Challenger #001
25th October 2010, 09:01 AM
http://wipeout-game.com/resource/images/teams/qirex_1.png
6 – Qirex Research and Development (Russia)
Team Principal:
Feliks Levovitch (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png)
Slogan:
"Prepare for a High Speed Revolution"
Backstory:
Whenever AG-Racing has gone, Qirex Research and Development has almost always been there, for better or for worse. Without question the most successful team in AG-Racing, Qirex was formed in 2021 by an amalgamation of five other Russian industrial companies in order to keep afloat during the global strikes sweeping the globe: Quantax CFD, Irkutsk Nuclear Developments, Rubik-Tech, Electrolux and X-Track Racing. The five initially began working on submarine and space ship technology for the Russian government, but it seemed to begin falling apart in 2035 after Pierre Belmondo demonstrated his first ever AG-ship in Nevada. Nobody wanted to go underwater anymore now that the sky was open to all, and the submarine division was forced to close its’ doors.
The head executives of Qirex began talk of trying to develop their own AG-crafts, but it was a long and arduous process to receive the patents from AG-Systems and develop their own thrusters. The first Qirex commercial craft were therefore known as unreliable beasts, but favoured for their cheapness compared to AG-Systems devices. Over the next nine years, Qirex slowly became better and better at making their craft, their nuclear facilities at Irkutsk providing them with efficient and powerful energy, giving them a lot of power when it was needed.
When the AntiGravity Race Commission was set up in 2044, Qirex decided to apply for a race entry, though they were initially unsure of how to go about making a race craft instead of the great lumbering transport behemoths they’d been making before. Salvation arrived in the form of Holst McQueen, one of Pierre Belmondo’s protégées from AG-Systems, who had been ousted from the Japanese company after arguments over money and the way the company should go with colleague Delia Flaubert, who later went on to run Auricom.
McQueen believed in fast, efficient business designed to make money and turn a profit, with no holds barred. The five men who ran Qirex together eagerly began to defer to the driven Canadian as he marshalled Qirex into making a race-winning team. McQueen encouraged Qirex to stop thinking of themselves as separate companies but all as a single team designed to make them all money and victory, and the Quantax-built LA-01 was Qirex’s first ever racing ship. When it hit the track in 2050, the Qirex with their favourite test pilot Kel Solaar at the helm dominated the long, sweeping curves of Altima VIII with a thrust level that belied belief.
AG-Systems reeled Qirex in soon in the later events on twisting tracks, but the constant changing of the craft instead of keeping it focussed on a winning design meant that AG-S kept losing points to Qirex and eventually Auricom as well, leaving the Russian team to charge home with the first ever AntiGravity World Championship. Over the years, Qirex netted another four F3200 trophies, and as the championship moved into F5000, it won another one, not to mention the two it achieved in F7200.
Qirex was always the victorious, powerful team but that impressiveness came at a price. Almost every single race, there was something raised against either the Qirex team or their pilots. Whether it was the accusations of Qirex having planted Cherovoski as a spy in the Auricom team, pilot Vladimir Tuchyon’s weaving to prevent an overtake from a faster FEISAR or even the team’s excessive amount of merchandise sales points at the entry to an event that resulted in almost half the audience wearing purple caps at the race. Despite all this, despite all the pursed lips and mutters amongst the racing fans, Qirex had never done anything actually wrong.
The same could not be said of Qirex’s iteration from 2156 to 2170, during the fated F9000. Overtel, one of the main datacast corporations that had sponsored and supported Qirex in its’ previous seasons left to run the F9000 league, leaving the Russian squad with a new owner necessary. Unfortunately, the Greek corporation Tigron Enterprises had taken some of Holst McQueen’s lessons far too much to heart, and promptly turned Qirex into its’ darkest iteration yet, the aggressive and corrupt Tigron.
When the F9000 fell, both Overtel and Tigron quickly took the easy way out, and their headquarters in Moscow and Athens were burnt to a crisp. Indeed, the fires that had destroyed Tigron’s HQ spread for miles about, leaving Greece nothing more than a barren, irradiated wasteland nowadays.
The old Qirex factory in Irkutsk lay abandoned and dormant for some years after that, and the doors did not open until 2185, during the first race of the resurrected FX150 league in January. The one functioning video surveillance machine left in the building’s tape is retained, and it shows a man in a large overcoat with curly black hair walking alone through the desiccated factory. This man was Feliks Levovitch.
