Formula One Oneshots

History has a funny way of repeating itself, sort of...

Charles is sitting in his driver room, still emotionally unavailable from what had happened. He has been here since his race ended with that unforced error. Since he had put his Ferrari in the barriers and lost the engine. Still, after those lonely hours had passed. He still doesn’t want to face the media, he doesn’t want to see a single camera pointed directly at his face. If it wasn’t Ferrari screwing his races up, it’d be himself. That’s all. And now Max was running away with the championship. He was just.. done. Done with the team and done with himself. If only I wasn’t such a screw-up. 

Just as he was settling into his thoughts, a ping emits from his phone. Charles isn’t really in the mood to deal with it, let alone just to look at it. In the end, he casts a small glance - to see that it was Mick Schumacher sending him a message. Where are you?

He stared at the message for a minute. Eventually, though, with a heavy sigh, Charles grabs his phone and responds. Driver room. Why?

He doesn’t have to wait long for Mick’s answer. I’ll see if I can get someone to have a chat with you. He should be able to help. I’ll be there in a moment.

The Monégasque doesn’t truly comprehend the message that he has just received. His brain was too exhausted to do so. Too tired from being upset. It was then that he realises how much energy he has lost from being upset. The only thing he can do is wait. Wait. And wait longer. Thankfully, his boredom-like weariness is lifted slightly when he hears a knock.

“In.”

Mick slowly opens the door, peeking his head through the opening. “Hi Charles.”

“Hi Mick.” the Ferrari driver responds.

Mick takes note of how low Charles’s head hangs and how tired and upset his voice sounds. The crash has hurt him badly, the Swiss-born German realises. Not unlike what happened with his dad’s former rival, when he spun out of a comfortable lead. Though that was at Monza, not in France.

“Who did you bring?” the former championship leader asks wearily, and Mick opens the door further to reveal someone Charles hasn’t actually thought about. But it did make complete sense.

“Oh. Hi Mika.” the Monégasque looks up, meeting the Finn’s gaze. Charles isn’t able to read much from Mika’s expression, though his eyes seemed to hint at something.

Charles lazily beckons them both in. But while Mika does join the lead Ferrari driver, Mick stays back, instead opting to not further join the conversation, and simply shut the door.

The younger of the two stays quiet, not knowing how to start the conversation. How could he? He didn’t ask Mick to fetch Mika. He didn’t specifically ask to be put in this situation. But here he was, still pissed about his race win-costing error and sharing his driver room with an F1 legend. And one who had challenged his team in the past at that. He drops his head back down to its usual position. At least, usual for the past hour or two.

“I can understand how you feel.” Mika breaks the silence as he sits down next to the young Ferrari driver. Charles once again finds himself looking at the retired double world champion.

“I also made a mistake, similar to yours. It was at Monza, back in 1999. My title defence up to that race could have been better, especially since Eddie was a point behind me going into that race. The weekend itself was very hot. Bad enough for me to pick up a fever. Despite that, I’d managed to get myself a relatively good lead over the rest of the field come race day, and that remained by lap 29. But when I arrived at the first chicane on lap 30, I made a gear changing error - I chose gear 1, and not 2 - so I spun, and of course, the ride height of an F1 car is very low, so naturally I beached it.” Mika explains to the other calmly, though his sapphire-blue coloured eyes tell a different story. One filled with hurt.