Repair (Sebastian Vettel)

Chapter 13: Flirt

Ferrari had performed spectacularly on Saturday as they locked the front row for the Azerbaijan GP race in Baku. Charles stormed to pole position with only 0.039 seconds ahead of Seb, but they both were around 4 tenths seconds clear in front of Mercedes drivers.

Mattia checked on his drivers and their cars at the starting grid. He went to Charles first, giving him motivational words. Charles himself had a very good memory back in 2017 when he won the race superbly there as an F2 driver.

Then, he walked over to Seb who was still talking to Riccardo. He held his shoulder and called him, "Seb."

"Mattia," Seb turned to him.

"Good luck for your race! You should be calm and focused. Lewis is right behind you, but don't let it distract your mind."

"Don't worry, Mattia. He will still be behind me until the finish line," Seb chuckled.

"I like your optimism."

Mattia patted Seb's shoulder before he walked to the pit wall where he would work at during the race. While, Seb had to say a word to Riccardo before he entered his car.

Some minutes later, the drivers had been in their cars, waiting for the race time to come. Charles led the formation lap in front of the rest.

The race started after the lights were out and Charles successfully blocked Seb's way to overtake him. They both turned left, which was the first corner, safely, followed by the rest of the drivers.

Unfortunately, the front left tyre of Daniil's AlphaTauri car locked up and then he hit the barriers on the right side. It ended up with breaking the front wing of his car, but he could still drive, very slowly, with the hope that he could arrive in the pit stop to replace it with the new one.

As the yellow flags were waved by marshals because of that incident, Seb needed to wait patiently until he got the chance to overtake his teammate. When the drivers were free to race again after some debris from Daniil's car had been brought, Seb started attacking Charles.

When he tried to focus on the exact same Ferrari car as his in front of him, Seb had to be aware that Lewis and Valtteri were closely following behind. Riccardo told him on team radio that he could start pushing to make a gap with the Mercedes.

Besides, his race engineer also warned him to be careful to pass Turn 8 or the castle section, which was the most difficult part of the circuit. Charles also had a nightmare there in the previous year as he crashed into the barriers on his flying lap during the qualifying session.

Half of the race had passed, but Seb still failed to take the lead over Charles. Even his effort to overcut him as he intentionally ran longer than him before he pitted was unsuccessful.

After around an hour and 45 minutes, Charles crossed the finish line first which meant that he took his first victory of the season. Seb was behind him around 1.4 seconds. While, Lewis completed the podium place with finishing third.

Seb was quite happy as he proved Mattia that he was right as he could hold Lewis behind him until the end of the race. But he was also unhappy as he hadn't won a race after the last time he won in the Netherlands.

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As they were delightful with their double podiums, some of team members planned to celebrate it at Bar 19 which was located on the 19th floor of Hotel Fairmont where they were staying at.

Charles had texted Seb to invite him to join. Inside his room, he was sitting on his bed and still holding his phone. He hadn't answered his teammate's message as he wasn't really sure if he wanted to drink.