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summary: max dating a royal princess is the craziest rumor ever. right?
folkie radio: okay sooo i almost scrapped this entire fic bc i lost inspo mid writing it but i decided to finish it. nit rlly my best but i hope you like it !
MASTERLIST | MY PATREON
liked by alexandrasaintmleux, charles_leclerc and 2,340,534 others
yourinstagram Life lately 🌺☀️
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user1 your feed is literally what pinterest wishes it was
user2 monaco's princess and she's still cooler than everyone i know
user3 i need your wardrobe immediately
user4 the way she's a princess but acts like a normal 26 year old 😭
user5 mother has posted
user6 i'm convinced she has the best life on earth
user7 not me forgetting she's actual royalty
user8 imagine being able to say "sorry i can't come i'm busy being a princess"
user9 she's the people's princess fr
user10 one thing about yn is she's gonna serve
user11 COOLEST PRINCESS EVER
alexandrasaintmleux excuse me why are you prettier than the sunset
└ yourinstagram Because i learned from you
└ alexandrasaintmleux liar ❤️
charles_leclerc Where is the photo i took
└ yourinstagram Not good enough for the feed
└ charles_leclerc Unbelievable
└ alexandrasaintmleux She's been bullying him for years don't worry
└ charles_leclerc THANK YOU
└ yourinstagram i am literally the victim here
user12 charles and yn bickering under every post is my favorite genre
user13 the monaco trio is back 😭
user14 yn and charles friendship content when
user15 if i lived in monaco i'd be outside hoping to run into her
user16 i just know she's funny in real life
user17 not actual royalty being friends with charles leclerc 😭
user18 i love how her account is just vibes and occasionally remembering she's a princess
└ user19 still obsessed with the fact she has a tiktok
user20 i wonder if she's dating anyone
└ user21 didn't people say she was dating max verstappen a while ago 😭
└ user22 PLEASE not this rumor again
└ user23 as if max verstappen is pulling a princess be serious
└ user24 the funniest part is some people genuinely believed it
user25 max verstappen dating a princess sounds like wattpad
└ user26 charles would have exposed it by now let's be real
user27 if yn had a boyfriend i feel like alex would accidentally reveal it
liked by lando, charles_leclerc and 2,019,394 others
maxverstappen1 🇲🇨☀️
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lando wow guys he posted
└ maxverstappen1 Unfortunately
alex_albon Who stole your phone
└ maxverstappen1 I posted this myself
└ alex_albon that's exactly what someone who didn't post it themselves would say
charles_leclerc Slide 2 looks familiar
└ maxverstappen1 It's coffee
└ charles_leclerc Sure
user1 charles knows something
user2 charles is being weird again
user3 why is charles always lurking under max's posts
user4 monaco content from max?? that's new
└ user5 he's been in monaco so much lately
└ user6 isn't he literally living there
user7 MY MANNN
user8 guys don't start
└ user9 i'm starting
└ user10 no because wasn't there that rumor—
└ user11 STOP
└ user12 the princess rumor 😭😭😭
user13 i can't believe people genuinely thought max was dating princess yn
└ user14 that was the funniest rumor ever
└ user15 imagine explaining that sentence out loud
user16 "formula one driver max verstappen is secretly dating the princess of monaco"
└ user17 sounds like a hallmark movie
user18 why yall talking about princess yn under his posts
└ user19 this is why nobody takes f1 fans seriously
└ user20 max would never date a princess
└ user21 and a princess would never date max 😭
liked by user1, user2 and 18,958 others
f1gossip Max Verstappen was spotted having dinner in Monaco last night with an unidentified woman.
