“I’m fine.”The words came out flat, mechanical, utterly unconvincing.
Liar.
The rest of my lap was an echo of the first.Slow, chaotic, untidy.Michael didn’t comment until the next lap went just as badly.
“Box this lap.”
Three simple words.I hated how much relief overtook me as soon as the pit entry appeared, hated myself for being grateful for the escape.This wasn’t me.I didn’t run from bad sessions.I fought through them, pushed harder, and found the speed through sheer determination.
Except today, I just couldn’t.
Back in the garage, I killed the engine and sat for a moment in the bleak silence, the cockpit feeling too small, too hot, despite the cool Canadian air.Finally, I unlatched the helmet, lifting it free.
Dampness hit my face, and my eyes stung from sweat, wind, and something else I refused to acknowledge.I blinked quickly, desperately hoping no cameras had caught the moment of weakness.The garage had gone quiet around me.As an F1 driver, you wanted to maximize your free practice sessions, and here I was, squandering mine.We had three hours this weekend to get the car set up correctly for qualifying, and I was panicking, wasting away valuable minutes.
They all saw me flounder out there.
Michael appeared beside the cockpit, crouching down to my eye level with the ease of someone who’d done this a thousand times.His expression was as steady as ever, his weathered face creased with lines earned from years of racing—not unkind, because that wasn’t in his nature.
But his eyes held questions I didn’t want to answer.
“Tell me,” he said simply.
Not “what happened?”or “what’s wrong?”Just “tell me.”Like he already knew there was something beyond the lap times—something deeper than setup issues or tire troubles.
“Front felt… bad,” I said automatically, reaching for the easy technical explanation.My voice came out hoarse, raw.“Understeer in the high-speed stuff.Rear hopped over the curbs in the chicane.Brake migration might be off, or maybe the—”
“Not the car,” he interrupted quietly, firmly.“You.”
The words hit like a physical blow.
“Don’t do that.”I tried to keep my voice level, but the edge still slipped through.“If the front’s washing out—”
“Henri, you froze.”His hand gripped the edge of the cockpit.“Right in the middle of the track, you just seemed tofreeze.”He paused for a moment.
I’d never heard Michael’s voice shake before.Not in eight years.Not through crashes, mechanical failures, or championship losses.
“You’re bracing before the corner even starts.Your heart rate is all over the place.And you almost collided with Lily before sending yourself into another wall.If she hadn’t avoided—” He stopped himself, dragging a hand over his face.“If she hadn’t reacted, we’d be having a very different conversation right now.”
Each observation landed with a blow, precise and devastating.But it was the tremor in his voice that really got me, the barely controlled fear of an engineer who’d just watched his driver nearly cause a catastrophic accident.
My fingers tapped against the edge of my wheel.Once, twice, three times.That nervous tic again.The words hung between us.
“She was too close.”Even as I said it, I knew how weak it sounded.How desperate.
“She was exactly where she was supposed to be.It’s free practice.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.My throat locked up around the thousand excuses clawing to get out.Michael just looked at me for a long moment, giving me space to say whatever I needed to say.
“Let’s try this again.Tell me what happened.”
But I couldn’t.The words wouldn’t come.
“She had room,” I insisted, because pride always moved faster than common sense.
“She had room becauseshemade it,” Michael said, and now there was an edge creeping into his voice.“Not because you gave it.”
I tipped my head toward the timing screen, desperate to redirect this conversation anywhere else.My name sat at the very bottom, a pale white embarrassment.Lily’s was perched neatly at the top, bold and smug.My shoulders ached from the tension I couldn’t seem to let go.