Feliks was the son of Sergei Levovitch, the chief Engineer at Qirex during the F7200 days, one of the several important figures of Qirex who was outed as soon as Tigron took control of the company. Feliks then had seen the damage that greed can do to a company, and had sworn to restore the Qirex name in the minds of people across the world. Feliks had bought the decaying factory for the sum of only ten thousand roubles and had every intention of returning to the fight. He called over a group of men on the streets who had returned from another unsuccessful day at the job centre, and asked if they’d help him clear out the factory. Before long, with the promise of regular food from Feliks (who was a good cook a the very least) meant that Qirex had a regular array of people willing to help install his new factory and clean it out. By September of that year, the factory was absolutely spotless.
Feliks then decided to go about searching for people to help him make a ship. Fortunately, there was no end of the number of people willing to help lend a hand even for little money. Russian Universities weren’t considered as powerful a force then as European and Japanese ones, so those who’d taken AG-studies often found themselves having to re-think their plans when the four teams in the FX150 turned them down. Despite his low funds saved up from his time working with a transport company during the lean years of F9000, Feliks could provide for everyone, and was soon known as ‘Хороший дед’, or ‘Good Grandfather’ to all at Qirex.
Feliks was firm in his job, and drove the workers hard, but he never treated them as anything less than human, and that is what a lot of people say got Qirex off the ground. The LR-01, the first ship flown since 2155 to bear the Qirex name, lifted off its’ mountings in April, 2188. With the news of a Russian AG-team, sponsors flooded in and soon Feliks found himself inundated with offers of money and images to stick on the sides. Knowing that he needed money, Levovitch did not turn down a single one, and hired the ace racing pilot Nadia Elenova to race for the team. Qirex took a few years to perfect the craft and train Nadia in Zone mode, with their first appearance halfway through the FX200. Unfortunately, as they found out in that first race, their old rivals hadn’t let up the bitter feelings and the LR-01 was destroyed within two laps by the Auricom team.
Undaunted, Feliks rallied his men and women and began to strike back, slowly clawing at the back of the field and sometimes coming within striking distance of FEISAR and Assegai. Nadia was proving to be an exceptionally popular pilot, though her skill compared to her teammate, Auricom refugee Rory Pinewood was always up for debate.
Qirex have shown again and again that they are more than capable of rising from the ashes of a team that had died so long ago, and now they are a force to be reckoned with. Feliks still lives in the same apartment as he has done for the past thirty years despite offers to live better, pouring as much money as he can into the team and his employees’ salary. No doubt Holst McQueen would tear his hair out if he saw Qirex’s turnover, but the fact remains is that people are buying purple hats and t-shirts willingly rather than it being forced down their throats.
Allies: Goteki 45, Icaras
Rival: Piranha
Arch-Rivals: Auricom
Searching AntiGravity Racing Archives for Subject ‘Qirex and Auricom’
1876 Matches Found...
Opening File...
The FX500 Race Commission has decided to decline Auricom's... *subject checks his data-slate* ...two hundredth and eighty-first attempt to ban a fellow competitor from the league on insufficient grounds. Auricom Originals claim to have the support of AG-Systems and Piranha Advancements on its' petition, however we see no evidence to that in the message.
Auricom have requested that the following teams are expelled from the AntiGravity Racing Leagues indefinitely: Qirex Research and Development, Goteki 45, EG-X Technologies and Triakis Industries. The letter has identified numerous minor faults with all teams that it claims are reasons for their disqualifications. It references amongst other things: Pilot N. Elenova's (of Qirex RD) jump-start at Tech De Ra in August 2212, for which the pilot served the appropriate time penalty; Pilot P. So-Gun's (of Goteki 45) forcing another competitor off the track at Ubermall in March 2210 for which the pilot apologised in the subsequent press conference; and Pilot V. Stephenson's elimination of a competitor with rockets after the end of the race, for which the pilot served the resultant eight-race ban.
*subject is interrupted as he begins another anecdote, whereby he clears his throat and nods* Ah, yes. My apologies. Auricom continues to declare these teams as 'rogue operatives' and decries their brutal tactics... which the Commission have deemed to be legal. All precautions have been taken to ensure the protection of the pilots these past few seasons, and as there has not been a serious injury since the FX150 leagues, we believe our precautions are working. If a team is afraid of being rammed or bumped, they should take precautions on track and in the garage, not in the courtrooms.
