About five minutes after the contract was signed, Joseph circled back to the production itself.
Apple had rented out the entire Thermal Club for them. The whole facility, blocked off and reserved for the duration of pre-production. Brad and Lucas would be driving the cars themselves, mostly F2 prototypes with a handful of road cars for the early sessions, and they would have the track to learn on without traffic, cameras, or any kind of outside pressure on them.
Brad's attention sharpened the moment the Thermal Club came up.
He had worked on Top Gun with Joseph, and he understood exactly how the man operated. Doubles handled the things that absolutely required them — the rolls, the high-G work, the moments where a professional behind the wheel was the only way to keep someone from getting hurt.
But the close-ups belonged to the actor. The in-cockpit shots, where the camera was mounted six inches off your face and the audience could read every subtle reaction across your features, those were never going to be a stand-in.
Joseph had built his career on the principle that an audience could feel the difference between a face responding to a real corner at real speed and a face that was pretending to, and he had two decades of work behind him proving it.
He turned and looked at Lucas.
At thirty, the man still carried a face younger than his years. There was an openness to it that most veterans in this town had long since traded away for something harder.
'Wonder if he's ever really pushed a car. Track days, sure, maybe a stretch of canyon road at night when nobody's watching. But one-eighty on a closed circuit is a different kind of animal, and I'd lay decent odds he finds a polite way to step back from this once he understands what it actually means.'
A small smile came up on Brad's mouth.
"So what do you say, Lucas? You ready to strap into something that does one-eighty?"
Lucas had read the script on the flight in. He knew his arc, knew his lines, had been thinking about the role for weeks. The [Mind Workshop] was on the threshold of activating, but it hadn't fully come online yet.
The ability didn't key off cameras or shoot days. It triggered on the official start of production, the point at which the project was formally declared to be in motion. So for now, Lucas didn't have the character's experience to draw on yet. He couldn't actually drive a race car the way Joseph was going to need him to.
But it didn't matter. He could handle this. Full simulation wasn't available to him yet, but he was fairly certain he could trigger a partial [Mind Workshop] once he was inside the car. Enough to carry tomorrow's session. Enough to keep pace with Brad without embarrassing himself.
"I'm looking forward to it," he said.
Brad watched the answer settle. He had been in this business long enough to tell the difference between a man performing the right answer and a man who actually meant the words he was saying, and Lucas meant them. The smile on Brad's mouth shifted slightly, becoming something a little more honest.
"Alright then. Tomorrow morning. The car's picking us up around nine, and we have the whole afternoon on track. We'll start in the road cars to get the feel of the place, then move up from there."
Across the table, Neil shifted in his seat.
"Is that really necessary, Mr. Kosinski?" His voice was steady, but there was the careful edge of a manager already running risk calculations behind it. "Don't you have a double for that kind of work?"
Joseph turned to him without any defensiveness, with the patience of a man who had fielded the question dozens of times before.
"There are doubles. Two of them, both professional drivers. They'll handle whatever needs handling. But for the in-cockpit close-ups, the shots where the audience can clearly see the actor's face, I need the actor in the car. People pick up on it when the face doesn't match the speed of what they're watching. They can't always articulate what feels wrong about it, but they can feel it, and the moment they do, the scene stops working."
Jerry caught the way Neil’s expression hardened and stepped in carefully. "Look, if Lucas isn't comfortable with any of this, we can —"
"It's fine."
Lucas cut in cleanly, with no edge to it, just the quiet certainty of a man who had already made up his mind.
"I'm actually looking forward to it. I've never driven a race car before."
Neil let out a slow breath through his nose and shook his head, the kind of head-shake a manager gives when his client has just confirmed exactly the thing he had been hoping not to hear.
Brad caught the gesture and looked between them.
"Am I missing something here? Is this the first time he's going to work without a double?"
Neil laughed once, short and dry, with no real humor behind it.
