Chase You -1- Formula 1

98. Is this what falling in love feels like?

I hated Sochi.

I always seemed to have bad luck here. Last year I was unable to race, when battling for the F2 championship. This time I got screwed over in qualifying. It was a great lap, in comparison to most, but I struggled with massive understeer. At some point, I was unable to control my car and lost it in the barriers. That meant, if I even started the race, I'd be somewhere where George raced. I, unfortunately, damaged our car that much, that the mechanics couldn't fix it in time. Even with my help.

On one side it was good that I didn't race since I stayed up until three am to help with the car. Or well, offer my support and apologise a million times over again. I brought all of my mechanics and other team members coffee and a snack, and they'd all get a raise. I was exhausted when we all went to our hotels, and we'd wake up earlier to continue working. Without success.

I sat at the pit wall with Joey, discussing a few things a few minutes before lights out. Neither of us had to be square, but out of kindness, we stayed for Kimi. Not that he begged for us to stick around, not at all actually. We watched the race anyway. What else did we have to do? Go to Japan, travel through Russia? I had no clue, so I watched my friends battle each other on the track whilst I simply enjoyed the spectacle from here. Outside of my car.

I bounced my leg and in the meantime played tic-tac-toe with Joey. It was boring, so we scribbled some stuff on his notebook and played silly games. At this point, we craved for this race to end soon. Seb had met the barriers at the same place I did, so that was unfortunate for him. Other than that, it was the worst race to watch if you were new to F1. It literally had no appeal. Maybe I was just being a bit biased since I barely raced on this circuit and it flooded me with bad luck and disappointment.

I was craving for this race to end, and we had to deal with the first Mercedes 1-2 after the summer break. After that, we had Max, Charles and then Carlos. Alex managed to separate the two McLarens. Despite that, I started to get worried about the orange cars. Not that I didn't expect them to pass us in the championship. Hello, they are a lot faster? It wouldn't be fun though. I called a lot of our achievements on us, and with McLaren nearing us, maybe even having passed us, it said more about my lack of performance at the time.

"It's not your fault, Daisy," Joey assured me as I eyed the two orange cars on the screen in our hospitality. They were recording parc ferme as Lewis spoke about his race, they switched frames between the driver and the parked cars every few sentences. Quite annoying. "Yesterday's accident wasn't your fault. You carried this team all season, no one is blaming you. In fact-" he clicked with his pen a few times and pressed it on an empty sheet in his notebook "-it gives us a more realistic view of where we stand, so we can improve the car."

"We're still improving for these final races?" I asked, scrunching my nose. "Now that's utter bullshit. How many do we have left? Six or something?"

"It's five actually."

"Five?" I repeated, my jaw dropping. "Only five more races in this team?" Joey cocked his head at the camera that was recording our hospitality. "And potentially of my career?" I said louder than my other words, trying to get out of the situation.

Joey let out a sigh, rubbing my arm. He pouted his bottom lip and looked sad at the camera. I played along with him and looked at my nails, I was scratching off the nail polish I applied somewhere in my lunch break. It chipped somewhere throughout the day and now it was hard to resist removing it all. However, the avoiding eye contact with my engineer and a faded smile quickly solved the issue I just created. I needed to be more careful for sure. No more mentioning of the future, not in public at least. The cameraman walked away, no longer zooming in on my face.