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Lewis smiled as you walked into his driver’s room. It had been literal months since you’d last seen each other in person, months since you’d been in his sights in general, and a year since you’d been at a race. 

“Don’t you look pretty,” he smiled, wrapping his hands around your waist as you chuckled. 

“I could say the same for you,” you smiled, bringing a hand up to play with his hair. “Get ‘em retwisted recently?”

He nodded. “Had to look good for you,” he joked. 

You laughed. “You’re too good to me.”

He pressed his lips to yours, and man, did it feel right. You hadn't been with him for months. You missed your husband, and he missed you right back. His hands slid lower, gripping your ass as he sighed into your lips. “Missed you so much,” he mumbled. “Too long to not see you.”

It had been a very long time. You two lived together in Monaco, but you were successful in your own right. You were part of the Indycar racing series. You loved Indycar, and truly had no intention to pivot into F1. You were an American after all, born and raised out in Marfa, Texas. The seasons were never going to match up, but you and Lewis worked damn hard to make your relationship work, and work well. You texted everyday, called every second day for at least an hour, and made it a habit to see each other at least every 4 months. You’d gone longer this time, 6 months, since both of you were too busy with work or holidays or something else. But now, the Indycar season is over, you were the victor, and you planned to come to the rest of the F1 races, under the guise of being Carmen’s friend, not Lewis’s wife. No one really knew you two even knew each other, let alone got married 2 years ago.  

“I missed you too,” you smiled as he pressed kisses down your neck. “We can’t let it go this long again.” 

“I promise it won’t,” he sighed. “Missed having you here. It’s been a tough fucking season.” 

“I know baby,” you pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s alright,” he shrugged. “Ferrari better be the right move next year.”

“It will be. You’ll win your 8th and then you can come be my WAG in Indycar,” you smiled, making him laugh. 

“Always with the solutions,” he chuckled. “Who says I’m settling with 8?”

“Me. You’re getting old, baby. If you want little Hamiltons’ running around, then you’d better be at home to take care of them,” you smiled, though stern in your tone. 

“Yes ma’am,” he smiled. “Man, I love you.”

“I love you too, now, I’ll see you later, yeah?” 

“See you at the finish line my love,” he pressed a soft kiss to your cheek before you left. 

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He’d done it again, another win, somehow. Through the fucking Austin heat, he’d pulled through with that piece of shit strategy from Mercedes. You cheered in the paddock, all cameras on you, but you didn’t care. He’d won yet another GP and you were hardly going to gently clap. 

You ran up to the Parc Fermé with Carmen, both ecstatic at the result (George got P2). You watched in awe as he left the car, celebrating with the team. You’d missed his latest victory in Silverstone and you were delighted to not have missed this one. He ran over to the team, searching only for you. 

“Where’s Y/n?!” he shouted over the cheering. You grabbed at his arm and smiled when he finally made eye contact with you. Suddenly he helmet was pulled off, his lips were on yours,  you were over the barricade and in his arms. 

“Lewis!” you scolded with a smile, pulling away. “What are you doing?”

“Celebrating with my beautiful wife,” he smirked. 

It was difficult to stay mad at him when he was looking at you like you hung the stars just for him. 

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Transcription of Lewis Hamilton’s GQ Sports interview:

GQ: So, Lewis, another win in Austin this time, how did it feel?

Lewis: It was amazing, I mean there was just so much riding on the moment, and it gave us the extra points to get up to Ferrari. There’s such a great atmosphere at places like Austin, especially since it’s a Sprint race and a Feature race, it means a lot to get to win both. 

GQ: And now we’d like to talk about the obvious elephant in the room

Lewis: And what’s that? (chuckling)

GQ: Your secret relationship with Indycar winner Y/n Y/l/n?

Lewis: It’s Y/n Hamilton, actually, and yes, what about it?

GQ: You’re married?

Lewis: Past 2 years, but we’ve been dating for 5. Best 5 years of my life. 

GQ: How did you keep this from the press?