The pair were seen leaving a restaurant near the harbor and walking together before getting into a car.
view all comments
user1 MAX???? ON A DATE????
user2 hold on hold on hold on
user3 WHO IS THAT
user4 max fans we ride at dawn
user5 this man has a GIRLFRIEND???
user6 why am i shocked like he's not a normal human being
user7 WHO IS THISSS
user8 the way this is how i'm finding out max leaves his house
user9 i need better photos immediately
user10 that picture was taken with a microwave
user11 zoom in
user12 ENHANCE
user13 BROOO I DONT BELIEVE THIS
user14 max verstappen has a girlfriend ??
user15 don't say it
user16 i'm gonna say it
user17 DON'T
user18 princess yn—
user19 GET OUT
user20 we're not doing this again 😭
user21 y'all think every woman in monaco is the princess
user22 why do yall randomly bring the princess up every single time
user23 if max was dating royalty we'd know
user24 "world champion dates princess" 😭😭😭
user25 if max was dating the princess charles would never be able to keep that secret
user26 this is probably just some rich monaco girl
user27 max pulling up with a mystery woman was not on my 2026 bingo card
liked by yourinstagram, charles_leclerc and 1,093,583 others
alexandrasaintmleux Thanks to our chauffeurs ❤️
comments
charles_leclerc Thank you for your support
└ alexandrasaintmleux Thank you for your service
└ yourinstagram 5 stars on uber
└ charles_leclerc That's all i get???
user1 WAIT
user2 CHAUFFEURS?????
user3 plural???
user4 THERE WERE TWO MEN???
user5 hold on because charles is obviously one of them
└ user6 WHO IS THE OTHER ONE
user7 OH MY GOD
user8 IS YN NOT SINGLE???
└ user9 THIS IS HOW WE FIND OUT???
user10 no because why did my stomach DROP
user11 i've never considered the possibility that princess yn has a boyfriend
└ user12 i thought she just existed independently from society
└ user13 same 😭
user14 WHO IS THAT
└ user15 zooming in immediately
└ user16 ENHANCE
└ user17 ENHANCE MORE
user18 all i can tell is that he's a man
└ user19 groundbreaking information
user20 charles is one chauffeur
└ user21 which means the other chauffeur was there specifically for yn
user22 PRINCESS YN HAS A BOYFRIEND
user23 OH MY GOD
user24 this lore
user25 ALEXANDRA WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
user26 there's literally no reason for a second guy to be there 😭
└ user27 unless they called an uber
└ user28 do you genuinely think alexandra saint mleux and princess yn of monaco take ubers
└ user29 fair point
user30 okay i'm being serious who is dating the princess of monaco
└ user31 some billionaire probably
└ user32 some prince maybe
└ user33 imagine if it's a normal guy
user34 imagine explaining to your parents that you're dating a princess
└ user35 "what does your girlfriend do?"
└ user36 "she's royalty"
└ user37 😭😭😭
user38 wait wasn't there that max verstappen rumor
└ user39 SHUT UP
└ user40 we're not doing this
└ user41 literally every mystery man becomes max verstappen
└ user42 that man could be 70 years old and y'all would still say max
user43 the funniest part is that if yn had a boyfriend she'd keep it private
└ user44 exactly we'll never find out who it is
user45 alex just accidentally caused an international investigation
user46 i know the palace PR team is SWEATING
liked by maxverstappen1, alexandrasaintmleux and 2,094,549 others
yourinstagram Last night's Princess Grace Foundation Gala 🤍 An evening dedicated to supporting young artists and celebrating creativity. Thank you to everyone who made it possible.
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alexandrasaintmleux absolutely stunning ❤️
└ yourinstagram Love you
charles_leclerc I was told there would be free food
└ yourinstagram There was
└ charles_leclerc Then I have no complaints
user1 i genuinely forget she's royalty until she posts things like this
└ user2 and then i'm like oh right she's a princess 😭
user3 the gown??? hello???
user4 whoever styled her deserves a raise
user5 imagine looking like this while attending a gala
└ user6 imagine attending a gala
└ user7 fair point
user8 no because she's living in a completely different reality than the rest of us
└ user9 princess by day, pinterest girl by night
└ user10 that's literally her brand
user11 i need to know what her life is actually like
└ user12 same
user13 imagine her boyfriend scrolling through these photos
└ user14 STOP
└ user15 i'm still processing the boyfriend thing
└ user16 every time someone mentions it i get surprised all over again
└ user17 because she feels above dating somehow 😭
└ user18 exactly
└ user19 not above dating 😭😭😭
user20 SHES SO ICONIC
user21 whoever the boyfriend is, he definitely saw these photos first
user22 i know she's a princess but she's really so iconic
user23 THAT SHOULD BE ME
user24 imagine your girlfriend casually sending you gala photos before posting them
└ user25 meanwhile i'm sending blurry selfies
└ user26 imagine getting a text like "how does this speech sound?"
