Features

The teams of Wipeout Fusion: Feisar

European Consortium

Feisar Xavier Menendez, FEISAR’s Director of Operations, has been in a confident mood since his team successfully signed F9000 debutante, Daniel Johnson. Much is expected of Johnson over the coming season, and Menendez has been making it his business to take the heat out of any potential conflict with long serving team member, Carlos Beneto.

Interviewed in the trade datasheet ’Anti-Grav Affairs’, Menendez stated,

"There is no hatred between Carlos and Dan."

When challenged to support this claim in the light of Beneto’s public insistence that "Johnson may be lead pilot on paper, but in the name of Truth, Honour and Justice, I am the lead and will be for all recorded time", Menendez shrugged and said,

"But that could mean anything."

FEISAR are only just beginning to emerge from the worst of their many funding crises, and now that they have money available for pilots of Johnson’s calibre, there is a feeling among supporters and other anti-grav enthusiasts that the team may be on the verge of their most successful season yet. Certainly, this is what the team leadership believe.

"FEISAR’s challenge is going to surprise the world," claims Thomas Debenham, the team’s First Engineer and the technical genius who developed the Tru-Fly? Enhanced Stability Core. This component has improved the handling of FEISAR’s ships still further and may well give them the edge over some of the less manoeuvrable craft out on the track. He goes on to pour scorn on reports that there have been transmission failures resulting in central reactor meltdown during some pre-season flights.

"Anyone who believes that sackful of lies is cracked," says Debenham. "I could give you a list of benchmark readings longer than War And Peace that show how good these craft are. If anyone out there thinks they can tune up an anti-grav ship better than me, give them a Digital Bore Spanner and send ’em over to my house. If they can strip down a Delirium Type 4 stabiliser faster than me, they can have my wife, kids and bank account and I’ll go work in Handi-Mart for seven Euros an hour."
Team FEISAR Pilots

DANIEL JOHNSON - Lead Pilot

DANIEL JOHNSON
DANIEL JOHNSON
 Nationality:
British
Sex:
Male
Age:
24
Height:
1.78 m
Weight:
75 kg
CMGFL:
13.2 G
League ID:
JOHN495.1.1.303
Grid rating:
16
We are blessed that a fine, healthy specimen like Johnson decided not to enter the family genetic modification business as their gain would most certainly have been our loss. He is what the younger members of the Commission might call ’download’ material, as his scantily clad form is one of those most commonly downloaded from public image forums, and though he claims to be embarrassed at receiving this type of attention, the quantity and quality of some of these images does rather suggest that he supplies them himself. He achieved some notoriety earlier this year when an image entitled simply ’Honeydew’ was splashed across all the most popular data sheets. Purchasing records reveal that despite protesting eternal shame, Johnson actually bought several thousand copies of the file which he distributed to friends, family and colleagues.

None of this activity harms his popularity with the public in any way. He has only recently moved up to F9000 from a lower racing classification, and represents an extremely valuable acquisition.

Johnson’s debut in the F9000 League will be the opening race of the 2160 season. However, his personal income this year has already hit $50 million as a result of his decision to move up, and he is virtually guaranteed to make double that in performance bonuses in one season if he fulfils his promise. If his longevity matches that of FEISAR team colleague Carlos Beneto (almost twenty years older than Johnson and many times more wrinkled) we can only assume that Johnson is going to make a very wealthy pensioner.

There are two F9000 pilots who could help determine the immediate progress of Johnson’s career, and Carlos Beneto is one of them. Beneto has been FEISAR’s lead pilot for around 15 years, and the naming of Johnson as this season’s lead represents the beginning of Beneto’s slide into non-league racing. And even if Johnson can survive the viciousness of Beneto’s mid-life crisis, he’ll still have to handle his own obsession with Natasha Belmondo.

Natasha represents a certain moral purity for Johnson - it has even been suggested in some circles that if the league title came down to a two-way race between them, Johnson would actually let Natasha win. We cannot know how he would react unless such a situation actually arose, but it remains an intriguing possibility.

CARLOS BENETO - Second Pilot

CARLOS BENETO
CARLOS BENETO
 Nationality:
Brazilian
Sex:
Male
Age:
43
Height:
1.65 m
Weight:
88 kg
CMGFL:
13.1 G
League ID:
BENE103.1.0.303
Grid rating:
14
As FEISAR’s lead pilot until this season, Beneto appears to believe that he is still in his prime, though it is widely recognised that he has been past his best for around 10 years. Funding problems within the European Federation resulted in their inability to recruit a new lead pilot, and Beneto was able to continue in this position unchallenged. However, recent changes in the way that funds are distributed between departments within the European Federation mean that anti-gravity racing now scores higher than urban regeneration, and FEISAR are now eligible for a substantially increased subsidy - this has allowed them to pay the wages demanded by Daniel Johnson and Beneto’s career is definitely on the wane.

Not that he accepts this situation in any way. Interviewed on the scandal-mongering anti-grav show ’Bile Rhythms’, Beneto publicly challenged Johnson to demonstrate that he was the better pilot. Johnson has refused to be drawn into the argument, but Beneto has since repeated his accusation that Johnson’s position has been bought for him by his wealthy parents. He has even gone so far as to suggest that Johnson has never actually completed a race. He claims that just before a race begins, Johnson vacates his craft and a highly-trained anonymous anti-grav pilot takes his place, with Johnson slipping back into the cockpit as the craft completes the final lap. This serves to illustrate the extent of Beneto’s paranoia and hatred of his team colleague.

If Johnson chose to answer his critic, he would have no shortage of ammunition. Beneto has won 17 medals throughout his career, but none of them have been gold. He has continually been overshadowed by a succession of second pilots flying for FEISAR, all of whom have been frustrated by their inability to topple Beneto from his position and have since moved on. There are undoubtedly many pilots throughout high level anti-grav racing who are celebrating the fact that Beneto is no longer number 1.