Lewis: Well, we’ve always been the kind of people who do our own thing, and we never really felt the need to be super open about our relationship because of that. We’re both introverts and we both enjoy what little privacy we can have in our mad world, and I think that’s another reason we didn’t tell anyone. We’re also not stupid. Sometimes relationships don’t work out, it’s happened to everyone, and we didn’t want to tell anyone until we were serious about each other, and by then, we were engaged and while we became less careful with hiding our relationship, we’re naturally private people, so it just… never slipped out I guess (shrugging). 

GQ: And what has your reaction been like to the reception of your relationship?

Lewis: (chuckling) It’s funny to see how the internet sees us now, y’know, it’s pretty amusing to see the edits and the theories and the people swearing they’ve known from the start. Honestly I’m really enjoying it. So is she. 

GQ: How did you two meet?

Lewis: I think it was actually Austin. Whenever we’re in America we usually get roped into meeting the Indycar side of our teams, if we have one, and she was just… there when I went to the track. It was so ridiculous, I was asking everyone who she was, and like, everything about her, it was bordering on embarrassing. 

GQ: What drew you to her?

Lewis: She’s just one of those people you meet once and know you can’t live without. She was so kind, and she was helping another team with their car because she’s an engineer, and she was literally being told off by her boss right then and there, and all she said back was, ‘If they have no car, they have no race. They’re not even close to us in the championship, all I’m doing is helping them put the thing back together. Have a bit of empathy’. I knew I was a goner. I just wanted to know everything about her. 

GQ: She’s a woman of the people? 

Lewis: She’s always helping people. We’re philanthropists when we’re not racing and she teaches free classes on engineering in the deep south to get kids out of poverty. They don’t even know who she is, she’s just their teacher, same as anyone else. It’s pretty incredible stuff. 

GQ: Wow, that sounds amazing. She sounds like a very incredible woman.

Lewis: She is. 

GQ: Finally, why did you keep this from everyone?

Lewis: Why shouldn’t we? When you’re in the public eye, everyone knows everything about you, and you’re just supposed to deal with that. We both just wanted something for ourselves rather than to broadcast absolutely everything. I’m deeply uninterested in giving the media more things to write about, and so is she. The only media about us we should be hearing is our race results, not who we’re dating and I think we’ve forgotten that in the past few years. It’s all become quite the popularity contest, and I’m getting tired of playing it.

GQ: Thank you for your time.

Lewis: You too.

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navigation for my blog :) (masterlist)

fic-tober masterlist

Phoenix Raceway.

Third in points going into the weekend, which meant everything and nothing simultaneously — enough to matter, not enough to breathe easy. The end of season races had a way of doing that, compressing the whole season into a handful of weekends where every decision, every lap, every pit call carried a weight that the regular season only approximated.

She'd learned not to think too far ahead. Just this weekend. Just Phoenix.

Scout had opinions about Phoenix, specifically about the desert heat in October which was different from the desert heat in March and somehow worse, and had communicated these opinions by refusing to move from the air-conditioned motorhome until absolutely necessary. She couldn't blame her.

Friday morning had that particular race weekend energy — sharper than usual, everyone a little more deliberate, the garages moving like it knew something was at stake. She'd done her debrief, walked the track with her engineer, gone over notes she already knew by heart. The usual.

The noise — the other noise, the kind that lived in comment sections and reply threads and the particular corners of the internet that had decided she was a convenient target — she'd gotten good at letting that exist at a distance. It was always there. The people who'd decided she was Carson's shadow, or something that had arrived in NASCAR sideways rather than through the years of work that had actually gotten her here. She'd learned not to look directly at it. Not because it didn't sting, but because it was always going to be there and she had a car to drive.

Her fans were louder than they used to be, which helped. After her earlier wins and Las Vegas especially — she'd watched her own corner of the internet grow teeth in real time, watched people who'd always been there suddenly have company, watched the Reddit thread that had gotten everything wrong pivot into something that got her exactly right. That helped too.

It didn't make the other stuff quieter. It just made it easier to hear past it.

She had a sponsor event at noon.

