Driven by Desire

1 ~ Sakhir

It was the weekend of the Bahrain Grand Prix, the first race of the season and the first Formula 1 race of Oscar Piastri's career. Whilst he wasn't the new boy in the paddock, having been the reserve driver for Alpine last season, he was certainly new in the McLaren garage. Oscar, on the surface at least, comes across as a confident, social butterfly however, realistically he is a shy person who takes time to come out of his shell. His teammate this season is Lando Norris, the F1 baby who is adored by everyone.

As Oscar strolled into the paddock entrance he came across his former PREMA teammate, Logan Sargeant, having a fight with the gate machine which was refusing his paddock pass.

O - Can you not get in?

L - Nah, its not even recognising it.

O - Try this...

Oscar holds his hand firmly across Logan's before hearing the audible beep to let him into the paddock. Logan instantly noticed how soft Oscar's palms felt, but before he had the chance to compliment his hand, Oscar had already ran off.

Inside the team meeting, Oscar was like a Year 7 child on the first day of school with a brand new shiny notebook with fresh pens and pencils ready to take notes ahead of the weekend. He was eager to finally get inside of the McLaren F1 car and start getting to grips with the new era of Formula 1, especially after Alpine cut down on his simulator time after his contract saga.

Once the meeting had concluded, Oscar headed into his driver room with his trainer Pete, who was also one of his closest confidants. As Oscar was Australian, he had to move to Europe at a fairly young age to get noticed by some of the top teams in each series and he had lived with Pete and his girlfriend for a while in Italy.

"I could tell Lando was a bit threatened by your performance in the meeting, really seems like you're gonna unsettle the dynamic here." said Pete.

"Yeah well, contract says equal status and I wanna beat that mamma's boy." Oscar replied.

"And risk your contract for next season?"

"And? The media will come after me if I am not performing to Lando's level by Imola. Trust me. I have to beat him."

"Fair enough, you still have that winner's mentality..."

"You don't become the only driver ever to win three consecutive junior championships by not having a winner's mentality... and to be honest, not even Lewis or Nico did that so I'm here to race for me and McLaren."

As Oscar's schedule came to a close, he made his way from the McLaren Team building to his hotel room.. As he locked the door and headed into the bathroom to have a shower, he couldn't help notice the large vibrations coming from the room next door. Oscar ignored it and continued to shower but the noise persisted. Once he had finished his shower, he dried off, got dressed in his comfy tracksuit and left his room to complain.

He arrived at the door and raised his fist to knock on the door but hesitated. Oscar eventually succumbed to the anger building up inside of him and gently banged on the door.

The time he waited felt like a life-time but it was, in reality, only 30 seconds until a short figure opened the door, stood in his underwear.

"Lando?" Oscar said.

"Oscar... what's the matter?" Lando replied.

"Oh... I... Ummm... Well..."

"Well what?"

"I was... um... wondering if you can turn the music down?"

"Oh... is that it?"

"Yeah..."

"Fine, I'll turn it down."

"Um... thanks... good- goodnight Lando."

Oscar quickly hurried off back to his own room. Why did Lando open the door in just his boxers and why the hell did it give Oscar a giddy feeling in his stomach?