That's Racing Baby | Lando Norris

Chapter 34

"FP3, let's go." Aurelia hyped up her driver as she entered her room. She had been warming up with Christine and now needed to leave to go down to the garage.

"You ready?" Christine questioned. Emilia nodded confidently in response. Christine knew that her driver had little confidence so she had to figure out a way to instil it into Emilia. She needed the self-assurance to optimise her performance. Not just being sure of her abilities but also certain in the car so she is able to extract the most out of her time.

"Let's go." Emilia strode out of the building with Christine following her carrying her helmet and neck support. George was already present on his side of the garage so Emilia went to greet him. "Morning."

"Morning, how are you?" George was leaning against a worktop chatting to his engineer when Emilia approached him.

"Alright, you?" Emilia replied.

"Looking forward to quali." George responded. Noise increased as engines were fired up so the conversation couldn't really continue but Emilia did manage to fit something in.

"Make sure you get out of my way on my fast laps." Emilia reminded George as she fist bumped him. He chuckled as he put his balaclava on.

The team wanted to wait a while until Emilia had a clean track to send her out on some qualifying simulations. She had a brand-new set of softs to use and low fuel so the data would be pretty accurate. Apart from the fact that Emilia never properly pushed the limits in practice.

Some of the reasoning behind that was that it meant she could always improve. Her time would get faster and she had motivation to do it. It also kept other teams guessing whether she was giving seventy or ninety percent so it gave Williams an advantage because she knew how much she was pushing.

It wasn't uncommon for drivers to do it. Lewis did it a lot. Red Bull would be top of the timings in practices then Lewis would smash a lap time in and stick his Mercedes on pole.

"Tsunoda on a quick lap." John warned and Emilia moved off the racing line. She didn't fancy getting in trouble for ignoring blue flags even if it was only in practice. It would make her unlikable and that's not what she needed right now. "Do another slow lap, there's too much traffic."

"Copy." Emilia replied. She didn't really want to do it but it wouldn't be a reasonable lap time if she couldn't get clean air. It would be alright down the straights but she'd lose a lot of time in the corners from the dirty air coming off the backs of the cars in front.

"George on a quick lap." John notified so Emilia shifted to the right side of the track so George could have the racing line up to turn three. He gave her a thanks as he went past and she held up her middle finger in return.

Eventually, she started her flying lap pressing the throttle all the way down to turn one where she slammed the brakes. The G Force could definitely be felt as she flicked down the gears and turned her car to the right. As soon as she could, she got on the throttle and headed up towards the hill.

At turn three she took a narrow line briefly touching the curb but not fully going onto it. Her exit was a little shaky but she couldn't have lost that much. She opened her DRS again going down the final zone of that lap having been through two already. Turn five was barely a corner; turn six that lead into turn seven which was where you had to be careful not to overrun and dip a wheel in the gravel which resulted in you spinning your car.

Turn eight was where Emilia knew she shouldn't use too much curb either otherwise she could get her lap ruined by the gravel. However here, the gravel was further away so she had more opportunity to keep the car on the red and white stripes and the green curbs before she met the gravel. Emilia smoothly navigated herself through the corners.