-AntiGravity FX500 Race Commission Steward K. Atkinson, speaking at Pre-Season Party 2213, Tokyo
Ship Details:
Qirex seems to have blown almost all of its’ money on the LT-01 for this season, a ship that bears little to no similarities to its’ predecessor whatsoever. Whereas the LS series were flat and wide, the LT is thin and long. Ship specifications state that the long extrusions of the hull beyond the bodywork are an experimental kind of solar turbo generator, designed to fuel the (fairly) small reactor inside the Qirex with light energy from the track sides, advertising and weapons fire from competitors. The scrutineers have been humming and hawing about this technology for some time, but have decided to allow it for this season. Some teams (surprise surprise, including Auricom) have called foul on Qirex’s plan, but as Levovitch himself stated, the only reason that they decided to try these devices on the ship hulls is that Qirex couldn’t afford any more ship armour aside from what is already on the cockpit, leaving ICON as the only major sponsor this year with noticeable hull space.
A lot of weight reduction has gone on inside the craft, meaning that this is in fact the only FX500 ‘Fury’ craft to be lighter than its’ predecessor aside from the Harimau. When asked if Harimau had any input in the weight saving technology, chief engineer Jokai Temuge admitted that yes, the Harimau/FEISAR collaboration had been consulted for help on the business of handling, but in terms of secrets given back to the two teams?
“Well, FEISAR hasn’t asked for anything... assuming we don’t let Heather trouble them with legal proceedings, and Harimau has asked Levovitch to look after a snow leopard cub. He’s called it Kel.”
Lead Pilot – Rory Pinewood (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Flag_of_Canada.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada.svg.png)
Initially a student at Auricom’s AG school, Rory was expelled for what his tutors called ‘an excessively dangerous and aggressive attitude towards racing’. Despite his speed, Rory preferred to eschew Auricom’s racing etiquette and forced his way to the front by trading a lot of paint. Not deterred from his love of the sport though, he searched around the other teams for a place and found an offer from Levovitch himself. Feliks offered Rory a place on the team for no pay but a chance to fly, and the man accepted gladly.
Pinewood faced down his long-time rival at the Auricom academy in his first race in the form of Platon Dhavoric, and the irony of a North American pilot in a Qirex racing against a Russian pilot in an Auricom was not lost on the commentators. Knowing that the world was watching, Rory slammed the LR-04 to its’ limits, determined not to slip up in front of the watching public and especially Levovitch. By the time the final lap came up, he had left Dhavoric behind and was coming up on the squabbling Caluroso and Stephenson, fighting for the lead. The commentator’s quotes from the race say it all.
“Stephenson takes the corner just a little too wide! That’s Caluroso through, but we’re opening onto a long straight, that Triakis is going to get right back up on the Frenchman’s backside!”
“Hold on, Stefan, something’s catching the Tri!”
“Blow me, you’re right! That’s Pinewood, Pinewood in the Qirex coming up on the lead... bet you didn’t think that was going to happen in the FX200 league, did you?”
“Absolutely not, and Qirex are going to be over the moon with Pinewood for this – first race out and he gets them a bronze. The man means business.”
“Stephenson has caught right up to Caluroso, and he’s slamming the AG-systems over to the side, neither pilot as any room and... oh, my god – is Pinewood trying to get through?”
“My god, he is – the man’s crazy, he’ll never get through that in a million... OH MY GOD! Pinewood is through! You couldn’t have squeezed a needle into that gap!”
“He very nearly didn’t, that’s ruined the paint on the right hand side! Pinewood, for Qirex in the lead on the final lap, three turns to go and... he’s just dropped a bomb, hasn’t he?”
“That’s a bomb right in the path of the two fighters and there’s nowhere to go... bam! Caluroso’s out! That AG-Systems had just taken too much punishment for its’ own good... Stephenson will be pleased with second, but I’m not quite believing it... on the top step we have a Qirex. A QIREX!”
