Interview with Angelica Cheng, Author of The Fast Track
Welcome to YAOTL, Angelica! Please tell us a bit about The Fast Track.
Hello! Thrilled to be here!
The Fast Track is a YA romcom about a 17-year-old driver who is trying to become the first female F1 champion, but finds her plans going off-track when she catches feelings for her biggest competition.
Justine Kwong is chasing a first-female-F1-champion dream in a sport that's never had one. What made you gravitate toward racing as the world to explore ambition, prejudice, and proving yourself?
Part of it was lucky happenstance, I must admit! I got super into Formula 1 during COVID in 2020 (it was one of the first sports to come back from lockdown and after too much Tiger King I was ready to sink my teeth into a new obsession). As I watched, I got curious as to why there were no female F1 drivers on the grid, and I fell down a rabbit hole of the history of female drivers in F1 (they do exist, but are few and far in-between), and that made me start wondering what it would look like for a girl in the current times coming up in the racing world, trying to make it to F1.
At the same time, I decided I was going to make good on my lifelong dream of writing a novel during 2020—it felt like I would never have that much downtime again, so it was a very ‘now or never’ moment for me. The two interests dovetailed and resulted in The Fast Track!
You've said this book draws on your own years in a male-dominated industry. Did any of your own experiences end up (even in disguised form) on the page?
Back when I was an intern, a few of my peers were discussing a senior woman of color who worked in a group adjacent to ours. One person said something to the effect of She’s there just for PR and diversity. That stuck with me for a long time, and still does today. We were interns a couple of weeks into the job with no idea of how things actually worked, so I know my peer must have heard that from senior full-time employees. It was a sobering moment for me, to realize how you can be an accomplished WOC with years of work experience and degrees from the most prestigious academic institutions and still be dismissed as nothing more than a token minority. Without giving away any spoilers, this experience not only shows up in The Fast Track but also informs a good deal of Justine’s world view.
Justine deals with people assuming she's there to "fill a diversity quota" and even mistaking her for an intern. It seemed just as important to you to show the smaller, daily slights alongside the bigger, more dramatic obstacles, yes?
It was! The big, dramatic obstacles are obviously traumatizing and impactful, but what I think really wears are the small microaggressions over time. The little side comments, facial expressions, vocal intonations that you can’t concretely point a finger to without sounding melodramatic, so you protect yourself however you can. Justine is only seventeen, but has already dealt with a lifetime of that so it was important to me to show how that impacts the way she moves through the world.
Rivals-to-lovers is a classic YA trope, but here the rivalry is literal! Cameron is both her love interest and her direct competition for the same F2 seat. What was the most interesting part of this dynamic to write?
I love me a good rivals-to-lovers trope, and this one was so fun to write! I enjoy putting characters through the wringer, so it was a delight to have my lead characters falling for the most inconvenient person possible. Justine and Cameron are both hyper ambitious athletes going after the same seat, so figuring out how they find commonality and grow to open up to each other despite the zero-sum competition they are locked in was extremely satisfying.
How much research into actual F1/F3 team hierarchies, sponsorship pressure, and racing logistics went into your depiction of that world?
By the time I started writing The Fast Track, I was already neck-deep in F1 lore thanks to following the sport. I have the type of personality where if I get interested in something, I get really into it. I’m almost embarrassed to admit how many hours I spent watching behind-the-scenes factory tours, typical day-in-the-life videos, not to mention old races that are classic must-watches in F1 history. I also spent inordinate amounts of time understanding what it takes to become a Formula 1 driver (spoiler: talent, but also just how early you have to get started and how much money needs to be spent over the course of the build-up)—and all this was before I even decided to try writing a novel set in the F1 world!
Because this is your debut novel, I have to ask: what was the most surprising part of the publishing process?
Just how much rejection hurts! It’s like childbirth: you can read all about how painful it is and what it feels like, but at the end of the day, nothing quite prepares you for that feeling of getting forty agent rejection letters until you actually go through it.
You write “messy, ambitious girls” across your work. Can you speak a bit about what “messy” means to you?
To me, messy first and foremost means an imperfect character—someone who is flawed, still figuring out who they are and what they want, and will make mistakes and get into shenanigans along the way. I love messy characters because they are so fun to write. They try their best, but oftentimes wind up doing things they shouldn’t do, developing feelings they shouldn’t feel—in other words, very much like people in real life!
What do you hope readers take from your story?
I hope first and foremost readers have a lot of fun with The Fast Track—if I can get someone to giggle or swoon while reading, I’ll consider my job done.
I also hope The Fast Track will have readers thinking about the costs of fitting in, as well as what being true to yourself really means. Finally, I hope to inspire young women to chase their dreams, no matter how the odds are stacked against them.
What’s next?
I’m currently working on a second YA romcom (also with Simon & Schuster). Similar to The Fast Track, it will be an enemies-to-lovers arc set in a high stakes situation, featuring an ambitious, messy protagonist!
Where can we find you?
I’m at my website: https://www.angelicachengauthor.com/
You can also find me on Instagram at @byangelicacheng
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