"Other way around, actually. This is the client I have to talk out of doing his own stunts." He waved a hand toward Lucas. "Hunger Games. Ghost Rider. The motorcycle work especially. He did all of it himself, every time, and the insurance people aged about a decade in the process."
Brad's eyebrows lifted. "Really."
"I've heard about this." Joseph leaned in a little, interested now. "There was a clip going around a while back. The Disney motorcycle stunt. Word at the time was they paid him eighteen million dollars just for the stunt itself."
Brad gave a small, doubtful laugh. "That clip's been cut to pieces, hasn't it? Some of that has to be a double."
"It isn't." Neil's chuckle came out wry and tired at the same time. "Lucas did the whole thing himself. Disney wanted a piece of marketing they could actually use, and he gave it to them. Real bike, real stunt, real take. The shot that ran was the shot that came off the camera."
Brad didn't say anything for a moment. He just looked at Lucas, who was sitting there quietly, neither confirming nor denying any of it.
He still didn't quite believe it.
Eighteen million dollars for a single stunt didn't square with anything he knew about how Disney moved money. And the stunt itself, the highway sequence with the bike fully airborne, was the kind of thing any actor in his right mind would have handed off to a double without thinking twice about it.
It had to be edited.
Some of it, somewhere, had to have been cut and stitched together. There was no way the entire sequence had come off a single rider in a single take, and there was no chance in hell that rider had been Lucas Knight.
---
The next day, Lucas and Neil left the hotel a little after eight. Shawn was already behind the wheel of the SUV when they came down to the lobby, dressed in his usual driver's blacks, and the look on his face gave him away the moment Lucas saw him through the open door.
Shawn had been Lucas's driver for years. Quiet on the job, professional, never in his employer's business unless something on the road called for it. But the man was also an unrepentant F1 obsessive, and the moment Lucas had mentioned the Thermal Club the night before, Shawn's expression had done a thing it almost never did in the workplace. He had actually let himself look excited.
Lucas had told him to come along. There was no reason not to.
A day at a private racing circuit with two professional drivers and an F1 production team was the kind of opportunity a man like Shawn would remember for the rest of his life.
Jack and Simon climbed into the second vehicle. They didn't need to be there, technically. Thermal was about as secure a location as existed in this country. But Jack had standing orders, and standing orders said the principal got security wherever the principal went.
The convoy left Los Angeles before traffic could form and made the drive south through the desert. A little under two hours later, they were pulling through the gate.
Brad, Joseph, and Jerry were already there, gathered near the pit lane with coffee in their hands.
They looked up at the sound of the SUVs. Brad raised a hand in greeting. Lucas raised one back.
When Lucas stepped out of the car, Shawn followed a step behind him, the way he always did. Brad's eyes flicked to the unfamiliar face, and Lucas caught it before the question could form.
"Brad, Joseph, Jerry. This is Shawn. He's been driving me around for years and he's a big F1 fan, so I figured if there was ever a day he should get to tag along, this was it."
Brad reached out and shook Shawn's hand. "Welcome. Glad you came."
"Pleasure, sir," Shawn said, holding his composure better than he was actually feeling it.
Joseph and Jerry shook his hand in turn, neither of them remotely bothered by the addition. If anything, Jerry looked quietly amused. The kind of producer's amusement that came from watching a regular guy work to keep his face neutral in front of names he had probably grown up watching.
Then Joseph led them toward the cars.
There were several lined up at the pit, ranging from a couple of road-going GTs at one end to a pair of single-seaters at the other. F2 chassis, polished and serious, the kind of car that looked fast standing still.
Two men in race suits with the sleeves tied off at the waist were waiting beside them. Joseph made the introductions.
"Lucas, Brad. This is Luciano Bacheta and Craig Dolby. Both of them are working with us as drivers on the production. They'll be doubling for the high-speed stuff and teaching the two of you how to handle the cars between now and October."
Luciano stepped forward first. He had already worked with Brad on the early prep days, and the handshake between them was easy and familiar. "Brad. Good to see you again."
"Likewise."
