When we broke apart, Jonathan was grinning.
“What?” I asked.
“I was just thinking,” he said. “Once, we were too practical to try long distance. Now we’re going to try dating while you cover my races. We’ve either gotten much braver or much stupider.”
“Probably both,” I admitted. “But you know what? I’m okay with that.”
We finished our beers and walked back toward the harbor, where the parties still buzzed. Jonathan tugged me toward the paddock. Behind the glitter, the Monaco Grand Prix was already vanishing, piece by piece. Crews swarmed over the cars with military precision, wiping them down, draining fluids, and sliding them into padded crates as if they were Fabergé eggs instead of machines built for speed.
The air still vibrated with leftover adrenaline. The sharp tang of fuel, the sweet stink of rubber ground into the asphalt, the faint bite of hot brakes cooling in the night mixed with the briny breeze from the harbor, a perfume of glamour and grit all at once. Everywhere I turned, there was motion and sound: the staccato crack of impact wrenches, the slap of gloves on metal, the hollow thud of crates sealing shut. Cables coiled like sleeping snakes at the workers’ feet as garage walls folded into flat panels and tool chests slammed closed, the paddock dissolving from carnival into pure efficiency.
I couldn’t look away. One moment it had been champagne and music and color; now it was stripped to bare bones. Somehow that made it even more impressive. The glamour was temporary, but the precision and the discipline was permanent.
I breathed it in, dizzy with the noise and smells and sheer scale of it all. My first Grand Prix was ending, but even in its aftermath I felt the pulse of something bigger than myself, alive and relentless.
“By morning, you won’t even know we were here,” Jonathan said beside me in his Meridian jacket. “Barcelona’s only a fewhundred miles. The trucks will drive overnight, and the setup crew will already be waiting.”
I nodded, picturing cars cocooned in trailers, engineers and mechanics scattering onto buses and budget flights while Jonathan and his teammates slipped onto a private jet with their race engineers.
The Monaco Grand Prix was over, but the season stretched ahead. Twenty-two more races, five more chances to figure out if second chances were worth the risk.
12
DISTANCE AND ACCESS
The contrastbetween Jonathan’s departure and mine could not have been sharper.
While the Meridian team packed up Monaco with military efficiency and boarded a private jet bound for Spain, I was standing in line at Nice Côte d’Azur Airport at six in the morning, clutching a budget airline boarding pass.
The Airbus was cramped and uncomfortable, but the anonymity suited me. As the plane lifted off over the Mediterranean, the harbor shrinking into a scatter of lights behind us, I opened my laptop and began working on the longer piece Thea wanted for the print edition.
The first sentence came easily, and just as quickly, I deleted it.
The Meridian driver’s journey to the podium began not with his pole position qualifying run, but with a decision made ten years ago in a cramped Berlin office, when a young American chose racing over the safe path his family had mapped out for him.
I paused, reading the sentence back. Too personal. I was supposed to be writing about Jonathan’s racing career, noteditorializing about choices I’d witnessed firsthand. I deleted the line and started again.
Monaco has a way of separating pretenders from champions, and Jonathan Hirsch’s drive from pole to second place Sunday afternoon announced his arrival as a genuine title contender. But the American’s path to Formula 1’s most prestigious podium has been anything but conventional.
Better. Professional distance, focus on the achievement rather than the man. I could do this.
By the time we landed in Barcelona, I felt steadier, professionally reset. El Prat Airport was loud and chaotic, the rhythm of a working city rather than a playground for the ultra-rich. Catalan and Spanish blurred together in announcements I only half understood, but the message was clear enough: Monaco was over. The season had moved on.
The drive to the circuit confirmed it. Gone were the yachts and velvet ropes. The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya sat out in the open, surrounded by scrubby hills and pine trees, built for racing rather than spectacle. The air smelled of hot asphalt and grilling meat from a nearby vendor. Honest work. Honest speed.
That afternoon, my phone buzzed as I cut through the paddock.
“Thea,” I said, ducking into the shade beside a motorhome.
“Barcelona’s important,” she said without preamble. I could hear keyboards clicking on her end. “Monaco was a breakthrough, for Hirsch and for you. Now I want range. Talk to other drivers. Show readers you understand the grid, not just the American storyline.”
“I’m on it.”
“And Wally, don’t get precious. Ask real questions. If Hirsch is going to be a title contender, that means scrutiny. Ask him whether Monaco flattered his driving style. Ask what happenswhen strategy doesn’t save him. Ask how he handles pressure when the car isn’t perfect. That’s our job.”
The line went dead before I could respond.
She wasn’t wrong. If this assignment was going to turn into a long-term job, I couldn’t afford to be seen as anyone’s mouthpiece.