The event was straightforward — a Spire Motorsports partner thing, the kind of Friday afternoon access situation that involved a small media contingent, some brand content, and the particular performance of being personable and professional simultaneously. She was good at it but would rather not have to be there. Carson was unpredictable at it, which their PR person had long since accepted as a fixed condition of his existence (He'd already said something mildly unhinged to someone from the sponsor's social media team and she'd given him a look and he'd dialed it back to merely chaotic, which was the best available outcome.) Daniel was great, he had long ago mastered the trick of making corporate obligations feel like actual conversations. He wasn't flashy about it. He just looked people in the eye, smiled, asked questions back, and left everyone convinced they'd gotten a little more of his time than the schedule had actually allowed.

The questions were routine for the first twenty minutes. Chase position, the car, Phoenix specifically, what the weekend looked like from where she was standing. She answered them the way she always did — direct, specific, no filler. She'd never seen the point of filler.

Then a reporter she didn't recognize — credentials she hadn't caught, the kind of access that sometimes materialized at these events from sources that weren't exactly the core motorsport press — leaned forward with the particular energy of someone who had decided they were about to say something interesting.

"Given everything that's happened this season off the track," he said, "do you think your profile has risen more because of your relationship with Verstappen than because of your actual results?"

The room did a thing. Not loud — just a shift, the kind that happened when something landed wrong and everyone felt it before they'd processed why.

She took a breath. She knew how to answer this. She'd been answering versions of this her whole career, in different words, with different names attached, the same essential implication underneath all of them: are you sure you belong here, or did someone just hold the door open for you?

She opened her mouth.

"That's funny," Carson said.

His voice was completely even. Not loud, not aggressive — just present, cutting through the room with the calm of someone who had already decided how this was going to go. 

She turned to look at him. He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the reporter with an expression that was almost pleasant, which somehow made it worse.

"Because she was outrunning half this field before he even knew what a choose cone was."

Silence.

Not uncomfortable silence — the other kind. The kind that settled after something accurate had been said plainly and the room was catching up to it. The reporter opened his mouth. Carson looked at him with the patient expression of someone willing to wait and see if whatever came next was going to be worth his time. Nothing came next.

She looked at Carson. He glanced at her briefly — just a flick of eye contact, checking she was okay — and then back at the room like nothing had happened, like he was perfectly prepared to move on to the next question and had simply made a small factual correction.

The event moved on.

She didn't say anything. She wasn't sure she had words for it yet.

r/NASCAR

📌 Y/N Carter Updates — the carson hocevar choose cone clip 

Posted by u/spire95daily • 47 minutes ago

if you haven't seen it yet. WATCH IT.

[video link]

I don't have anything else to say. I just need everyone to see this.

↑ 9.4k | 673 comments

u/Monsterorbust • 44m "before he even knew what a choose cone was" I need him to know he said that for ALL of us

u/95ganggang • 43m the way he didn't even raise his voice. he just said it. like it was obvious. BECAUSE IT IS OBVIOUS.

u/lurkingengineer • 41m that reporter really looked at a woman who has been racing since she was a teenager, who has built a career from the ground up at one of the hardest tracks on the circuit, who is THIRD IN POINTS IN THE CHASE, and decided the interesting question was about her boyfriend. I'm going to be so normal about this. u/f1nascarcrossoverfan • 40m you are not going to be normal about this   u/lurkingengineer • 39m   I am not going to be normal about this

u/nascarnotes • 38m her FACE when he said it. she did not see that coming. you can see the exact moment she realizes what he just did

u/redbullorbust • 37m she turned and looked at him like — I don't even have words for that look

u/95ganggang • 36m that's the look of someone who has a best friend who just said the thing she wasn't going to let herself say

u/oldschoolnascarfan • 30m third in points in the chase. runs that nobody in this garage would have called possible in a Spire car two years ago. and someone really asked her that question. in a room full of people. on camera. I genuinely don't know what to tell you about the state of motorsport media.

u/95ganggang • 28m at least Carson was there    u/oldschoolnascarfan • 27m   at least Carson was there.

u/maxshipper_supreme • 25m not to make this about something else but do we think Max has seen this yet u/lurkingengineer • 23m it's been 47 minutes and lando norris exists so yes. absolutely yes.

