The Bull Prince | Max Verstappen

Chapter One: The Art of War

17th March 2016

Australia, the first race of the season. Each team tried to keep its cards close to its chest during the winter. The results you see during testing are often misleading. Everyone has their poker face on and no one wants to let the other know what they really have in their hand. The ace up the sleeve is hidden, there is bluffing, lying, and cheating. Gamblers all of them. But in Australia everything is different. As soon as you arrive in Melbourne, the game really starts.

The first stakes are set, the drivers are used to keep the fans and media at bay while the teams try to look into each other's cards. It is not unusual for the first official protest to be launched in Australia. It's a game and if you can't win with your own strength, you need to weaken the others.

This year, Ferrari must win the early mind games. They've played dumb, not tested to their limits, but they knew that Mercedes did the same. They might be seconds away without even knowing yet.

Joanna was used to it by now, it was her fifth year with the traditional team from Italy after all. She was one of the most experienced drivers on the track and knew what it was like in Australia. The race was usually pure chaos and you were lucky to get out unscathed at the end of the day, but the real competition for the championship started much earlier with the first media appearance live in front of the fans.

Joanna Lauda never feared the media, she was overly beloved, but it was always exciting to see the rookies. That day would decide what would become of them. Getting into trouble with the press early on can cause some serious problems, so it's even more important to gather support and goodwill along the way, but the real hurdle was the fans because the fans could decide whether you had a seat in a team next season or not. If the drivers were the heart of F1 and the FIA the head, the fans were the lungs that kept it going.

The Austrian entered the room, where they would wait until being called onto the stage with her teammate Sebastian by her side. To Joanna's amusement, the rookies tried their best to play it cool. Palmer was leaning against the wall, sipping from his bottle from time to time, while Pascal Wehrlein was shaking like a leaf. How adorable.

She shot Sebastian a look, which caused the German to shake his head at her no. He knew her good enough to know what she was about to do. Making the Rookies sweat a little bit was one of Joanna's hobbies, but Pascal looked like he would pass out any minute. Letting Joanna play with them would just be cruel.

Joanna and Sebastian had just stepped over to Jenson as someone for the official entered the room to tell them how they would do it. Joanna would be the first one on stage, followed by Daniel and Lewis just a few minutes later, some from the lower teams and the rookies would follow them, before Sebastian, Daniil and Nico would close the stage. All twenty drivers would stay up on the stage for questions from the fans. Of course, preselected, so every driver would get at least one question from the fans.

"The event will start in a few." The woman told them the last, which caused the driver to mingle a little bit among themselves.

"Have you already set your bets?" Screamed Daniel through the room towards the group of older drivers, from where he was sitting with his teammate and the Toro Rosso drivers on an L-shaped couch. It was a tradition that they set their little bets on who would succeed this year and who wouldn't. Normally they kept it away from the rookies and the youngest drivers, so it wouldn't get to their heads, but Joanna guessed that was now no longer possible.

"Not all of us yet, want to set your bet now?" Nico asked him, which caused Daniel to break out in a big grin, while a few drivers watched the exchange confused.