That's Racing Baby | Lando Norris

Chapter 23

TW: sexual assault and a panic attack. If you don't want to read this, which I completely understand, I will do a chapter summary in the comments.

"I cannot believe he said that." Emilia groaned flopping onto the sofa. Videos had come out from Thursday's media day and Emilia was not happy with what one of the drivers had said. The three women were in Emilia's driver room prior to qualifying in Baku.

"That was so unnecessary." Christine agreed and sat next to Emilia.

"What a dickhead." Aurelia added. The two on the sofa looked up to the Spaniard. "I don't have to be professional here, I'm saying this as your friend."

"What exactly did he say?" Christine questioned.

"Bottas was asked who he sees in contention for his seat and said George, who he was all complimentary about. He could have ended the question there but continued to say that Emilia was nowhere near good enough to be even considered for Merc. Like he didn't need to say that but did anyway." Aurelia huffed. She was more annoyed than Emilia was about this.

"Just go and beat his ass in qualifying." Christine patted Emilia's knee as she got up to get the warm up ready. They had around an hour until quali and after Valtteri's comment Emilia was not in the right mental state to compete. "Emilia get up here and let me massage your neck, no sulking."

"It's so fucking stupid though. Why does he need to say that? Is he trying to start shit?" Emilia asked.

"Alright, you need to calm down and warmup. You need to be ready for qualifying because there's going to be a ton of red flags." Christine commanded. Emilia got up grumpily and lay on the massage table.

"Maybe he feels more threatened by you so he wants to anger you. I don't know how we've only just seen this, it happened on Thursday." Aurelia commented.

"Not likely, George is the one with podiums and win." Emilia scoffed not out of jealously but out of her stupidity of throwing podiums away.

"Ignore him and focus on quali." Christine instructed.

Emilia was ready and focused by qualifying with a bit more determination than usual due to Bottas' comment. She got in her car and flew through Q1 with no red flags there. Her car felt good due to the team finding the right balance. The Williams were especially quick on the straights here which would further aid overtaking adding to a slipstream and DRS which were already in the arsenal for the main straight. 

"Emilia, get a good lap in case of red flags." John said. He seemed to be a bit more tense today possibly due to the number of red flags there had been in practices.

"Copy." Emilia replied as she was signalled to leave the garage. She was told to do two warmup laps so that's what she did. Emilia slowed down before going round turn sixteen so she could go flat out from there. She let the Red Bull in front of her go and waited a few seconds so she could get a slipstream.

She pressed the throttle and sped up twitching the steering wheel vaguely to get round turns seventeen to twenty as they didn't require breaking. By the time she reached the straight she was flat out until turn one. The Red Bull was definitely giving her a tow which was a great benefit as such an abnormally large part of the circuit was a straight.

That was one of the great things about Formula 1. All the circuits were unique. Some were really overtakable so they relied more on racing but tracks like Monaco. were harder to overtake on so strategy was more important. Anything could happen as well which made it a lot more exciting. A millisecond was all it took to go wrong.

Thankfully, all the milliseconds in Emilia's first sector went well. The castle section, the trickiest corners all year, wasn't a problem. Emilia kept her focus and kept an eye out for red and yellow flags being waved as she didn't want to receive penalty points for missing them.