𝚂𝙷𝙾𝙾𝚃 𝚃𝙾 𝚃𝙷𝚁𝙸𝙻𝙻 ,, formula 1: drive to survive

03

REAL LIFE

SAKHIR, BAHRAIN

BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX

FRIDAY: FREE PRACTICE

The midday sun filtered through the sheer hotel room curtains, multiple portable fans churning cold air into the room, where the two AlphaTauri's were curled up next to each other in the double bed. Dakota McManus stirred, shifting away from her boyfriend as her phone began to rapidly vibrate on the nightstand.

REMINDER: HELP SET UP AT PADDOCK IN SAKHIR

Sighing, the Aussie dropped her phone and stumbled to her feet, pale pink panties visible underneath the Under Armour tee she had worn to bed.

It was too hot for pants.

She dressed quickly and quietly before checking her phone, anxious for updates about the season before she got to the Sakhir track. Dakota had always been one to worry, and her grandfather had once told her that it was something she'd thank herself for later, especially in the pit lane.

Four years ago, her life could have gone differently. When Graham McManus, pit crew chief for Toro Rosso Honda, had brought his granddaughter into the paddock at the Melbourne Grand Prix in 2018, she still had a stack of unsent college applications sitting at the dining room table.

His granddaughter was going to work at a 9-1-1 call center. OR the Australian equivalent.

But Dakota had always wanted to see the world, and at eighteen, a few weeks shy of her nineteenth birthday, the glitz and glamour of Formula 1 racing had seemed liek the best way. She was just supposed to fill in for one of the mechanics at Melbourne, and had ended up staying on for the 2018 season before being officially hired ahead of the 2019 season.

And then her grandfather had a stroke, and her world was flipped upside down. Suddenly Dakota was thrust into the spotlight, media attention that she never wanted suddenly focussed on the youngest- and so far only- female assistant crew chief in the sport. 

Soft snores disturbed her from her reverie. Still lying on his hown in the large bed, swaddled in blankets like a child, lay Yuki Tsunoda, AlphTauri's rookie driver.

Another thing that Dakota had never counted on was finding love. At least, not with one of her team's own drivers. But from the moment Yuki joined the team in 2021, she was enamoured by the man. At just twenty-one, he was the youngest driver on the grid, and twenty-two year old Dakota wasn;t ready to deal with the stress of her new position. 

But Yuki made her feel like everything was going to be okay again.

"Babyyyyy..." Yuki grumbled, dragging out the last letters of the word. "Come back to bed."

Dakota chuckled, tucking her phone into the back pocket of her denim cutoff shorts before kneeling on the bed next to her boyfriend, using her arms to prop herself up as she hovered over top of Yuki, giggling as she kissed him.

"I promised Franz that I'd help out at the paddock this morning. You know the team would fall apart without me."

Yuki fully opened his eyes, still dazed and jetlagged. Even with all the world travel he had done before, both with Carlin when he was in F2 and when he moved up to race with AlphaTauri, he thought that he'd be used to it by now.

He wasn't.

"Why do you have to be there so early?"

Dakota chuckled, kissing Yuki again. "Because they need me, and I'm a good person. "