675 more comments

They walked back from the event in the late afternoon Phoenix heat without saying much.

That was unusual for Carson, who treated silence like a personal challenge, which meant he understood this one needed having. She was grateful for it in the way you're grateful for things you don't have to ask for.

"Carson."

"What?"

She looked at him for a moment — at this person who had been in her corner since before anyone was paying attention, who had sent her chaotic Reddit threads at 1am and talked her down from stress spirals and vaulted things he shouldn't vault to get to her in victory lane and today had just — quietly, calmly, completely — said the thing she hadn't let herself say.

"Thank you," she said. Simple. No speech attached.

Something moved across his face. Not the grin, not the deflection — something quieter underneath those things.

"You were going to answer it fine," he said.

"I know."

"I just—" He stopped. Started again. "You shouldn't have to. Keep answering that. You've answered it enough."

She nodded. Her throat felt slightly stupid about that, which she chose not to acknowledge.

He looked at her for one more second and then he shrugged — easy, loose, like it had been nothing, like he hadn't just meant every single word of it.

"Come on," he said. "Scout's been in the motorhome for four hours. She's going to be unhinged."

She laughed, and they walked, and the clip kept spreading somewhere behind them across every corner of the internet, and she let it.

Scout was, in fact, unhinged.

She'd done three full laps of the motorhome at speed the moment the door opened, investigated Carson thoroughly, stolen one of his shoes directly off his foot somehow, and was now lying in the middle of the floor looking extremely pleased with herself.

"She got my shoe," Carson said, pointing.

"She does that."

"How."

"Nobody knows."

He looked at Scout. Scout looked back at him with the absolute confidence of a dog who had no regrets. He reached over and scratched her ear and she closed her eyes like she'd won something, which she had.

She made coffee and Carson sat on the floor with Scout and they talked about the weekend — the car, the track, what Sunday looked like from where they both were in points — and it was completely normal, the most normal thing, and she was grateful for it in a way she couldn't have explained.

He left an hour later. She stood in the doorway of the motorhome and watched him go and then went back inside and sat with Scout and her coffee and the quiet desert evening.

Her phone buzzed.

From: Max 💙

Can I call you?

She looked at that for a second. He always asked. She'd noticed that early on — he never just called, always checked first, like he understood that her time was hers and he was a guest in it.

To: Max 💙

yeah

It rang almost immediately.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey." His voice was the same as always — unhurried, a little dry — but underneath it something was paying closer attention than usual. "How are you?"

"I'm fine."

“Uh huh.”

She almost smiled. "I am."

"Okay," he said, in the tone that meant he was going to let her have it for now but hadn't fully believed her.

She leaned back against the couch cushion. Scout lifted her head, decided nothing interesting was happening, and put it back down.

"I watched the clip," he said.

"I figured."

"Lando sent it."

"Of course he did."

He was quiet for a beat. The thinking kind of quiet.

"Does it happen a lot," he said. "Questions like that."

She exhaled. "Versions of it."

"Before me?"

"Different names. Same question underneath." She looked at Scout, solid and warm. "Are you sure you belong here? Did someone let you in? Can you actually do this or does it just look that way?" A pause. "You get good at answering it. You have to."

The quiet on his end had a weight to it.

"You do belong there," he said. Not loud. Not emphatic. Just plain, the way he said things that were obvious to him and didn't require decoration.

"I know that."

"I know you know." A beat. "I just wanted to say it."

She pressed her lips together. Her throat did the slightly stupid thing it had been doing all afternoon.

"Where are you right now?" she asked, because sometimes that was the thing — just knowing where he was in the world when she couldn't be there.

"Monaco. The balcony." A pause. "Jimmy is on my lap. Sassy is ignoring me from inside."

"Standard."

"Standard," he agreed.

She looked out the small window of the motorhome at the darkening Arizona sky. Monaco and Phoenix — different continents, different time zones, different everything. She'd gotten used to the math of it. What time it was for him when she woke up. What he was doing when she was at the track. The way a conversation could happen in the ten minute gap between one commitment and the next and feel longer than it was because they'd both learned to be present in it.