└ user27 imagine proofreading a princess's speech
└ user28 that's actually insane
user29 imagine being introduced as "the princess's boyfriend"
└ user30 i'd immediately pass out
└ user31 i wonder if he's royal too
└ user32 probably
└ user33 i don't know, yn seems like the type to date someone normal
└ user34 define normal 😭
└ user35 not another royal
user36 imagine if her boyfriend an athlete
└ user37 wait
└ user38 don't
└ user39 DON'T
user40 every road leads back to max verstappen somehow
└ user41 this fandom has one joke
└ user42 and it's not even a good one anymore 😭
user43 if she was dating max we'd know
└ user44 exactly
└ user45 there's no way they could keep that secret
└ user46 absolutely impossible
liked by user1, user2 and 10,948 others
f1paddockupdates Max Verstappen attended the Princess Grace Foundation Gala in Monaco last night. The four-time World Champion was photographed arriving at the event and spending the evening with fellow guests.
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user1 max at a gala feels wrong somehow 😭
user2 OH WHAT IS THISSS
user3 WAIT wasn't princess yn there too
└ user4 she literally hosted it
user5 okay the rumors are about to start again
└ user6 as if they ever stopped
user7 i'm sorry but max verstappen dating the princess of monaco still sounds fake
└ user8 because it IS fake 😭
user9 i genuinely think she's dating some billionaire we've never heard of
└ user10 same
user11 people see max in monaco once and lose their minds
└ user12 he lives there 😭
user13 PRINCE MAX SO TRUE
user14 imagine if they've been together this whole time and everyone keeps dismissing it
└ user15 that would be the funniest thing ever
user16 there's no way they could keep that secret
└ user17 especially with charles involved
└ user18 now THAT is a good argument
└ user19 charles would accidentally leak it in under a week
└ user20 poor charles catching strays for being incapable of keeping secrets
user21 MAX AND PRINCESS YN??
user22 okay but WHAT is he doing there
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liked by yourinstagram, charles_leclerc and 1,984,430 others
maxverstappen1 Solid weekend. Thanks everyone for the support. 👊
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redbullracing 👏👏
charles_leclerc Decent weekend
└ maxverstappen1 Thanks charles
yourinstagram Told you it'd be a good weekend 🤍
└ maxverstappen1 You were right ❤️
└ user1 WAIT???
└ user2 "TOLD YOU"??????
user3 okay i'm listening
user4 HOLD ON
user5 why does that comment sound so...
└ user6 boyfriend girlfriend coded 😭
└ user7 no literally
user8 wait because how would she told him
└ user9 she probably wished him luck before the race??
user10 why would princess yn be texting max verstappen before a race 😭
└ user11 because they're FRIENDS
└ user12 exactly thank you
user13 and he replied with "you were right" ❤️
└ user14 IT'S THE HEART FOR ME
└ user15 he doesn't reply to everyone with hearts
user16 i think y'all are reading too much into this
└ user17 maybe
└ user18 but i'm choosing delusion
user19 every week these two accidentally feed the allegations 😭
└ user20 i'm still saying there's absolutely no way they're dating
user21 and i'm still saying if they ever announce it i'm deleting my account
└ user22 deal 🤝
liked by user1, user2 and 12,094 others
f1updates Max Verstappen was asked in today's press conference:
Interviewer: "What's the craziest rumor you've ever heard about yourself?"
Max: "Probably that I'm dating the Princess of Monaco."
