COLLISION COURSE - Lando Norris [ff]

Four

The paddock was full of people coming from every corner of the world to watch the infamous race in Silverstone. The amount of Mercedes and Norris fans on track was overwhelming as it was a home race for Lando and both British drivers of the only German team in the sport.
"Why are people looking at me like that?" Christina murmured, not expecting an honest answer from her manager Leon who just laughed, "They probably saw last night's picture online."

"So all of them think we're dating now? Great." She rolled her eyes at the thought of being associated with her McLaren colleague in that way. That was certainly the last thing she needed after already receiving massive backlash from Franz Tost following her well-known outburst after qualifying the day before.

"Believe me, this probably isn't much easier for Lando," her manager defended the McLaren driver in a soft tone.

"There isn't much I can do about it now. The photo was taken and uploaded. I can't get rid of it, so we must adjust to the circumstances either way," Christina recorded and headed for the motorhome. The race would start in over four hours, so there was enough time left for her to go through the strategy again, have a small practice session with her physician and listen to some music to calm her nerves. She had a few traditions on a race day and she would not let the lasting awkwardness between her and her British colleague disturb her usual course.

"Pack your stuff away and we will get into the meeting for today's race. Afterwards you have a few media duties and the driver's parade," Leon caught up with her on the plans that were written down on his timetable.

She had not been able to get much rest the night before as her thoughts had been revolving around the events of the past few days. The qualifying had been tough for the team as the performance of the car had been lacking a lot within the last weeks. Accordingly, the team's mood was on a downtrend. Not to mention the tension between her and Lando that had become unbearable since their incident in Australia.

She took a few deep breaths and banished the thoughts of doubt from her head. As a professional athlete Christina knew how to handle herself in those situations in order to guide her full focus to the race and her duties next to the track.
She got taken back to reality when someone literally ran into her. Almost tripping over her own feet, she stepped to the side, "Damnit Nyck!"

A hearty laugh escaped his lips, "Ready for the race? You look like shit to be honest."

"How nice of you to point out my restless night." She rolled her eyes at his cheeky comment and headed for their motorhome to get dressed for the meeting; her teammate already wearing the official wardrobe provided by their employer by the start of every season.

"You've been receiving literal death threats on the internet. I am not pointing out your restless night; I am stating the obvious," he replied.

"I haven't even read the comments yet, nor checked my inbox or anything." Christina reacted to his clarification and just shrugged her shoulders at it. She was used to being seen as the villain all the time. Growing up in a working-class family with little to no financial stability; her father spending most of his days at work or on different trips through the whole world, and her mother with an average, underpaid 9-5 office job; made her realize how cruel the world of motorsports really is. Her parents could barely afford the needed equipment for her to score points at races, and her friends kept winning while she was not more than the best of the rest. When her father managed to get one of his comrades to start investing into her career, and her hard work finally paid off with her being promoted to F4 and later F3, she started facing another issue: sexism. She had heard comments from her own mechanics after crashing her car, comments from her colleagues' parents whose attendance at nearly every race is fairly common in F4, and of course comments from random people on the internet. When AlphaTauri announced her as their new driver for the 2019 season alongside Pierre Gasly, people threw literal tantrums. Everyone tried to hound her out of the sport. Strangers left death and rape threats below her posts or sent her direct messages depicting how exactly they would sexually assault her. It could have worked.
It almost had.