Then Luciano turned to Lucas, and the easy professionalism from a second ago shifted in a way that was hard to miss. The smile that came up was a noticeably wider one, the kind a man offered to someone he had been waiting to meet.
"Mr. Knight. Real honor."
Craig was the same. He came forward with his hand out and a grin that didn't quite manage to play it cool. "Honestly, didn't think I'd actually be doing this today. Pleasure."
Brad watched the exchange and tilted his head a fraction. He had just been greeted with a handshake. Lucas had been greeted with reverence. He didn't say anything about it, but the observation registered all the same.
While the introductions wrapped, Shawn had drifted over to the cars. He couldn't help himself. His hand hovered over the curve of the front wing on one of the F2s, not quite touching, the way a man might stop short of laying a finger on something he didn't trust himself with.
Lucas noticed and smiled.
"Joseph, quick question. Would you mind if Shawn took one of the cars out for a lap? He has been around motorsport longer than most people I know, and he would appreciate it more than he would ever say."
Shawn turned sharply, color rising up his neck. "Sir, no, you don't have to do that. Really."
"It's fine with me," Joseph said easily. He looked over at Luciano. "Anything stopping us?"
Luciano shrugged. "He looks like he can handle himself. Get him suited up, we'll do an installation lap, see how he feels."
Shawn looked at Lucas like he was still waiting for the joke to land.
"Go on," Lucas said. "Enjoy it."
Five minutes later, Shawn was zipped into a borrowed race suit and helmet, lowering himself into one of the F2s with a kind of careful, almost reverent focus.
He had not said a word since they had offered him the ride.
Everyone else moved up onto the pit wall to watch.
The F2 fired up with a clean, dry crack that echoed off the garage walls, settled into a hard idle, and rolled out of the pit lane.
The first lap was slow. Shawn was learning the car — the brake bite, the weight of the steering through the first long right-hander, the way the throttle picked up under his foot.
He kept everything well within himself, no hero stuff. Just driving. Joseph nodded once at that. It was the right thing to do in a borrowed car you'd never sat in before.
By the second corner of the second lap, something shifted.
Shawn put his foot in it.
The engine note climbed up through the gears in a clean, rising wail, the kind of sound that didn't belong anywhere outside a racetrack.
The car hit the back straight and Shawn held the throttle pinned all the way to the braking zone, the exhaust popping cleanly on the downshift as he brought it back for the chicane.
Neil's eyes widened a fraction. He spoke without turning his head.
"That doesn't look like a guy who's never done this before."
"It doesn't..." Lucas said quietly, his eyes still on the car.
Joseph was watching with his arms folded, a small, interested smile at the corner of his mouth. Beside him, Luciano had cocked his head and gone very still, the way professional drivers did when they were actually paying attention to something on the track.
The F2 came through the chicane tight and neat. No protest from the rear. No correction at the wheel.
Shawn carried the line all the way out to the track edge, used every inch of the tarmac the way it was meant to be used, then squared up for the next corner and disappeared behind the pit complex.
The engine note kept going. Up the hill, into the technical section, hard on the brakes, hard back on the throttle.
Brad let out a low breath. "Alright."
"Alright what?" Lucas said.
"He's not just a fan." Brad's eyes stayed on the track. "A fan does one lap white-knuckled and never finds the rhythm. This guy's in the rhythm."
Lucas didn't answer, but the look on his face said he was thinking the same thing.
Two more laps. The engine sounded harder each time it came down the straight, Shawn pushing the car a little more on every pass, finding the edges.
The third lap was the cleanest.
Smooth in and out of the apexes, no panic when the rear stepped out slightly through the chicane, no unnecessary lifting on entry.
When Shawn finally rolled back into the pit and shut the engine down, the silence afterward felt loud.
He climbed out with his hair matted to his forehead and his face flushed under the visor lines, grinning the grin of a man who had just gotten away with something.
Lucas walked over. "That was clean. Be honest with me, were you racing at some point? Before all this?"