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user1 HE KNOWS ABOUT THE RUMOR 😭
user2 I'M CRYING
user3 the way he started laughing immediately
user4 okay that pretty much settles it 💀
└ user5 exactly 😭
user6 imagine if he was actually dating her and just said this
└ user7 that would be the funniest thing ever
user8 no because imagine lying straight to everyone's face
└ user9 max would never 😭
└ user10 he looked way too amused
user11 honestly he's probably just tired of hearing it
user12 i still don't know where that rumor even came from
└ user13 literally because they're friends with charles???
└ user14 and they both live in monaco
└ user15 people ran with it for no reason
user16 wait because if i WAS secretly dating the princess i'd answer exactly like this
└ user17 😭😭😭
└ user18 stop feeding the delusions
user19 i'm sorry but this somehow convinced me more
└ user20 HOW
└ user19 because why did he laugh first
└ user21 because the rumor is ridiculous 😭
└ user22 exactly
user23 imagine princess yn watching this interview
└ user24 she's probably laughing too
└ user25 honestly i need her reaction
liked by alexandrasaintmleux, user1 and 234,948 others
charles_leclerc Recently.
view all comments
user1 CHARLES?????
user2 THAT IS LITERALLY MAX AND PRINCESS YN
user3 NO WAY 😭
user4 WAIT A DAMN MINUTE
user5 max just said dating her was the craziest rumor he's ever heard
└ user6 AND NOW THIS???
└ user7 HELLO???
user8 zooming in immediately
user9 THAT'S THEM
user10 THAT IS ACTUALLY THEM
user11 charles accidentally hard launching his friends 😭
user12 I'M CRYING
user13 somebody save slide 4 before he notices
└ user14 TOO LATE I ALREADY DID
user15 MAX YOU LIAR
user16 😭😭😭
THIS POST HAS BEEN DELETED
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replies:
user1 OH THEY'RE COOKED
user2 if it was innocent why delete it 😭
user3 exactly
user4 CHARLES LECLERC YOU HAVE CHANGED THE COURSE OF HISTORY
user5 max is currently on his way to charles' apartment as we speak
user6 charles is never beating the allegations that he can't keep a secret
user7 i'm sorry but deleting it made this ten times worse
user8 way worse 😭
user9 all he had to do was leave the post up
user10 now i'm convinced
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liked by maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc and 2,094,958 others
yourinstagram A few moments lately 🤍
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alexandrasaintmleux The first point is important
└ charles_leclerc I don't appreciate this slander
└ yourinstagram And yet
└ charles_leclerc 😐
user1 OH MY GOD
user2 SHE KNOWS
user3 "do not trust charles with secrets" 😭😭😭
user4 YOUR HIGHNESS PLEASE
user5 THERE IS NO WAY THIS IS A COINCIDENCE
user6 charles accidentally exposing people and then getting called out publicly is killing me
user7 "monaco is surprisingly small"
user8 OH SHE'S EVIL
user9 SHE'S READING THE TWEETS
user10 i know she and max are somewhere laughing at us
└ user11 don't start
user12 no because that notes app screenshot feels targeted 😭
user13 charles is never recovering from this
└ user14 honestly? deserved
user15 i need to know what happened in the group chat after that post got deleted
user16 MAX LIKED THIS BYEEEE
user17 this is way too funny specially when you remember that she's a ROYAL PRINCESS
liked by alexandrasaintmleux, carmenmmundt and 1,938,439 others
f1 Royal visit. 👑🇲🇨 Princess YN of Monaco arrives at the paddock ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.