"What does it look like," she said. "The water."

He was quiet for a moment, and she knew he was actually looking. "The sun’s just barely up," he said. "Calm. There are still lights on in the boats."

"I like when you describe it."

"I know." Not smug about it. Just — certain. "Jimmy is purring. You can probably hear it."

She listened. She could, faintly, underneath everything. "Yeah."

"He likes the mornings out here."

"Scout stole Carson's shoe today."

“Really?” 

"Right off his foot. He didn't even notice until he went to take a step."

"How."

"Nobody knows. She's done it to nearly everyone. It's affection apparently."

"That's terrifying."

"She likes Carson," she said. "That's high praise from her."

"She likes me," Max said, with the mild confidence of someone who had been thoroughly investigated by a doberman and came out the other side approved.

"She does," she agreed.

 She settled back into the couch cushion. Outside the motorhome the desert had gone fully dark, the kind of dark that only happened away from cities, and she could see a handful of stars through the small window. In Monaco it was early morning — the sun barely up, the water doing that thing it did at dawn where it looked like it hadn't decided on a color yet. She'd seen it once, in person, standing on his balcony with coffee while he was still asleep, and she'd built it carefully in her head since then so she could find it when she needed it.

That was the thing about the distance. You built things in your head. His balcony at sunrise. The way Jimmy always chose his lap over any available surface. The particular sound of Monaco quiet, which was different from any other quiet she'd been in.

He'd built things about her too, she knew. He knew what a race weekend sounded like from inside the motorhome. He knew Scout's schedule and the way her voice changed after a bad result versus a good one and that she made coffee before she looked at her phone in the morning without exception.

You learned each other from a distance and then when you were in the same room it was like confirmation. Like finding out the thing you'd built in your head was right.

"I hate that you're not here," she said. Not dramatic about it. Just true.

"I know." A pause. "Four more weekends."

"Four more weekends," she agreed.

It wasn't a promise exactly. Just the math of it, laid out plainly. Three more race weekends and then one more where she finished up the end of season stuff regardless of her results, then she would join him in Las Vegas before following him to the last few races of his own season, they'd figure out the rest from there. 

"Tell me something," she said. "Anything."

He thought for a moment. She could hear him shift on the balcony, Jimmy adjusting with him.

"Sassy knocked a glass off the counter this morning," he said. "Made eye contact with me the entire time. Did not break eye contact when it hit the floor."

She laughed. "She did not."

"She did."

"She's punishing you for something."

"I gave her the wrong food yesterday. Apparently she's making her feelings known."

"Reasonable."

"I don't think it's reasonable. I think it's disproportionate."

"Max. She's a cat. Disproportionate is the whole thing."

"Fair," he said.

She was smiling though he couldn’t see.

They stayed on the phone like that for a while after that — not talking about anything much, just existing in the same space across a thousand miles. 

It was never the same as being there. But it was theirs, this — the particular intimacy of shared quiet across a thousand miles, of knowing the shape of someone's silence well enough to sit in it comfortably. She'd learned to hold that carefully, the way you held things that mattered.

"Go sleep," he said eventually, softly.

"You first."

"I asked first."

"That's not how it works."

A pause. Then, quieter: "I'll see you soon."

"Yeah," she said. "You will."

"Goodnight."

Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Friday morning and the desert was already doing what the desert did in October — bright and sharp and dry in a way that made everything feel slightly more urgent than it needed to be.

She'd been up since six. Scout had been up since five, because Scout did not understand the concept of sleeping in and had expressed this by sitting next to the bed and staring at her with the focused intention of a dog who had somewhere to be. They'd gone for a run before the track got loud, just the two of them in the early morning quiet, Scout covering twice the distance she did by virtue of having four legs and no sense of pace management.

Now Scout was asleep on the floor of the motorhome like she hadn't just dragged her owner through three miles at sunrise, and she was on her second coffee going over the weekend notes from her engineer, and everything was normal.

