and in an instant the twenty-two cars assembled around him sprang to life with a deafening scream. Time for the fun to begin. The start was just like the twelve others he had contested that year, and the fourteen he'd contested the year before. Swerve to the left, onto the racing line. Flick the paddle behind the steering wheel; up into second gear. Make sure you don't slam straight into Wurz in front of you. Check your mirrors; check Barrichello's still behind you. Now look to the left again; look for the brake markers. There they are. BRAKE!

Round the La Source hairpin. A tricky enough corner in the dry. Thankfully it wasn't far from the start line, so the cars hadn't gotten up to speed yet. A car dived down the inside; Barrichello had gotten the better of him. No matter; he had passed two cars already, and was right on the tail of a third. He stamped hard on the accelerator; back up to second; now up to third; now they were away, down the long straight up to Eau Rouge. The most famous corner in Formula One.

Jarno swerved to the left, cutting off a car behind him; he immediately cut to the right to avoid touching the back of the car in front. It was a Sauber - or was it a Benetton? Jarno couldn't tell through the heavy spray flying up from the back of the car, and from the cars all around him. One could scarcely see one's own hand in front of their face.

Something registered in the corner of Jarno's vision. Something seemed to have swerved across the track a few hundred yards in front and slammed into the right-hand wall. Was it a car? Jarno couldn't tell. Through the spray it looked almost dolphin-shaped, but obviously it wasn't a dolphin, even though it was wet enough for one to survive here...

SLAM. What happened registered immediately; Jarno had suffered a lapse in concentration and hit the car in front. With the sudden deceleration, everything seemed to lapse into slow-motion; even the rain seemed to shudder to a temporary crawl. There was an instant of silence, broken sharply by another loud bang and a furious jolt, as another car (presumably) slammed straight into the back of Jarno's stricken car. Obviously unsighted by the spray.

Jarno sat in his car for a few seconds to come to terms with things. His race was over. The safety car would probably have to come out, slowing down the remaining cars while the debris from the accident was cleared away by the track marshals. And this could certainly damage his status within the team. This was his sophomore year in F1, and he'd retired from more than half the races so far and failed to score any points; Jarno knew that if he carried on like this it would be his last.

Now for the disheartening, though mercifully short walk back to the pit lane. He unscrewed the steering wheel, and placed it where he knew the car's nose cone would be; he still couldn't see it through the driving rain. Then he got out of the car, took one step and felt his leg kick something. He looked down; it appeared to be a tyre. Free from its carbon-steel master, it had been merrily rolling across the deserted track as tumbleweed does across desert.

But was it deserted? The tyre couldn't possibly have come from his car. He raised his visor, increasing his visibility, though only slightly as it was still hard to see through the driving rain. Even so, it was just enough for him to make out the carnage that had unfolded around him.

The tarmac around him was littered with cars. At least a dozen of them, all apparently having crashed into each other. The floor was strewn with shards of carbon fibre, winking white and blue and red through the grey gloom, and scores of wheels like the one he had just kicked were barrelling from the scene like escaped cattle broken free from their ranch. It appeared that somebody had run wide and spun onto the racing line; and everyone else, just like Jarno had, had simply ploughed unsighted into the melee, systematically eliminating almost every car behind a certain point on the track. And all around him, the other drivers were getting out of their cars, taking off their helmets, and awakening to the same nightmare.

Jarno clambered his way through the chaos, the stricken cars, and approached a marshal, who was frantically waving a blood-red flag. "What the hell happened?" he asked him.

"Not a clue." replied the marshal in a slight French accent. "I see Coulthard spin up there somewhere-" he gesticulated wildly at an area a few yards behind Jarno's stricken car "-and the next thing I know, all the cars are piled up together, sliding across the tarmac..." The marshal lowered the flag and sighed heavily. "It'll be a damned miracle if nobody was hurt."

A tap on the shoulder. Jarno turned round to see his team-mate, Olivier, holding his crash helmet in one hand. He looked somewhat dejected.

"You'll be needing that for the restart." he said, gesturing at Jarno's crash helmet. Jarno nodded and was about to put it on when he hesitated. "What about you?" he asked.

"I got taken out too," replied Olivier, "and there's only one spare car. You're the lead driver, so..." He shrugged disappointedly. "I'll have to just watch in the garage."

Jarno smiled at his team-mate, then put the crash helmet back on. His race engineer was calling him over the team radio. "Jarno," he said, "are you okay? What happened?"

Jarno surveyed the carnage once more. Not just the Minardis and Tyrrells had been taken out, but a Ferrari and a Benetton as well. World Champions and backmarkers, household names and debutantes, all levelled in one mistake, one wrong turn of the steering wheel. He looked over at his team-mate, still holding his crash helmet and staring longingly at his wrecked car. He looked over at the marshals, now picking up the pieces; clearing away the reams of debris, rolling the severed tyres out of the way and pushing the cars' shattered remains to one side so they could be recovered. Then he looked behind him, and saw David Coulthard, seemingly the instigator of this whole affair, walking dejectedly back towards the pits to claim his spare car, his helmet still on, the raindrops bouncing off it. Trying to come to terms with it all. Jarno sighed, and took a deep breath.

"It's...almost like the whole place just exploded." said Jarno. And with that, he meandered his way back through the destruction, past the broken pieces of carbon fibre that still carpeted the ground. He passed a marshal wheeling his car towards the barriers, to be picked up by a crane and taken away, and for a moment, it seemed to Jarno that he was hauling a battered body across a bomb site, ready to be thrown into an ambulance and driven to the morgue. Then he was back in the pit lane, joining the dozen other drivers marching through the monsoon, some still helmeted, some dragging their crash helmets behind them, as though the storm had washed away their homes and they were now hauling their belongings through the driving rain, soaked through, searching for refuge.