Cornering / responseMeridian Works
KESTREL
Reads the tunnel a corner ahead, and resents every straight between them.
Vela Gravity League / Season Nine
Six hundred to the corner.You hold the line.
VELA is anti-gravity racing on a repulsor cushion four millimetres thick. Nine circuits, three works teams, and craft that read the track a corner before the pilot does. The whole sport is a wager that a human can stay faster than that.
- Top speed
- 612km/h
- Cushion
- 4.2mm
- Field
- 18craft
- Corner load
- 6.8g
Hull resolve0%
Scroll to spool the tunnel. The KESTREL resolves from schematic to hull as you go.
Three works teams, three answers to the same tunnel.
Every chassis reads the track and holds the cushion differently. The bars are the numbers the teams argue over: thrust, clearance at speed, the load the pilot carries through a corner, and how fast the craft answers a hand.
Thrust / top speedAshline Racing
CINDER
All thrust. It survives its own engine and asks for more.
Balance / enduranceCoilworks
VESPER
Late into the braking, calm all the way through it, always there at the flag.
Nine circuits a season. These three set the character of the sport.
A VELA circuit is a line, a set of timing gates, and one corner that decides the round. The gates reset the cushion and the clock. The corner is where the season is won and lost.
01
Meridian
Flagship- Length
- 6.44 km
- Elevation drop
- 62 m
- Surface
- Sealed basalt
- Gates
- 6
Signature corner: The Needle
You enter at 580 and you leave at 578. The wall passes at arm's length on both sides at once, and the craft threads the gap on a cushion thinner than a coin.
02
Cinder Flats
- Length
- 8.10 km
- Elevation drop
- 18 m
- Surface
- Fused ash
- Gates
- 5
Signature corner: Ashfall
A downhill sweeper into fused ash you cannot see over. The line is memorised, not seen. Brake here on faith, then feed the thrust back in before the horizon returns.
03
The Coil
- Length
- 4.90 km
- Elevation drop
- 141 m
- Surface
- Banked composite
- Gates
- 5
Signature corner: Overwind
The spiral tightens as it drops. Load climbs a tenth of a g with every turn inward until the craft is pulling six and the pilot is counting breaths instead of corners.
Telemetry, felt
Drag the craft around one Meridian lap. It runs the real line, and the six sector gates are detents under your hand. Below the map the cornering load draws itself as you go: this is the trace a pilot generates, at the speed you choose to generate it.
- Sector
- S0 Start / Finish
- Lap
- 0%
- Load
- 0.4g
The gates sit where Meridian's timing lines sit, so they are not evenly spaced and the notches do not arrive on a beat. The resistance between them is the load carried across the gate, modelled as a notched spring. Keyboard: arrow keys step gate to gate, Home and End jump to the ends of the lap.
Round 11, Meridian. The grid, and where it finished.
The provisional grid settles into the classified result on entry. The grid column keeps every pilot's starting slot, so the places won and lost stay readable after the rows have moved. Callsigns in mono, intervals to the leader in seconds.
PosGridCallsignPilotChassisGap
12+1HALFLIGHTIyra SolveigKESTREL+0.000
21-1DEADWINDMaro DengCINDER+0.884
34+1LONGSHOTPetra VanceKESTREL+2.117
43-1ASHGRADEKell OzanVESPER+5.640
56+1HOLDFASTNadia BrandtCINDER+9.021
65-1LOWLINEToma ReyesVESPER+12.774
78+1TRUENORTHSena ArdalKESTREL+21.508
87-1SHEARWATERCy HalloranCINDER+38.115
Season Nine, Round 11. Classification provisional until scrutineering.
Spectate
There is no grandstand at 600 km/h. There are vantages, each one a different way to be near the craft as it passes.
The Needle overlook
Meridian
Stand above the gap. The craft arrives as a line of heat and leaves as a line of sound, and the two do not reach you in the same second.
Cinder apron
Cinder Flats
Trackside at Ashfall, below the crest. You hear the braking before you see the nose, and the ash lifts off the surface a beat before the craft does.
The Coil gantry
The Coil
Inside the spiral at Overwind. The craft passes you five times in ninety seconds, each pass tighter and lower than the last.
R11Meridian18 Jul / 20:00 UTC
R12Cinder Flats01 Aug / 18:30 UTC
R13The Coil15 Aug / 21:00 UTC