Watching on the provided screens at the trackside, Feliks Levovitch smiled amidst the whooping Russian mechanics. Wherever Qirex has gone, Pinewood has gone with them, taking over First Pilot status from Elenova when she left at the end of the FX400 series. Quick to compliment good piloting and to criticise alike, Pinewood has been more than welcome at press conferences where his matter-of-fact manner, while sometimes controversial, is always welcome amidst the waves of publicity-friendly statements from some pilots.
As well as Ferrai of Goteki 45, Pinewood has often been seen on race weekends with Kaet’yrun of Mirage and Harding of Triakis, the four of them colloquially calling themselves ‘The Bad Boys’ of the league and sometimes setting up private Zone Battle events, meaning that the four have extraordinary experience with the new and experimental simulated race series.
Second Pilot – Balawyn Samirsdøttir (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Flag_of_Iceland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Iceland.svg.png)
When the final eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland threatened to shatter the entire island apart, Qirex was one of the many companies that went to the rescue, firing up every model they’d ever made and a few from their old days of F7200 as well with test pilots, engineers, Pinewood and Levovitch himself flying to the doomed island even as it began to splinter apart under the volcanic eruption. One pilot of a 2099-Spec LH-03 craft landed on the outskirts of Reykjavik, but as the engineer got out to help people clamber on to the sides of the ship, he was hit by a piece of volcanic rock and was knocked senseless.
One of the refugees clambered into the ship and fired it up herself, getting the engineer strapped onto the side as she pulled the race craft up and shuttled it to and from the waiting rescue ships out of range of volcanic activity. The LH-03 was reported to have saved the lives of nearly five hundred Icelandic civilians as well as the engineer, and the pilot was approached after the rescue operation by Levovitch, to thank her for her work. The woman, who had been a tour guide before the eruption and had been used to flying AG-craft, thanked Levovitch and took up on his offer to stay in Russia for a few months until she could be reassigned to a new home.
Balawyn Samirsdøttir proved to be difficult to move to her new home in Norway however, having more than adapted to life in the Qirex factory as a test pilot to earn her keep. After a suggestion from Pinewood, Balawyn was given the chance to fly Qirex’s race craft and she quickly became Qirex’s test pilot, followed by third pilot when the FX350 started allowing third pilots.
Known as the ‘last Icelander’, Samirsdøttir is famous for her teasing of anyone nearby, particularly male pilots who can’t keep up with her, once invoking the wrath of Vincent Stephenson by beating his record on Vineta K Reverse while singing a classic metal song the whole way through. She takes over as second pilot, and is a favourite to succeed Pinewood when he retires, which is looking closer and closer with his impending marriage.
Third Pilot – Heather McKellen (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Flag_of_Scotland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Scotland.svg.png)
Heather has had the privilege (though she’d hardly call it that) of flying for three different teams in the AG leagues. She was initially enrolled with the Icaras Project, and made huge advancements through the training levels, particularly in Zone where she was said to have ‘outstanding ability’ by Connor Burns himself. But with Icaras still being slow to get set up, and unwilling to replace any of their existing pilots, she was snapped up be FEISAR, who needed a good pilot behind Di’Rosso and Ikrausus who was adept at Zone Mode.
However, FEISAR’s historical failures to look after some of its’ pilots occurred once again, and the nervous McKellen (who had been severely lacking in confidence throughout her childhood due to her diminutive size and glasses) had difficulty adapting to the serious work ethic and lack of internal leadership at the European team. It didn’t help that neither of her team-mates were particularly friendly people, and the Scotswoman found herself alone for the most part during the FX350 league. With a lack of support, she suffered in race events in particular, un-used to flying against other pilots and particularly not against a team with some top-class fliers such as EG-X.
McKellen left FEISAR shortly after the start of the FX400 league as a result of her own accord, and broke all contact with the AG-racing world as a result. It is believed that Elenova herself contacted McKellen and asked if she would like to join Qirex as her replacement, though the fact that this would have led to Qirex’s first ever lineup without a Russian in it makes this theory hard to swallow somewhat. However, what is known is that Heather turned up at the Qirex factory one day, and was greeted warmly by all when it was realised that she was there for a possible race seat next year.
In a more comfortable environment, it seems that McKellen is maturing a lot more, and having a pair of good-natured teammates seems to be improving her overall confidence in press conferences. That said though, despite her self-inflicted absence from the league, she remains one of the best forces in the Zone ship to this day and is a favourite to keep up the work in Zone Battle.