Her phone buzzed.

From: Carson 🤠 [link]

No caption. Just the link.

She clicked it.

r/NASCAR

📌 Y/N Carter Updates — okay I need someone to validate my shipping CartVar Posted by u/spire95daily • 2 hours ago

Someone made a four minute video and I have watched it six times. I’m convinced they’re dating. I'm going to describe it because you need to understand what's happening here.

It starts with a clip from the media day interview at Darlington back in August. A reporter asks Carson Hocevar who his favorite person on the grid is and without missing a single beat, before the reporter has even finished the sentence, he points at her and says "her." no hesitation. doesn't even think about it.

Then it cuts to HER doing a separate interview, different day, and someone asks her the same question and she laughs before she answers. Not like a polite media laugh. Like a genuine "what kind of question is that" laugh and then says "Carson, obviously" like it's the most boring question she's ever been asked.

Then there's like six clips from their joint Twitch stream. I'm going to need you to understand what this stream was. It was two hours of Carson Hocevar yelling at literally every other driver on the iracing platform while she sat next to him and did not stop him once. She just sat there. She was smiling. She handed him a snack at one point without him asking and he took it without looking and they both just continued on like this was completely normal.

Then there's a clip of him in a post race interview after Kansas where he's talking about her race, not his, and he says "she deserved better than P8 and anyone who watched the race knows that" with the kind of personal investment that is not standard teammate behavior.

Then — and this is the part that got me — there's a tweet from two months ago where she retweeted one of his posts with just "correct" and nothing else and he replied with "thank you finally someone gets it" and she replied with "I always get it" and. I'm just going to let that sit there.

I'm not saying anything. I'm just describing what I see.

↑ 6.2k | 521 comments

u/Monsterorbust • 2h the way she handed him that snack without looking I think about it constantly

u/95ganggang • 2h THE "I ALWAYS GET IT" TWEET. I remember when that was posted and I did not understand its significance at the time

u/spire95daily • 2h none of us were ready

u/monsterpurist04 • 1h okay but to be fair they've been teammates for a year and best friends even longer so some of this could just be— u/lurkingengineer • 1h the snack. explain the snack. u/monsterpurist04 • 1h ...I cannot explain the snack

u/nascarnotes • 1h I went back and watched the full Twitch stream after seeing this compilation and I need everyone to know there's a moment around the 47 minute mark where another driver comes into the chat to defend himself after Carson roasted him and Carson just looks at her and she shakes her head slightly and he drops it immediately. he dropped it IMMEDIATELY. do you understand what kind of power that is

u/f1nascarcrossoverfan • 1h The silent communication. THE SILENT COMMUNICATION u/redbullorbust • 58m they have a whole language and we're only seeing part of it

u/oldschoolnascarfan • 58m y'all said this exact thing about the max verstappen instagram stuff a few months ago and then nothing happened so u/95ganggang • 55m the max thing was different this is different u/oldschoolnascarfan • 54m how is it different u/95ganggang • 53m the SNACK

u/maxshipper_supreme • 45m wait so we're dropping the max theory?? u/spire95daily • 43m I mean he still follows her and likes her photos but he does that with a lot of drivers. The Carson evidence is RIGHT THERE u/maxshipper_supreme • 42m I just think we're being hasty

523 more comments

She read the whole thread.

Then she read it again.

Then she looked at Scout, still asleep on the floor, entirely unbothered by everything, and thought about how nice that must be.

To: Max 💙 Carson sent me a Reddit thread.

Four minutes passed.

From: Max 💙 I know. Lando sent it to me this morning.

She sat up straighter.

To: Max 💙 Lando sent it to you.

From: Max 💙 He thought it was funny.

To: Max 💙 And what do you think?

From: Max 💙 I think they're wrong.

To: Max 💙 That's it? That's your whole response to people on the internet thinking your girlfriend is dating her best friend?

From: Max 💙 You're coming home to me at the end of the season. I'm not worried about a Reddit thread.

She stared at that for a moment.

To: Max 💙 You're infuriating.

