That's Racing Baby | Lando Norris

Chapter 8

After Bahrain, Emilia had a week off to prepare for China with the race taking place on the eleventh of April. When she wasn't in the factory practicing on the simulator, Emilia was at home recharging. Her hands were fine to do the sim work as they'd mostly healed from the injury to them during the Grand Prix. 

Plans had been made by Williams for Emilia and George to go and kick a football around on the Saturday instead of exercising with their trainers just to mix it up a bit and for some team bonding. 

They both wore watches that would calculate the distance they ran and their heart rate which their trainers would look at before deciding how much they would have to work out on the Monday so neither Emilia nor George were there to mess around.

"You want to start off with just some dribbling?" George suggested. Both of them had a ball each and cones so they could set up a slalom.

"Yeah sure but we lay the cones like Shanghai circuit so you can teach me all your secrets." Emilia proposed. They had at least a dozen cones which would be enough for each corner. There were many disagreements on how long the straight were and that if they made the chicane too small, they wouldn't be able to get a ball through there. 

Once the circuit was completed George set of dribbling and making childish car noises with his mouth to indicate his speed – including the shifting of gears. He added some advice on where to turn wide and to kiss the curbs as he put it so not only were they getting exercise done they were memorising the track and learning the ins and outs of it.

Emilia started going when George was halfway around the track so they wouldn't bump into each other. She kept the ball at her feet using the underneath, the inside or the outside softly guiding the ball to change direction. The vrooming noises from George were off-putting but she began making them anyway as it would help her know when to break and accelerate even though it was a scaled down version of the track.

Despite giving George his distance, Emilia caught George up. As Emilia went to dribble past George, just to annoy him, Emilia kicked his ball away from him on the way past. It caused an outroar from George.

"I let you pass and you do that to me" George huffed.

"You did not let me past then, I'm just faster." Emilia shook her head as she continued ahead of George.

"I definitely let you past." George huffed.

After about twenty laps, with Emilia almost lapping George again, the pair stopped to take a drinks break. It was the beginning of April so the weather wasn't particularly warm in England but layers weren't needed if you were exercising. Emilia took off her gloves she'd initially put on and took off a jumper as well. While grabbing a drink, Emilia and George decided they were going to do some free kicks with there being goals already set up.

"There's no point getting power if you just smack it straight. The keeper would easily catch it." Emilia pointed out. George had repeatedly smashed the ball straight down the middle, which in Emilia's opinion, would be an easy save.

"If you hit it with enough power then they won't have a chance to get it at all." George replied as he shot another one in the bottom right corner just to prove a point. He shrugged his shoulders at Emilia who responded by curling one beautifully into the top left corner scraping the bar as it went.

"Top bins." Emilia boasted. George tried to copy Emilia and it frustrated him how he couldn't. George spent a lot longer than he should have trying to learn how to do it rather than finishing for the day and going home. His determination was evident and Emilia helped him by showing him how to move his foot around the ball to get the maximum curl on but not too much as it wouldn't reach the top corner. That determination was a quality Emilia admired about George, it was the reason Williams had improved so much.