The Best American Sports Writing 2014(101)

By the midpoint, it was shaping up as a two-man race between Vettel and Hamilton, with Alonso in a distant third. (Webber’s alternator blew on the 17th lap, forcing his withdrawal.) Hamilton’s car was faster in a straight line—by 11 kilometers per hour, the BBC commentary said—but seemed to lack the Red Bull’s downforce, or grip, and he slid more in the corners. On my screen, as I pretended to be Hamilton, Vettel would appear larger and closer each time we approached a sharp turn, only to scurry away again as we accelerated out. The cat-and-mouse game continued for more than 20 minutes, as Hamilton narrowed the gap to within DRS-boosting range.

Newey stood in the pit lane with several team officials, wearing noise-canceling headphones and staring at a bank of computer screens, in a bit of pageantry for the television production. (“We could probably do a better job in the back of the garage,” he confessed. “You’re strung out in a line. You can’t hear anything.”) They monitored live data from the hundreds of sensors in Vettel’s chassis and engine, advising on tire conditions, and communicated via radio and instant message with another group of technicians seated in a command center back in Milton Keynes, some of whom simulated the race in real time, forecasting when Hamilton and Alonso and the others might make a pit stop.

The ample technical support was unable to help Vettel overcome his biggest obstacle: the inconvenient slowness of Narain Karthikeyan, of the struggling Hispania Racing Team. Vettel cursed into his microphone as he downshifted into Turn Eleven on his 43rd lap and found himself momentarily impeded by Karthikeyan, bringing up the rear on his own 42nd. The brief logjam brought Hamilton to within a couple of car lengths, and gave him the window he needed on the following straight. Up went the DRS flap on Hamilton’s rear wing. More cursing. The cat had overtaken the mouse.

Vettel would have to wait another week to secure his third title, but, in accordance with the complexities of Formula One, Red Bull still had cause for celebration. The second-place finish in Austin was worth enough points in the team standings to clinch the Constructors’ Championship, the source of the big prize money, if not of the cork-popping glory. Few in the Paddock Club, or among the departing crowd, for that matter, seemed to notice all the Red Bull personnel assembling on the track for a team photo after Mario Andretti had welcomed the victorious Hamilton and the runners-up, Vettel and Alonso, to the podium for the ceremonial Mumm spraying. The garages were being hurriedly disassembled. On the Jumbotron above, a man in a cowboy hat sang “Margaritaville.” Newey lingered a while longer, speaking politely to the remaining British TV cameras, and raised his fist and thumb in the air. Last week, a report surfaced in the Italian press that Ferrari had resumed its pursuit of his services.





NICK PAUMGARTEN

The Manic Mountain


FROM THE NEW YORKER





UELI STECK’S CLOSEST BRUSH with death, or at least the time he thought it likeliest that he was about to die, came not when he plummeted 700 feet down the south face of Annapurna, or spidered up the Eiger’s fearsome North Face alone and without ropes in under three hours, or slipped on wet granite while free-climbing the Golden Gate route of El Capitan with his wife, on their honeymoon, but, rather, while he was hugging his knees in a tent on Mount Everest, hiding from a crowd of Sherpas who were angry that his climbing partner had called one of them a “motherfucker,” in Nepali. They were threatening to kill him. He had no escape. He had planned everything so scrupulously. The intended route up the mountain was sublime, the conditions perfect. He had spent years honing his body and his mind while tending to his projects and the opportunities that arose out of them. As a climber, he knew that the mountains can foil the best-laid plans, that in an instant a routine ascent can turn into a catalog of horrors. But it would be ridiculous to die like this. The expedition had hardly begun.

Steck had made his first trip to Everest in May 2011, at the age of 34. He’d built a reputation as one of the world’s premier alpinists—“the Swiss Machine,” some called him, to his dismay—by ascending, in record time, alone and without ropes, Europe’s notorious north faces and then by taking on bold Himalayan routes, with style and speed. Everest hardly fit the pattern. In recent years, accomplished mountaineers in search of elegant, difficult, and original climbs had tended to steer clear of its crowds, expense, and relative drudgery. Still, Everest is Everest. Steck felt the pull.

That spring, 500 feet from the summit, he turned back, concerned that frostbite might claim his toes. He was also uncharacteristically spent, after climbing two other 8,000-meter peaks in previous weeks. (The goal of three in one trip was new.) But an idea had taken hold: a route that, if accomplished from beginning to end, would represent a milestone of modern mountaineering, a glorious plume. He began scheming and training for it. He returned a year later, to attain the summit via the standard route—a step toward the goal. He reached the top in the company of the lead group of Sherpas, the local people, many of whom work as porters and guides for the commercial expeditions on Everest. This was on the first day that the weather cleared for a summit push. The next day, the crowds went up—hundreds of aspirants, most of them clients of commercial companies, and their Sherpas—and, amid the traffic jam approaching the summit, four climbers died, of exposure and cerebral edema.