From: Max 💙 You're stressed about nothing. Go focus on your briefings and practice session.

She made a noise out loud that Scout opened one eye for, assessed, and decided wasn't worth getting up over.

She called Carson. He picked up laughing, which was not a great start.

"Before you—"

"Five hundred comments, Carson."

"Five hundred and thirty-seven," he said. "It went up while you were reading it."

"That is not the flex you think it is."

"I'm just saying, the engagement is impressive—"

"They think we're dating."

"I know."

"They made a compilation video."

"I watched it," he said. "Honestly pretty well edited. Whoever made it has a future in—"

"Carson."

A pause. Then, with a slightly less grin in it: "What do you want me to say?"

"I want you to say something useful."

"Okay." A pause, the joke mostly gone. "Here's something useful — it doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"Why?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it.

"Five hundred people on the internet who don't know you, don't know me, and have never been to a race track, they’re just looking for something to do," Carson said. "That's what this is. That's the whole thing. All they did was compile things that are just — us. That's just what we're like. Best friends. We've always been like that."

"I know that."

"So what are you actually worried about?"

She didn't answer that.

Carson let the silence sit, which was unusual for him. When he spoke again the grin was fully gone. "Hey."

"I'm fine."

"I know you're fine. That's not what I asked."

She looked at Scout, still resolutely asleep on the floor. "I just don't love that the narrative is out there and I can't do anything about it."

"You could do something about it."

"Carson—"

"I'm not saying do anything. I'm saying you could. And you're choosing not to. Which is a decision you made. So own it a little."

She didn't say anything.

"You know how this ends," he said, simpler now. "You're the only one acting like you don't."

A long pause.

"Go look at your setup notes," he said. "we’ve got a race Sunday. You're in the hunt for the championship. Everything else is noise."

"When did you get wise."

"I've always been wise. You just don't listen." The grin was back, faint. 

“Okay mister wiseguy, I'll see you out there.” 

"Yes you will." He said and hung up.

Max landed in Las Vegas on Saturday evening.

Nobody noticed, or if they did, nothing surfaced yet. He came to the motorhome and Scout greeted him with the focused enthusiasm she reserved for people she had decided were worth her time — which was a meaningful list, not a short one — and he crouched down and let her investigate him thoroughly with the patience of someone who had learned the protocol.

"How was the flight," she said from the couch, not looking up from her notes.

"Long," he said. Scout headbutted his hand. He scratched behind her ear without being asked. "How's the car?"

"Better than Friday. Not quite where I want it yet."

He came and sat next to her and looked at the notes without saying anything for a while. Just read. That was the thing about him she still hadn't fully gotten used to after six months — the quality of his quiet. It wasn't empty. It was just comfortable.

"Your rear entry angle," he said eventually, pointing at something on the sheet.

"I know."

"Your engineer knows?"

"He knows."

"Okay," he said, and leaned back.

Scout relocated to lie across both their feet. Outside Las Vegas was being Las Vegas on a Saturday night — loud and lit up and completely indifferent to the two of them sitting in a motorhome going over setup notes like it was the most normal thing in the world.

It was, she thought, a very normal evening.

The Reddit thread had 1,200 comments now. She didn't open it.

She won Las Vegas Motor Speedway on a Sunday afternoon with three laps to go and a move on the bottom that Carson would describe for the rest of the year as "the most calculated thing I have ever watched happen in real time" and she would describe simply as "it was there."

The radio erupted. The crew erupted. She took the checkered flag and let herself be loud about it for a few seconds inside her helmet before everything got very fast — victory burnout, bringing the car in, the noise hitting her all at once the moment she climbed out. Carson got to her first because Carson always got there first, grabbed her by the shoulders and said something completely inaudible over the crowd, and she laughed, the unguarded kind, pure adrenaline. Then there were crew members everywhere, her engineer with his arms around her, someone putting a hat on her head, hurrying through the motions of victory lane, the interviews, the presenting of the trophy, the photos, the hat coming off and going back on, someone asking her to move left for the cameras and then right and then back again, and she was trying to be present in all of it — smiling and here and grateful then she saw him.

