His schedule for today? Media. Hours of it. Tomorrow, he’ll run laps and sit in meetings and wade through fans andstillhave to suffer througheven moremedia.
It’s unending.
Didn’t Julien do enough already? He out-raced his brother and won his home grand prix.
Why does he have to start the entire weekend over from square one again?
He groans as he kicks the stiff hotel blanket off. The next step would’ve been to try to win the championship, but this is Julien’s last race with Ferraro. The only thing he can do is win this weekend, but even that seems a little lame when the last race he won was hishomerace.
The team kit shirt has extra green in it—a little bit of spice for Ferraro’s return to Italy. The race suit does too, but Juliendoesn’t have high hopes for the photos he and Thomas were forced to take for the special livery announcement.
If the team wanted good photos after last weekend, they should’ve done two separate shoots. Common sense, really.
Julien checks himself in the mirror and tries to hype himself up. It’s just one more weekend. He needs to enjoy it. Needs to be grateful he got a chance with the car at all. Needs to?—
He deflates with a sigh.
At the beginning of the year, Julien thought every moment would be thrilling. As time finally winds down, he finds himself eager to pass the responsibility back to Rafael.
Let Rafael do the media duties and the photoshoots and the fan stages and the social media posts. Julien kinda misses his dark room at the factory.
He takes the service elevator to the lobby. His fluffy hair is tucked into his hat, but he still has to duck and hide his face to avoid the fans that stalk the back hallways, hoping for a chance to meet a driver.
Julien quickly navigates through to the secret side entrance and nearly sprints out the door when he spots the awaiting SUV.
“You ready for the last one?” Rafael asks as Julien slams the door behind himself. There’s a nervous undertone to his voice, like he’s afraid of what the answer might be.
“Definitely. Absolutely.” Julien won’t leave any room for doubt. “Are you ready? Monaco’s a hard first race back.”
“I’m more than ready.” Rafael rolls his shoulder and lifts his elbow towards the car’s ceiling, further up than he’s been able to do all year. “I’m tired of waiting—I wanna get back out there. I only have sixteen races left to try to steal the championship from your brother.”
He can’t be serious.
“Have you done the math?”
“If I win all sixteen races and both sprints and Thomas comes second from this weekend to the end of the year, I’ll beat him by three points.”
Win every race? Julien would laugh at the absurdity, but Rafael’s face is set with honest determination.
But that’s crazy. He can’t possibly think he has a serious chance to win every single race until the end of the year, right? He only just learned how to raise his arm again.
“You really think you can?”
“Why not? Lucas won almost every race for his first championship title. Now Ferraro is actually competitive. I mean, we have a car fast enough for areservedriver to win in.”
“Right.”
Julien sinks back against his seat.A reserve driver. Some random reserve driver. Not the Formation 2 champion or anything.
Rafael probably didn’t mean it like that.
“P4, Julien. That’s P4.”
Julien only just missed the podium, but he still battled Sam right up to the checkered flag. It was a good fight, even if he won’t receive a trophy for it.
“Grazie, Davide. It’s been an honor and a dream to drive with you for these last six races.Forza Ferraro.”
“You are an incredible driver, Julien. Any team would be lucky to have you.”