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user1 THE PRINCESS HAS ARRIVED
user2 monaco gp weekend officially started 😭
user3 she looks so good omg
user4 home race for charles and the princess
user5 every year she somehow steals the show
user6 watch the cameras find her every five seconds 😭
user7 monaco's favorite daughter
user8 can't wait for the annual princess yn paddock content
user9 somewhere charles is already looking for her
user10 the real question is how long until she gets photographed talking to max
└ user11 DON'T START
└ user12 i'm serious 😭
└ user13 after this week every photo is getting investigated
user14 if max appears in the background i'm deleting my account
└ user15 see you tomorrow
└ user16 😭😭😭
user17 OH THIS IS ABOUT TO GET INTERESTING
user18 coolest princess ever fr
user19 charles deleting that post made everything worse
└ user20 WAY WORSE
└ user21 i still can't believe he actually deleted it
user22 charles leclerc the man that accidentally launched a thousand conspiracy theories
liked by user1, user2 and 65,948 others
f1gossip MAX VERSTAPPEN AND PRINCESS YN OF MONACO. WE REPEAT. MAX VERSTAPPEN AND PRINCESS YN OF MONACO.
After months of rumors, fan theories, deleted Instagram posts, suspicious comments, mysterious appearances, and one very unfortunate Charles Leclerc photo dump...
It appears the internet may have been right.
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user1 OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD
user2 EVERYBODY STAY CALM
user3 I AM NOT CALM
user4 CHARLES LECLERC YOU ARE NEVER SEEING HEAVEN
user5 i can't believe my eyes are actually seeing this
user6 oh god he's really dating a PRINCESS
user7 i just fell to my knees at walmart
user8 I SPENT SIX MONTHS DEFENDING THIS RELATIONSHIP TO PEOPLE WHO CALLED ME DELUSIONAL
user9 APOLOGIZE TO THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS RIGHT NOW
user10 max looked us in the eyes and said it was the craziest rumor he'd ever heard
user11 they must be dating for like a year now
user12 THEY WERE LAUGHING AT US THE WHOLE TIME
user13 of course the rumors were real
user14 MAX VERSTAPPEN DATING A PRINCESS??A
user15 this is not real
user16 but HOW
user17 i love this bye
user18 THEY WEREN'T EVEN TRYING TO HIDE IT
user19 NO BECAUSE WE ALL THOUGHT THEY WERE JUST FRIENDS
user20 oh i know charles is livinggg
user21 CHARLES ACCIDENTALLY HARD LAUNCHED THEM WEEKS AGO
user22 i manifested this
user23 i've been staring at this for hours and i still can't believe it's real
user24 THIS IS THE FUNNIEST POSSIBLE WAY THIS COULD HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED
user25 THE FOUR-TIME WORLD CHAMPION IS DATING A PRINCESS
user26 THIS SOUNDS LIKE FANFICTION
user27 ACTUALLY IT SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE FANFICTION
user28 SOMEBODY CHECK ON CHARLES
user29 no. fucking. way
user30 charles is currently turning off his pone
user31 IMAGINE BEING MAX VERSTAPPEN
user32 IMAGINE BEING PRINCESS YN
user33 IMAGINE BEING THE PERSON WHO TWEETED "WHAT IF IT'S ACTUALLY MAX"
user34 THEY WON
user35 THEY WON SO HARD
user36 MONACO GRAND PRIX WEEKEND HAS PEAKED
user37 THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE RACE
liked by yourinstagram, charles_leclerc and 4,093,240 others
maxverstappen1 P3 in Monaco and the best part of the weeknd
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ser1 wait HE posted it???
user2 oh my god 😭
user3 NO WAY
user4 i'm sorry but this is actually insane
user5 the princess of monaco and max verstappen was not on my 2026 bingo card
user6 remember when everyone said the rumors were ridiculous
└ user7 and then it turned out every single rumor was true 😭
user8 I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THIS
user9 max and a princess. WHAT
user10 i know charles is somewhere relieved this is public now
user11 max saying it was the craziest rumor he'd ever heard about himself is taking me OUT
└ user12 meanwhile he was dating her the whole time
user13 THIS IS JUST INSANE
user14 they were laughing at all of us
user15 the fact that the conspiracy theorists got everything right
└ user16 every. single. thing.
user17 wait because wasn't she commenting on his posts this entire time?