6 – Qirex Research and Development (Russia)
Team Principal:
Feliks Levovitch (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Flag_of_Russia.svg/22px-Flag_of_Russia.svg.png)
Slogan:
"Prepare for a High Speed Revolution"
Backstory:
Whenever AG-Racing has gone, Qirex Research and Development has almost always been there, for better or for worse. Without question the most successful team in AG-Racing, Qirex was formed in 2021 by an amalgamation of five other Russian industrial companies in order to keep afloat during the global strikes sweeping the globe: Quantax CFD, Irkutsk Nuclear Developments, Rubik-Tech, Electrolux and X-Track Racing. The five initially began working on submarine and space ship technology for the Russian government, but it seemed to begin falling apart in 2035 after Pierre Belmondo demonstrated his first ever AG-ship in Nevada. Nobody wanted to go underwater anymore now that the sky was open to all, and the submarine division was forced to close its’ doors.
The head executives of Qirex began talk of trying to develop their own AG-crafts, but it was a long and arduous process to receive the patents from AG-Systems and develop their own thrusters. The first Qirex commercial craft were therefore known as unreliable beasts, but favoured for their cheapness compared to AG-Systems devices. Over the next nine years, Qirex slowly became better and better at making their craft, their nuclear facilities at Irkutsk providing them with efficient and powerful energy, giving them a lot of power when it was needed.
When the AntiGravity Race Commission was set up in 2044, Qirex decided to apply for a race entry, though they were initially unsure of how to go about making a race craft instead of the great lumbering transport behemoths they’d been making before. Salvation arrived in the form of Holst McQueen, one of Pierre Belmondo’s protégées from AG-Systems, who had been ousted from the Japanese company after arguments over money and the way the company should go with colleague Delia Flaubert, who later went on to run Auricom.
McQueen believed in fast, efficient business designed to make money and turn a profit, with no holds barred. The five men who ran Qirex together eagerly began to defer to the driven Canadian as he marshalled Qirex into making a race-winning team. McQueen encouraged Qirex to stop thinking of themselves as separate companies but all as a single team designed to make them all money and victory, and the Quantax-built LA-01 was Qirex’s first ever racing ship. When it hit the track in 2050, the Qirex with their favourite test pilot Kel Solaar at the helm dominated the long, sweeping curves of Altima VIII with a thrust level that belied belief.
AG-Systems reeled Qirex in soon in the later events on twisting tracks, but the constant changing of the craft instead of keeping it focussed on a winning design meant that AG-S kept losing points to Qirex and eventually Auricom as well, leaving the Russian team to charge home with the first ever AntiGravity World Championship. Over the years, Qirex netted another four F3200 trophies, and as the championship moved into F5000, it won another one, not to mention the two it achieved in F7200.
Qirex was always the victorious, powerful team but that impressiveness came at a price. Almost every single race, there was something raised against either the Qirex team or their pilots. Whether it was the accusations of Qirex having planted Cherovoski as a spy in the Auricom team, pilot Vladimir Tuchyon’s weaving to prevent an overtake from a faster FEISAR or even the team’s excessive amount of merchandise sales points at the entry to an event that resulted in almost half the audience wearing purple caps at the race. Despite all this, despite all the pursed lips and mutters amongst the racing fans, Qirex had never done anything actually wrong.
The same could not be said of Qirex’s iteration from 2156 to 2170, during the fated F9000. Overtel, one of the main datacast corporations that had sponsored and supported Qirex in its’ previous seasons left to run the F9000 league, leaving the Russian squad with a new owner necessary. Unfortunately, the Greek corporation Tigron Enterprises had taken some of Holst McQueen’s lessons far too much to heart, and promptly turned Qirex into its’ darkest iteration yet, the aggressive and corrupt Tigron.
When the F9000 fell, both Overtel and Tigron quickly took the easy way out, and their headquarters in Moscow and Athens were burnt to a crisp. Indeed, the fires that had destroyed Tigron’s HQ spread for miles about, leaving Greece nothing more than a barren, irradiated wasteland nowadays.
The old Qirex factory in Irkutsk lay abandoned and dormant for some years after that, and the doors did not open until 2185, during the first race of the resurrected FX150 league in January. The one functioning video surveillance machine left in the building’s tape is retained, and it shows a man in a large overcoat with curly black hair walking alone through the desiccated factory. This man was Feliks Levovitch.