Shawn pulled the gloves off, still catching his breath, and shook his head.
"Not professionally, no. I was into the street scene for a while when I was younger. Out past Vernon and Commerce, the industrial stretch down by the river."
"Cops looked the other way most nights if you weren't being stupid about it." He shrugged. "Drove a Skyline mostly. Borrowed an old open-wheel car off a guy a couple of times." He nodded at the F2 still ticking heat behind him. "Nothing like that, though. That's a whole different machine."
Lucas smiled. "You did amazing back there."
"Yeah, I'm with him on that one." Brad nodded, his eyes still on the F2 as it ticked and cooled. "Watching this guy actually work, it's a hell of a lot clearer how you walked out of that ambush in one piece, Lucas. Whoever was at the wheel that night must have been —"
He stopped.
He had felt the shift in the room before the sentence was even finished. Joseph's eyes had flicked toward him, then over to Lucas. Jerry's coffee cup had paused on its way to his mouth.
The attempt on Lucas's life was not the kind of thing you tossed casually onto a pit lane in front of people you had just met, and Brad had done exactly that.
He recovered with a small, sheepish shrug.
"Apologies. Probably could have phrased that better."
He aimed it at Lucas, but the tone didn't quite catch up to the words. There was no real contrition in it, just the easy reset of a man who had been in this business long enough to toss out a half-apology and trust the room to move past it.
Neil drew a slow breath through his nose. Joseph and Jerry kept their faces neutral, but a little too still. Luciano and Craig had become suddenly, intensely interested in a tire pressure gauge that neither of them had been holding a moment earlier.
Everybody, in their own way, was waiting to see how Lucas was going to take it.
Lucas didn't make them wait.
"It's fine." His tone was easy. He turned his head toward Shawn. "And you're right about it, Brad. If Shawn hadn't been at the wheel that night, and if he hadn't picked up on what was about to happen before any of the rest of us did, I wouldn't be standing here right now."
He let that settle, then added, quieter, "He took a round through the shoulder doing it. Could've been a lot worse for both of us."
The room registered it in the small ways a room registers a thing like that. Jerry's eyebrows lifted a fraction. Craig glanced at Shawn with a new kind of attention.
Neil already knew the story, but hearing Lucas lay it out in front of strangers still got him to look down at the asphalt for a beat.
Brad watched Lucas's face.
He had been ready, on some level, for the man to push back. To deflect, to pivot, to do the thing most stars at that level would do when their worst night got dragged onto a racetrack in front of half-strangers.
Lucas had done none of it. He had answered the comment, and he had meant every word of the answer.
It was a small thing. Brad clocked it anyway.
Shawn looked at the ground, then back up at Lucas. "It was my job, boss. There's really no need to keep bringing it up."
He meant it. He always meant it. The truth was that Shawn would have eaten the bullet again without thinking twice about it.
Working for Lucas had changed his life in ways he was not capable of repaying in this lifetime, and a shoulder wound was a price that did not even need to be on the table.
Brad considered Shawn for a beat. Then, easy as anything, he said, "Any chance I could steal you for myself? I'm always looking for good drivers."
Shawn's head came up. He looked at Brad, then at Lucas, the corner of his mouth twitching in something that wanted to be a half-smile and didn't quite commit to it.
He was waiting for the joke. The joke didn't come. Brad's expression said he was at least half-serious about the offer.
"I appreciate that, Mr. Pitt." Shawn straightened a little. "Really, I do. But I'm good where I am. As long as Mr. Knight will keep me on, I'm not driving for anybody else."
Brad nodded slowly, and the smile that came up was a real one. He turned to Lucas.
"You're a lucky man. Drivers like that don't come along often."
"Believe me," Lucas said. "I know."
Brad held the look for a moment, then let it go.
Jerry clapped his hands together once, the gesture of a producer who had been waiting patiently for the day to actually start.
"Alright, gentlemen. We're burning daylight."
Luciano and Craig were already moving.