└ user18 yes 😭
user19 "told you it'd be a good weekend 🤍"
└ user20 don't remind me
user21 i genuinely thought they were just friends
└ user22 same
user23 not max hard launching with a kissing picture
user24 not max hard launching with a PRINCESS
user25 honestly good for them
user26 they look really happy
user27 this has to be one of the wildest f1 relationship reveals ever
user28 a world champion dating a princess sounds fake
user29 it literally sounds like a wattpad story
charles_leclerc Thank God finally
└ user30 FINALLY???
└ user31 charles has been waiting for this day 😭
└ user32 he's free from keeping the secret
alexandrasaintmleux ❤️
└ user33 alex knew EVERYTHING
└ user34 of course she did
yourinstagram ❤️🤍
└ user35 your highness that is NOT enough information
user36 we're going to need a statement, a timeline, and the group chat screenshots
summary: after qualifying, you and lewis are seen having a long private conversation that appears emotionally charged and unsettling.
pairing: formula one + female!driver!reader
warnings/tags: (this is more of a fic than a smau, because i believe this fic works best without social media getting in the way!) angst, just angst.
reblogs, likes, and comments are so so appreciated! if you want to read more from me, kindly submit in my inbox !!! xoxo
The debrief felt endless, a suffocating blur of lights, telemetry data, voices that sounded like they were underwater, and journalists were already circling like sharks.
You answered all of it on autopilot. You nodded at the right graphs, gave the expected feedback about balance, and forced the familiar, PR-trained smiles.
But the entire time, a single, heavy thought sat in the back of your mind, anchoring you to a strange sense of dread.
I need to tell you something.
The words hadn't been spoken to you yet, but the text message sitting on your phone screen felt like a timer counting down. The moment the final engineer closed their laptop and left the room, your eyes immediately flicked toward the door.
Lewis wasn't there. Usually, he'd linger, trading notes or making some dry comment about the car. Today, he vanished the second the checkered flag fell.
Five more minutes passed in the quiet of the room. Then ten.
Your phone buzzed.
Lewis: At the top floor.
The hospitality building had mostly emptied out by the time you made your way up the stairs. Down below, the faint sounds of mechanics packing up crates and the distant hum of the paddock provided a strange contract to the silence of the top floor.
You found the room immediately at the end of the hall. The door was already unlocked, yielding to a gentle push.
Lewis sat alone inside. There were no engineers, no managers, no public relations handlers, and no cameras.
Just him, stripping of his racing harness, wearing only his team fireproofs with the sleeves tied loosely around his waist.
For a long moment, he didn't even turn around. He simply stared out the massive glass window overlooking the circuit.
He looked entirely exhausted. Not physically, but emotionally. The lines around his eyes seemed deeper, his shoulders slightly rounded under the weight of a massive secret.
You shut the door behind you.
"You look like someone died," you said, trying to inject a bit of lightness into the heavy air.
A small, breathless laugh escaped him, though his eyes stayed fixed on the lights outside. "Yeah."
Your stomach sank further. You walked closer, the squeak of your sneakers sounding overly loud. "Lewis."
He rubbed a hand over his face, a slow, weary gesture, before finally turning to look directly at you. And for the first time you had known him, he looked nervous.
Actually nervous.
"What happened?" you asked softly.
Silence stretched between you, thick and suffocating.
"I'm leaving Mercedes."
The words hit like a brick to the chest. You blinked, the air leaving your lungs in a short, sharp gasp. "What?"
"I'm leaving."
You stared at him, waiting for a punchline, waiting for him to tell you it was a prank. "No."
A sad, fleeting smile touched his lips. "Yeah."
"No."
He laughed softly, shaking his head. "That's pretty much what I said when it first became real."
The room suddenly felt incredibly small, the walls closing in. Your brain flatly refused to process the information.
Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes.
Those two concepts were practically the same sentence in your mind. They were the same identity, the same golden era, the same history.
You couldn't imagine one without the other.
"You mean eventually?" you asked, desperate for a safety net. "After a few years? At the end of the multi-year contract?"