Feliks was the son of Sergei Levovitch, the chief Engineer at Qirex during the F7200 days, one of the several important figures of Qirex who was outed as soon as Tigron took control of the company. Feliks then had seen the damage that greed can do to a company, and had sworn to restore the Qirex name in the minds of people across the world. Feliks had bought the decaying factory for the sum of only ten thousand roubles and had every intention of returning to the fight. He called over a group of men on the streets who had returned from another unsuccessful day at the job centre, and asked if they’d help him clear out the factory. Before long, with the promise of regular food from Feliks (who was a good cook a the very least) meant that Qirex had a regular array of people willing to help install his new factory and clean it out. By September of that year, the factory was absolutely spotless.
Feliks then decided to go about searching for people to help him make a ship. Fortunately, there was no end of the number of people willing to help lend a hand even for little money. Russian Universities weren’t considered as powerful a force then as European and Japanese ones, so those who’d taken AG-studies often found themselves having to re-think their plans when the four teams in the FX150 turned them down. Despite his low funds saved up from his time working with a transport company during the lean years of F9000, Feliks could provide for everyone, and was soon known as ‘Хороший дед’, or ‘Good Grandfather’ to all at Qirex.
Feliks was firm in his job, and drove the workers hard, but he never treated them as anything less than human, and that is what a lot of people say got Qirex off the ground. The LR-01, the first ship flown since 2155 to bear the Qirex name, lifted off its’ mountings in April, 2188. With the news of a Russian AG-team, sponsors flooded in and soon Feliks found himself inundated with offers of money and images to stick on the sides. Knowing that he needed money, Levovitch did not turn down a single one, and hired the ace racing pilot Nadia Elenova to race for the team. Qirex took a few years to perfect the craft and train Nadia in Zone mode, with their first appearance halfway through the FX200. Unfortunately, as they found out in that first race, their old rivals hadn’t let up the bitter feelings and the LR-01 was destroyed within two laps by the Auricom team.
Undaunted, Feliks rallied his men and women and began to strike back, slowly clawing at the back of the field and sometimes coming within striking distance of FEISAR and Assegai. Nadia was proving to be an exceptionally popular pilot, though her skill compared to her teammate, Auricom refugee Rory Pinewood was always up for debate.
Qirex have shown again and again that they are more than capable of rising from the ashes of a team that had died so long ago, and now they are a force to be reckoned with. Feliks still lives in the same apartment as he has done for the past thirty years despite offers to live better, pouring as much money as he can into the team and his employees’ salary. No doubt Holst McQueen would tear his hair out if he saw Qirex’s turnover, but the fact remains is that people are buying purple hats and t-shirts willingly rather than it being forced down their throats.
Allies: Goteki 45, Icaras
Rival: Piranha
Arch-Rivals: Auricom
Searching AntiGravity Racing Archives for Subject ‘Qirex and Auricom’
1876 Matches Found...
Opening File...
The FX500 Race Commission has decided to decline Auricom's... *subject checks his data-slate* ...two hundredth and eighty-first attempt to ban a fellow competitor from the league on insufficient grounds. Auricom Originals claim to have the support of AG-Systems and Piranha Advancements on its' petition, however we see no evidence to that in the message.
Auricom have requested that the following teams are expelled from the AntiGravity Racing Leagues indefinitely: Qirex Research and Development, Goteki 45, EG-X Technologies and Triakis Industries. The letter has identified numerous minor faults with all teams that it claims are reasons for their disqualifications. It references amongst other things: Pilot N. Elenova's (of Qirex RD) jump-start at Tech De Ra in August 2212, for which the pilot served the appropriate time penalty; Pilot P. So-Gun's (of Goteki 45) forcing another competitor off the track at Ubermall in March 2210 for which the pilot apologised in the subsequent press conference; and Pilot V. Stephenson's elimination of a competitor with rockets after the end of the race, for which the pilot served the resultant eight-race ban.
*subject is interrupted as he begins another anecdote, whereby he clears his throat and nods* Ah, yes. My apologies. Auricom continues to declare these teams as 'rogue operatives' and decries their brutal tactics... which the Commission have deemed to be legal. All precautions have been taken to ensure the protection of the pilots these past few seasons, and as there has not been a serious injury since the FX150 leagues, we believe our precautions are working. If a team is afraid of being rammed or bumped, they should take precautions on track and in the garage, not in the courtrooms.
