“Quite well. The charity ball I hosted last month was a resounding success. Grant was there with his newest girlfriend; we all missed you.”
“I was preparing for the season.”
“Were you?” she sounds surprised. “Then could you please explain just how you’ve managed to fuck up so spectacularly already? With all those preparations, I expected better results.”
My jaw clenches, but I remain silent. There are very few people in this world who I respect, and my grandparents happen to be at the top of that list. Even if I wanted to snap back, I couldn’t; she’s right. The first three races this season have been disastrous, and odds are I’m not going to get any better.
“I’m not your grandfather, brother, or father,” she says. “I don’t insist that you go into art or business to carry this family’s legacy. You were always meant to carve your own path rather than walk the ones laid out for you.”
Her support has always been a constant in my career. She was the only person to encourage me to pursue my F1 dreams.
“But you’re not carving a path,” she goes on. “Not anymore. Something’s changed, and it’s clear you no longer have the love for this driving business you once did. Which is why I might recommend that you either find it again, or move on. You’re meant to be the best atwhatever you do, Asher—you were born with talent and inherited a competitive streak. But you’re not even trying, which is something you may want to reflect on.”
I stare hard at the race track. The main straight stretches out ahead of me, white lane markings flowing faintly under the lights. “I love what this sport was. But it’s changed in ways that make me hate it. I… don’t know how to reconcile with its evolution.”
“Then decide if you’re in or you’re out. We live in a rapidly evolving world, Asher. You either change with time or get crushed by it.”
“I know,” I mutter. I’ve known that I need to buck the fuck up and move forward along with the evolution of F1 or just get out for years, but I’ve been stalling. As if waiting long enough will make Formula One racing into what it was years ago.
I don’t want to leave, but I can’t seem to move forward with it, either. Change has never been my forte. That might have to do with being sent to a different boarding school every year. My life was constantly upended, leaving me to make new friends and learn new languagesconstantly.I always felt like I’d been left behind—by schools, by my family, by friends whenever I moved away.
I thought I’d found something consistent in driving. Just a car, a man, and a track. But eventhat’schanging for the worse. And now, I’m not behind because of unfortunate circumstances; I’m behind because I refuse to move forward. I’ve put myself in a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure by remaining stationary.
The only way to keep a position in F1 is to constantly, rapidly learn. I’ve failed at thatspectacularly.
“In other news, I’ve bought tickets to the Dubai race, and I’ll be watching all of your races this season. I very much look forward to tracking your progress. Until then, my boy.” She hangs up without a goodbye.
My heart rises into my throat, then plummets to my toes.
Effectively, Grandma is giving me a push forward. Either I give up F1 altogether so I don’t make a fool of myself in front of her—the one person in my life I actually want to please—or I figure out my shit. I climb out of the self-fulfilling prophecy, or I stay comfortably inside it.
I walk the race track in its entirety once, then twice, lost in thought. The overpass bridge looms ahead on my second lap, with the back straight cutting above me where the track crosses over itself. It’s Suzuka’s famous figure eight, which I used to think was the most brilliant piece of circuit design in the sport. Somewhere along the line, I lost my appreciation and sense of wonder. The feeling ofbrightnessandnewnessthat invigorated me instead of frightening me.
If I’d stayed up to date and taken every new season as a learning opportunity, I think I’d still have it.
It’s late,verylate by the time I come to a decision.
I’m not ready to leave F1. I fell in love with it for a reason.
But I am so far behind that I won’t be able to catch up with the changes it’s had alone. I won’t be able to improve enough to get contractoffers on my own.
Even if I read the manuals front to back and spent the next two weeks in a simulator… I have about three years’ worth of strategy shifts, regulations, rules, and mechanisms to learn. I can barely stand to admit it, but I’ll need help.
And the one person whomightstill be willing to put up with my ass—mostly because her future in the sport is partially entwined with mine—is an infuriating little intern who I can’t decide if I want to fuck or kill.
It takes me an hour to track down her room in the team’s designated hotel. If I were a more sane person, I might wait until the morning to speak to her, but I have neither the patience nor the desire to put this off.
An urgency hums in my gut after my phone call.Decide if you’re in or you’re out.
I want to be in. When the pressure of racing is absent and I stop worrying about the constant changes to cars and rules, I tap into thepeacethat I used to feel on a racetrack. The sensation of flying through space and time at a speed and force so immense it’s unstoppable. For years I would desperately chase that feeling, the high that came with it… until I lost it.
The other day in the simulator, Ialmostcame close to finding it again, until it slippedjustout of reach. That, combined with the wake-up call Grandma just delivered,lights something as close to a fire under my ass as I’ve come to feeling in years.
I don’t pause to analyze why I’m choosing to go to the most junior and inexperienced member of the team to talk. Instead, I knock on the smooth wood of her hotel room door. Three times at first. Then five times. Then ten, the knocks increasing in speed and intensity, until I hear the shuffle of footsteps from inside the room.
I hear a faint, “Are you fucking kidding me,” before the door swings open.
Fuck. Me.
