Same but Different | Carlos Sainz

chapter three

Carlos S.

It had been a solid race, P4, not the best I could have done but it was fine for the first race with RedBull. They were happy, obviously more for Max, who had won, but also for me as it was a strong team result considering all the changed that had been made on the car.

Still, I was feeling a bit bad, asking myself if P3 wouldn't had been possible, even though I knew that Charles was way to far off at the end. But still these thoughts were there and I just hoped that the next races would be better.

Luckily the garage was right next to the parc ferme, an advantage of driving for RedBull so it was only a short walk over to my engineers. The moment I entered the garage and wanted to talk to them, I saw a person standing next to one of the men.

She started playing with her hair while speaking with one of my engineers as soon as she saw me. Her eyes met mine and immediately I felt the anger in my stomach. I was a bit frustrated as after I had signed her laptop case, she hadn't said anything.

It was freaking me out somehow that she had shouted at me, yelling why I had been to her office or other things, nothing, for the last two days. But now she was standing there, flirting with my engineer like it was some dude in a bar.

"Hey Marc." I therefore went quickly over and patted the men's shoulder as he was facing his back towards me, I ignored Sofia on purpose.

"Hello Carlos, great race today. The five second penalty was shame but next week we are on the podium." my engineer returned and grinned at me, before he looked back at Sofia, who also had a big smile on her face.

After giving my engineer another, for my opinion way too flirty, look, she turned towards me, the smile quickly disappearing.

"Yeah good race Sainz." she just commented without any emotion, "But so you know, here at RedBull we expect a 1-2 every race or at least a third place, so be better."

I snorted at her words and gave her a death stare, the engineer luckily got called over so he stepped away. We were still in the garage, surrounded by many people so I couldn't really yell at her, insult her in any kind of way, so I put a fake smile on my face.

"Why are you not with your Max if winning is so important for you? Do you wanna miss his podium?" I barked at her, seeing the anger shooting up her body.

"Guess what, I had work to do. Other than you, I know how to do my work right."

The heat of the anger was now filling my body completely, I really wanted to throw her out of my garage, shouting every little though of mine after her, but we were still in the garage so I had to be discrete as I didn't want to attract too much attention.

Otherwise it would look like I couldn't control my emotions and I was sure that the team didn't want a young Max Verstappen back and I also knew how fast you can loose your seat at this team. Sofia was really testing my self-control here.

"'Working', right, all I saw was you flirting my with my engineer." I hissed back and she suddenly started laughing.

"Flirting? I was just asking something related to my work." Sofia returned, before a grin appeared on her face, "Why? Are you jealous? You really think every women wants you, how dump."

I laughed sarcastically, was she really pulling that card. She knew I had a girlfriend and I loved Rebecca, she was the best girlfriend I've ever had. Speaking of her, I needed to find her after my work was done here, I really needed a good fuck to blow off that steam.

"Jealous? Of you?" I laughed, "Never. I would rather quit than being around you for longer than ten minutes, such a loud person who can't control her anger issues."

After that sentence had left my lips I saw how she wanted to attack me, but luckily she had also some self-control and knew that we were on full display in the garage, where now more and more people were coming back from the podium.

"Fine, do it. We both know that I'll stay here a bit longer, so I guess you start looking for new teams, Mr. I-can-have-it-all. But probably nobody wants you as you're pretty old already." she said and innocently blinked with her eyes.

Quickly I looked around and lowered my voice, tough I grabbed Sofia's arm to show to her how frustrated and angry I was.

"I. am. not. old." I returned slowly, my accent strongly coming through, "But don't you usually like older man? Isn't your boyfriend almost forty?"

As I remembered when I had seen them last year, behind Ferrari's hospitality, the man on her side seemed a bit older, maybe not forty but surely the same age as I was. Also Sofia wasn't looking like twenty herself, not that she was looking bad, she wasn't. Objectively obviously.

"Don't you dare saying that, if you have any ide" she snapped at me, her accent also suddenly showing stronger, but she got interrupted by Helen.

I always wondered what accent it might be, but as it was pretty similar to Max's I recon that she was also Dutch or Belgian.

"Carlos we need to go to the interviews now." my press manager said and pointed towards the paddock.

"Yeah right, one second." I returned and she stepped out of the garage again.

"Don't talk to my people again, they need to focus on their work and they are here because they know their stuff, other than some other members of the team." I said quietly and saw how Sofia's eyes widened.

But before she could return anything, I walked out of the garage, point for me.

The media was luckily pretty quickly done and now there was nothing more that I wanted than to go back to the hotel and have something to eat. Rebecca had just texted me that she was already there, waiting for me to arrive.

And God I needed her now, after this little upsetting race the conversation with Sofia had robbed all my nerves even more. How should I do a whole season with her in the same team if she was taking all my energy, this was manipulation.

Maybe it was her plan, with Max, to distract me and make me slower so her could shine even more. But not with me, I would fight back and signing her laptop cae had just been the beginning. I still was surprised that she hadn't said something about it, probably she hadn't even noticed.

I knew she had the moment I walked into my drivers room. Before the race I had left all my things in here, cloths for afterwards and all that stuff. My jeans were laying on the table with socks and underwear next to it, just the shirt was missing.

It was one of my favorite ones and I wanted to wear it for this evening, the evening after my first race with RedBull and now it was gone. Quickly I looked around the room, but obviously it wasn't there and as no one else had a reason to take it, I knew she had it.

She had been here while I was doing my interviews and she simply took my shirt. Frustrated I punched at hand on the table, shrugging together at the loud noise it made. No, no, no, this can't continue like this, I needed to focus on racing.

There was only one thing, as I couldn't really go to Christian, how dump would that look like 'Oh yeah Max's PR had stolen my shirt and rives me crazy?', god no, the only thing I could do, was staying strong and fighting back, this meant war.