Hate You - LN

17

It's raining. Somehow I forgot it rains sometimes in Australia. I don't think the wet tires were even brought to the track but turns out they were. The practice sessions went well yesterday and afterwards, I'd offered a report back to Zak on Lando's progress. We'd discussed a few different options moving forward and because I had so much work to do when it came to people in the team other than Lando, Zak decided to let me hand off some of the physio duties to Jon, Lando's trainer.

I refrained myself from cheering out loud in front of my boss. 

Today, I watched the last free practice session before the real start of the Formula One weekend from the back of the garage. The position where I stood in the corner of the room was going to be my new normal according to Zak and some of the McLaren mechanics. I spin my ponytail in my fingers as the cars with the numbers eighty-one and four roll out into the pitlane. Oscar's on full wets, Lando's on intermediates. Because it's been monsoon raining all morning, all the teams up and down the paddock were pretty much doing the same thing with their cars for free practice three to test out what tires would be needed for qualifying this afternoon.

Even if the full wets were needed, as long as the intermediates were cleared to run all the teams would be on them no matter what. The different tire compounds have such a difference in speed they provide to the car that there was pretty much no debate about which tire people would use for qualifying later today.

In Saudi, the team had revealed a set of headphones made for me with my name on them. It was a nice gesture and I appreciated the thought from the garage mechanics to put 'DG' on the side of the earpieces to label them as mine. I could listen in to either Oscar or Lando's radio by clicking a button on the wall mount beside me and because Lando's shoulder was the cause for most of my concern right now I clicked the button with the number four on it. Lando's voice filled my ears.

"Inters are good, track's already dry in places." He spoke to his race engineer. His voice was tense and I watched the driver tracker. The corner he just went through would be his biggest issue this weekend.

"Copy, we are going plan A, repeat plan A Lando."

"Yeah copy."

Of course, I wasn't included in all the engineering meetings and had no idea what plan A was, but within a few minutes and watching the timing screens I figured out he was doing the long runs. Likely to find out how long the intermediate tire will last in the race tomorrow if the rain continues like it's predicted to. Once I was confident Lando wasn't favouring his shoulder or in any immediate pain I flipped back and forth between Lando and Oscar's radios. Oscar didn't talk much on the radio and when his responses were usually single-worded ones.

An hour after it started, free practice came to an end without any issues for once. It was rare for Australia to not have any red flags in a session, especially in the wet, but I suppose all the teams up and down the grid decided to play things safe ahead of qualifying. I unplugged my headphones and walked out of the garage. On the way out I put them back in their proper place, stored them with all the other ones and went immediately to Lando's driver's room. I knew he'd come here right after he got out of the car and as much as I didn't want to see him, the sooner I get this over with the sooner I can go back to the hotel.

I walk through the orange building, bypass a few people hanging about and drag myself down the narrow hallway that leads to the driver's rooms. Lando's room is its usual mess when I walk in and I move off some of his clothes from his massage table to his small desk to clear room for him to lay down. The room smells like his cologne. Once I'm finished clearing off his massage table like perfect timing Lando fills the room.

"Hey," he says softly. I'm slightly caught off guard by the gentleness in his tone.

"Hi," I reply cautiously.