He was standing just back from the chaos, slightly removed from it the way he always was in crowds. Cap pulled low, sunglasses on, in the completely futile way that Max Verstappen wore hats and sunglasses as a disguise in public — like it would work if he just believed in it hard enough. He was watching her with that almost-smile, quiet in the middle of all the noise, and for a second the rest of victory lane went a little distant.

She thought about six months of late nights and setup notes and a pigeon on a balcony in Monaco and a Reddit thread sitting at 1,200 comments about entirely the wrong person.

She thought about Carson saying you know how this ends. You're the only one acting like you don't.

She crossed the distance between them with the trophy still in her hand and kissed him, and he caught her like he'd known it was coming — one hand at her jaw, completely unbothered by the cameras and the noise and the very public nature of what was currently happening.

It lasted maybe five seconds.

When she pulled back he looked at her with that same calm expression.

"Good race," he said.

She laughed, still a little breathless, still holding the trophy, still vaguely aware that there were approximately forty cameras pointed at them right now. "That's all you've got."

"You drove well in the second stage," he said. "Your tire management was better than the leader's. I was watching."

"You were watching my tire management."

"I was watching everything." The almost-smile again, closer to the real thing now. "But yes. Specifically the tire management in stage two."

She shook her head. Six months and he could still catch her off guard with it — the way he paid attention, the specific and unhurried way he saw things. She'd stopped being surprised that he'd noticed. She hadn't stopped being glad about it. She was still smiling when Carson appeared at her elbow approximately four seconds later. She watched him look at her, then at Max, then back at her. Something moved across his face — not surprise, more like a man watching something he already knew become real in front of him.

"So," he said.

"Don't," she said.

"I'm not saying anything."

"Good."

"I'm just standing here."

"Carson."

"Observing," he said. He looked at Max. Max looked back at him. Something passed between them — brief and unspoken, the kind of acknowledgment that didn't need words. Carson nodded once, slow, like something had been confirmed. "Nice to finally meet you properly," he said.

"You too," Max said.

She looked between them and felt something settle — quiet and certain and a little overwhelming — underneath all the noise of a race win on a Sunday afternoon in October.

r/NASCAR

📌 Y/N Carter Updates — VICTORY LANE. LAS VEGAS. I NEED EVERYONE TO LOOK AT THIS VIDEO RIGHT NOW Posted by u/spire95daily • 6 minutes ago

I don't have words. I literally do not have words. She won the race which is already — but then in victory lane she — I can't.

[video link]

I'm going to go lie down. Someone else take over.

↑ 18.4k | 1,249 comments — sorted by: new

u/Monsterorbust • 5m IS THAT MAX VERSTAPPEN

u/95ganggang • 5m IT'S MAX VERSTAPPEN

u/lurkingengineer • 4m THE RIVAL SPONSORS AGENDA WAS REAL THIS WHOLE TIME

u/monsterpurist04 • 4m I need to sit down I genuinely need to sit down

u/f1nascarcrossoverfan • 3m OUR OWN REDDIT THREAD. WE WERE SO WRONG. WE WERE SO EMBARRASSINGLY WRONG.

u/oldschoolnascarfan • 3m okay. FINE. I'll admit it.

u/95ganggang • 3m TOLD YOU IT WASN'T THE SNACK

u/maxshipper_supreme • 2m I NEVER DOUBTED THIS FOR A SINGLE SECOND

u/nascarnotes • 2m wait where's Carson in this video u/redbullorbust • 1m HE'S RIGHT THERE. HE'S WATCHING IT HAPPEN IN REAL TIME u/lurkingengineer • 1m his FACE. someone gif his face immediately

u/95ganggang • 58s Carson Hocevar watched his best friend kiss Max Verstappen in victory lane in Las Vegas and I think that's the most Carson thing that has ever happened

u/monsterpurist04 • 45s the rival sponsors agenda was real the whole time and we almost missed it because of a SNACK

u/nascarnotes • 30s I am not going to be normal about this for a very long time u/spire95daily • 15s none of us are