Christian hit 'Extract.' The password prompt appeared. He had one guess, a code buried in the history of the sport. He typed: NIKI1976 .

The heavy rain drummed against the glass of the Milton Keynes headquarters as stared at the glowing monitor. On it, a single file was highlighted, sent from an anonymous source in Maranello: f1-manager-2022-part1.rar .

The download bar crawled forward. Outside, the wind howled, mirroring the storm brewing in the paddock. Mercedes and Ferrari knew something was missing. Their encrypted servers had been breached, and the "Part 1" of the master code was now sitting in a compressed archive on a Red Bull workstation.

The folder popped open. Inside wasn't just code, but a live feed to every telemetry sensor on the grid. The race had started before the cars even hit the track.