Faking it || Lando Norris LN

17

Olivia Reyes

Saturday. Austin Grand Prix.

The interviews and debrief had gone awfully slow, just like I did during qualifying. It was torturous to stand there and answer the same old questions over, and over again.

'What's different from last season? Do you have any hard feelings for Charles given the striking difference between both of your results? Are you nervous? What do you think about your pace?'

I think my pace is hiding in the deepest hole in the entire world, Mr. SkySports, that's what I think about it.

As I scrunched myself into a ball against the corner of the sofa inside my room at Ferrari's lounge, I felt myself sinking into a hole just as deep. But hey, maybe I'll find my fucking pace here if I dig deep enough. For fucks sake.

I held my phone between my hands while I watched a repetition of my last flying lap, wincing after every word the commentators said.

'Not the best first sector.'

'Not an awful middle sector, but she's still more than half a second behind her teammate's lap time.'

'P13 for the Olivia Reyes on the Ferrari. That's got to hurt.'

I locked the phone and threw it to the other side of the sofa and held my legs even tighter. They were right. It hurt.

It had hurt to get out of the car and have Santiago try to joke with me to lighten the mood by telling me I 'only needed three cars in front of me to crash so I could get into the points'.

It had hurt to match my worst qualifying result ever and to know that I hadn't ever gotten a result that bad even in my rookie year. It had hurt to stand in front of the interviewers and find the words to say after each painful question.

It had hurt to sit inside the meeting room for the post-qualifying debrief and get asked if I had felt any issues with the car after Charles had complimented it beforehand. 

'Issues with the car? Or issues with their driver lineup?' An article had been posted with that headline just mere minutes after the qualifying session had ended. As if they'd already prepared it because they knew it would be another disappointing day on my end.

Even now, scrunched into a ball of embarrassment, it hurt. It hurt to think that after this awful day I wouldn't be getting in Charles' car and feel the weight of the world fade away as he turned the music on and let the windows down. No. I would be occupying Lando Norris' passenger seat and putting sunglasses on before anyone outside of the car could tell my eyes were teary.

Despite having been done with the dreadful past events, I was still dreading the ones that followed, silently begging for McLaren's post-qualifying debrief to be its longest-ever and allow me to stay scrunched on the couch of my Lounge Room. Even the company of my depressing thoughts was better than Lando Norris'.

Lando Norris: I'm outside.

Of course he was, I thought to myself after hearing my phone chime. I rolled my eyes and gathered my backpack, putting my sunglasses on to disguise how sad I felt as I waved goodbye to the remaining crew members inside the lounge.

We grabbed each other's hands and walked through the paddock, smiling and waving at the same photographers we always did. Putting the act we were always told to put on.

For someone that had just gotten pole position a mere hour ago, Lando's expression wore the coldness it always did. He only ever smiled when he had a camera near him and in the pictures of him partying that filled articles and headlines every week last year.