-AntiGravity FX500 Race Commission Steward K. Atkinson, speaking at Pre-Season Party 2213, Tokyo
Ship Details:
Qirex seems to have blown almost all of its’ money on the LT-01 for this season, a ship that bears little to no similarities to its’ predecessor whatsoever. Whereas the LS series were flat and wide, the LT is thin and long. Ship specifications state that the long extrusions of the hull beyond the bodywork are an experimental kind of solar turbo generator, designed to fuel the (fairly) small reactor inside the Qirex with light energy from the track sides, advertising and weapons fire from competitors. The scrutineers have been humming and hawing about this technology for some time, but have decided to allow it for this season. Some teams (surprise surprise, including Auricom) have called foul on Qirex’s plan, but as Levovitch himself stated, the only reason that they decided to try these devices on the ship hulls is that Qirex couldn’t afford any more ship armour aside from what is already on the cockpit, leaving ICON as the only major sponsor this year with noticeable hull space.
A lot of weight reduction has gone on inside the craft, meaning that this is in fact the only FX500 ‘Fury’ craft to be lighter than its’ predecessor aside from the Harimau. When asked if Harimau had any input in the weight saving technology, chief engineer Jokai Temuge admitted that yes, the Harimau/FEISAR collaboration had been consulted for help on the business of handling, but in terms of secrets given back to the two teams?
“Well, FEISAR hasn’t asked for anything... assuming we don’t let Heather trouble them with legal proceedings, and Harimau has asked Levovitch to look after a snow leopard cub. He’s called it Kel.”
Lead Pilot – Rory Pinewood (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/Flag_of_Canada.svg/22px-Flag_of_Canada.svg.png)
Initially a student at Auricom’s AG school, Rory was expelled for what his tutors called ‘an excessively dangerous and aggressive attitude towards racing’. Despite his speed, Rory preferred to eschew Auricom’s racing etiquette and forced his way to the front by trading a lot of paint. Not deterred from his love of the sport though, he searched around the other teams for a place and found an offer from Levovitch himself. Feliks offered Rory a place on the team for no pay but a chance to fly, and the man accepted gladly.
Pinewood faced down his long-time rival at the Auricom academy in his first race in the form of Platon Dhavoric, and the irony of a North American pilot in a Qirex racing against a Russian pilot in an Auricom was not lost on the commentators. Knowing that the world was watching, Rory slammed the LR-04 to its’ limits, determined not to slip up in front of the watching public and especially Levovitch. By the time the final lap came up, he had left Dhavoric behind and was coming up on the squabbling Caluroso and Stephenson, fighting for the lead. The commentator’s quotes from the race say it all.
“Stephenson takes the corner just a little too wide! That’s Caluroso through, but we’re opening onto a long straight, that Triakis is going to get right back up on the Frenchman’s backside!”
“Hold on, Stefan, something’s catching the Tri!”
“Blow me, you’re right! That’s Pinewood, Pinewood in the Qirex coming up on the lead... bet you didn’t think that was going to happen in the FX200 league, did you?”
“Absolutely not, and Qirex are going to be over the moon with Pinewood for this – first race out and he gets them a bronze. The man means business.”
“Stephenson has caught right up to Caluroso, and he’s slamming the AG-systems over to the side, neither pilot as any room and... oh, my god – is Pinewood trying to get through?”
“My god, he is – the man’s crazy, he’ll never get through that in a million... OH MY GOD! Pinewood is through! You couldn’t have squeezed a needle into that gap!”
“He very nearly didn’t, that’s ruined the paint on the right hand side! Pinewood, for Qirex in the lead on the final lap, three turns to go and... he’s just dropped a bomb, hasn’t he?”
“That’s a bomb right in the path of the two fighters and there’s nowhere to go... bam! Caluroso’s out! That AG-Systems had just taken too much punishment for its’ own good... Stephenson will be pleased with second, but I’m not quite believing it... on the top step we have a Qirex. A QIREX!”
