fan behaviour

•Caught the Eye

ellie_ryan added to their story!

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Let's just say , Ellie hoped to never ever see a race start like Silverstone 2022 ever again.

The rookie Zhou Guanyu had the scariest crash she'd ever seen , but she gained a massive amount of respect for George Russell who ended his home race prematurely to make sure the Chinese driver was okay. To Ellie's upset , Pierre was also involved in the accident , however he was able to stay going until the red flag brought all drivers back to the pits.

Alex Albon had also been in a crash , ending what could also be condidered as the Thai-British drivers home race. He was brought to hospital for checks , but was deemed fit with no serious injuries.

Ellie and Orla had watched the crash from the RedBull garage. However , 15 minutes into what ended up being a 45 minute long red flag , Ellie got bored and so she took it upon herself to take Pierre up on his offer of watching the race from the Alpha Tauri Garage.

And so , Ellie left her cousin who wanted to stay in the RedBull Garage , and went in search of that change of scenery.
And got lost.
And found herself in the middle of the pit lane.

Ellie knew she wasn't meant to be here. She wasn't a mechanic or an engineer or a team principal or a driver, and Sarah didn't bring them to the Alpha Tauri garage this way yesterday. If only she could find her way back to the RedBull garage and-

"Ellie? Is that you?"

Ellie turned to see who was calling for her.
And felt her heart race when she noticed a certain French driver coming her way.

"Pierre! My knight in shining armour" she laughed.

"In the flesh" he responded.
"You seem lost"

"That's cause I am" she replied , earning a light laugh from the Frenchman.
"I was going from the RedBull garage to your garage and ended up on the pit lane and I know I'm not meant to be here"

"It's alright, I can bring you to the Alpha Tauri garage if you still want?" Pierre asked politely, doing anything he could to spend a small bit of time with this girl , maybe even get an Instagram or a phone number by the end of the evening.

"If you don't mind?" she asked.

"Not at all!" he answered.
"Come with me"

And so she did.
And the two looked like quite the pair walking down the pit lane laughing at eachother , Pierre earning himself the odd playful slap and Ellie receiving the odd shove.
The pair would have had you fooled if you didn't know they had only met the previous afternoon.

And in no time , they reached their desired garage.

"Here we are!" Ellie said with a laugh , relieved that she'd finally made it but also upset that she might not get to talk to Pierre anymore until after the race.

"Here we are" Pierre replied with a laugh.
"I must go to look at data with the car after the crash , I'll be back"

"No stop you really don't have to there's no..." she tried explaining , but Pierre had already ran over to his engineers and mechanics to see what the damage was.
"...rush"

Pierre was true to his word. He quickly assessed the damage and decided wether it was worth the risk to go back out on track again. They decided to race on and if they DNF'd then so be it.
And in no less than 10 minutes , Pierre was heading back to the back of the garage to Ellie , who was staring at her phone with a stunned look on her face and a hand over her mouth.

"Everything okay over here?" Pierre asked with a hint of concern.

"Someone sitting at turn one posted a video of the crash on TikTok , look at this" she said , going to show Pierre her phone and then suddenly retracting her hand.
"Are you allowed to watch this or will I get in trouble?"

"Ah , what they don't know won't hurt them" Pierre replied with a laugh.

"Grand , but don't blame me if you get in trouble for this" she came back , showing him her phone.

"Deal" he replied , intrigued to see the footage from a spectator's perspective.
"Wow ... Jesus"

"I know right"

"Merde"

"Right , enough of that , you'll shit yourself before you sit into the car and decide you don't want to race anymore" Ellie said , attempting lighten the mood.

"Me? Shit myself?" Pierre asked with a laugh.
"Never"

Ellie laughed with him.
"Hearing you say 'shit myself' in your accent is kind of funny for some reason , I'm so sorry"

"For me hearing it in your accent is funny" Pierre said , the pair now laughing uncontrollably in the back of the garage.

"Hey , don't disrespect the Irish accent , it's lovely" she said in a jokingly defensive tone.

What the two didn't know was that SkySports was picking up on their little moment.

"Now down to Ted Kravitz , and Ted I must ask , who is the girl Pierre is talking with in the Alpha Tauri garage?"

"Yes Crofty! Well I've asked around and that is Ellie Ryan. Ellie is from Ireland and she has just over 460,000 followers on TikTok. She's a singer and , according to people I've spoken to , could quite possibly be the next big thing. She's here with her cousin , the two were invited by Honda! Imagine that! Her cousin is sitting over in the RedBull garage and I've heard that her name is Orla but my goodness Crofty and Martin , don't these two make quite the pair?"

"That they do Ted!" Crofty replied , before Ted interjected.

"I'll tell you something I was walking through the Pit Lane trying to talk to some team officials or even some of the team principals when I saw these two walking down the pit lane , and if you had tried to tell me they'd only met yesterday I wouldn't have believed you , they looked like they'd known eachother years!"

"Yes , they've really seemed to take a keen liking to one another. Thank you Ted! Now we head down to the Pit Wall where we're joined by Christian Horner , Christian how was the start for both your boys?"