Watching on the provided screens at the trackside, Feliks Levovitch smiled amidst the whooping Russian mechanics. Wherever Qirex has gone, Pinewood has gone with them, taking over First Pilot status from Elenova when she left at the end of the FX400 series. Quick to compliment good piloting and to criticise alike, Pinewood has been more than welcome at press conferences where his matter-of-fact manner, while sometimes controversial, is always welcome amidst the waves of publicity-friendly statements from some pilots.
As well as Ferrai of Goteki 45, Pinewood has often been seen on race weekends with Kaet’yrun of Mirage and Harding of Triakis, the four of them colloquially calling themselves ‘The Bad Boys’ of the league and sometimes setting up private Zone Battle events, meaning that the four have extraordinary experience with the new and experimental simulated race series.
Second Pilot – Balawyn Samirsdøttir (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/Flag_of_Iceland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Iceland.svg.png)
When the final eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland threatened to shatter the entire island apart, Qirex was one of the many companies that went to the rescue, firing up every model they’d ever made and a few from their old days of F7200 as well with test pilots, engineers, Pinewood and Levovitch himself flying to the doomed island even as it began to splinter apart under the volcanic eruption. One pilot of a 2099-Spec LH-03 craft landed on the outskirts of Reykjavik, but as the engineer got out to help people clamber on to the sides of the ship, he was hit by a piece of volcanic rock and was knocked senseless.
One of the refugees clambered into the ship and fired it up herself, getting the engineer strapped onto the side as she pulled the race craft up and shuttled it to and from the waiting rescue ships out of range of volcanic activity. The LH-03 was reported to have saved the lives of nearly five hundred Icelandic civilians as well as the engineer, and the pilot was approached after the rescue operation by Levovitch, to thank her for her work. The woman, who had been a tour guide before the eruption and had been used to flying AG-craft, thanked Levovitch and took up on his offer to stay in Russia for a few months until she could be reassigned to a new home.
Balawyn Samirsdøttir proved to be difficult to move to her new home in Norway however, having more than adapted to life in the Qirex factory as a test pilot to earn her keep. After a suggestion from Pinewood, Balawyn was given the chance to fly Qirex’s race craft and she quickly became Qirex’s test pilot, followed by third pilot when the FX350 started allowing third pilots.
Known as the ‘last Icelander’, Samirsdøttir is famous for her teasing of anyone nearby, particularly male pilots who can’t keep up with her, once invoking the wrath of Vincent Stephenson by beating his record on Vineta K Reverse while singing a classic metal song the whole way through. She takes over as second pilot, and is a favourite to succeed Pinewood when he retires, which is looking closer and closer with his impending marriage.
Third Pilot – Heather McKellen (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Flag_of_Scotland.svg/22px-Flag_of_Scotland.svg.png)
Heather has had the privilege (though she’d hardly call it that) of flying for three different teams in the AG leagues. She was initially enrolled with the Icaras Project, and made huge advancements through the training levels, particularly in Zone where she was said to have ‘outstanding ability’ by Connor Burns himself. But with Icaras still being slow to get set up, and unwilling to replace any of their existing pilots, she was snapped up be FEISAR, who needed a good pilot behind Di’Rosso and Ikrausus who was adept at Zone Mode.
However, FEISAR’s historical failures to look after some of its’ pilots occurred once again, and the nervous McKellen (who had been severely lacking in confidence throughout her childhood due to her diminutive size and glasses) had difficulty adapting to the serious work ethic and lack of internal leadership at the European team. It didn’t help that neither of her team-mates were particularly friendly people, and the Scotswoman found herself alone for the most part during the FX350 league. With a lack of support, she suffered in race events in particular, un-used to flying against other pilots and particularly not against a team with some top-class fliers such as EG-X.
McKellen left FEISAR shortly after the start of the FX400 league as a result of her own accord, and broke all contact with the AG-racing world as a result. It is believed that Elenova herself contacted McKellen and asked if she would like to join Qirex as her replacement, though the fact that this would have led to Qirex’s first ever lineup without a Russian in it makes this theory hard to swallow somewhat. However, what is known is that Heather turned up at the Qirex factory one day, and was greeted warmly by all when it was realised that she was there for a possible race seat next year.
In a more comfortable environment, it seems that McKellen is maturing a lot more, and having a pair of good-natured teammates seems to be improving her overall confidence in press conferences. That said though, despite her self-inflicted absence from the league, she remains one of the best forces in the Zone ship to this day and is a favourite to keep up the work in Zone Battle.