He shook his head slowly.
"When, Lewis?"
Lewis looked directly into your eyes, his gaze steady but filled with an apology. "Next season."
The world stopped spinning. Your mouth fell open. "No."
His expression told you everything you didn't want to hear. It wasn't a joke. It wasn't a paddock rumor designed to stir up the media. It wasn't speculation.
It was done. Signed. Final. Real.
You sat down in the nearest chair, your knees suddenly feeling like water. You stared at the floor, your mind racing through every team on the grid.
"Where?" you whispered.
"Ferrari."
You snapped your head up, staring. Lewis actually winced at your reaction.
"Yeah," he mumured.
"Ferrari."
"Yeah."
"The Ferrari? Maranello? The red car?"
He laughed despite himself, a quick flash of his usual warmth. "I mean that's the Ferrari I know."
"Oh, shut up," you snapped, though there was no real heat in it.
The laugh died almost immediately, leaving a hollow space behind. Because now, the staggering reality was settling into your bones.
Ferrari. Lewis Hamilton.
The headlines alone felt mathematically impossible. The sport would explode. Toto would probably tear the garage apart. Half the paddock would faint from the sheer shock of it.
You looked back up at him, a sharp pang of hurt cutting through the shock. "When were you going to tell me?"
Lewis hesitated, his eyes flicking away. And immediately, you know.
Your eyes narrowed. "Lewis."
Another hesitation. He wouldn't look at you.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me," you said, standing back up because sitting still felt impossible.
"It's complicated."
"No. Don't give me 'complicated'." You crossed your arms, pacing across the room. "When did you sign?"
Silence. The heavy, guilty silence answered for him.
Your jaw tightened, a bitter taste in your mouth. "You already signed."
Still, he said nothing."
"You signed the contract and then you called me up here to tell me?"
"C'mon, please."
"You signed a lifetime commitment with Ferrari and you didn't say a single word to me while it was happening?"
His voice sharpened slightly, a rare crack in his calm facade. "Because I couldn't."
You scoffed, turning your back to him. "Bullshit."
The second the word left your mouth, a deep, profound regret flashed across his face. Not anger at your language, but a genuine, aching regret.
"You think I wanted it to be this way?"
The room went completely quiet again. Lewis stood up from the table, stepping into your line of sight.
"I wanted to tell you," he said, his voice dropping.
"Then why didn't you? We tell each other everything."
"Because if one person knew, it became two people," he explained. "And if two people know, it becomes a risk."
You crossed your arms tighter, defensive. "I'm not exactly known for leaking things to the press, Lewis. I've kept your secrets for god knows how long."
"I know that," he said softly, stepping closer. "I know you wouldn't tell a soul."
"Then why?"
Lewis looked away. For a second, he looked older.
Not the seven-time world champion Lewis. Not the global superstar, fashion icon, or celebrity. Just a man carrying a massive, heavy decision that weighed a thousand pounds.
"Because if you knew before I signed..." He paused, his throat catching slightly. "I might've listened to you."
That shut you up instantly. The anger died right in your throat, leaving you completely breathless.
Lewis gave a small smile. "You would've asked the hard questions. You would've challenged every single assumption I made. You would've made me think twice, made me think harder about what I was leaving behind."
You looked down, knowing he was entirely right. You would've fought tooth and nail to keep him.
"And I needed to know what I truly wanted," Lewis continued, "before I let anyone else's voice influence it. I had to make this choice completely alone."
The last remnants of your irritation evaporated, replaced by a quiet, aching understanding. Because that sounded exactly like him.
You let out a long sigh, dropping your arms to your sides. "You're incredibly annoying."
Lewis laughed, a genuine sound of relief washing over his face. "Yeah. I know."
"Ferrari?"
"Ferrari."
"Seriously?"
"Apparently so."
You shook your head. "You're absolutely insane."
"Probably," he agreed, the tension in his shoulders finally breaking. Just enough for both of you to breathe.
Then, Lewis's demeanor shifted, turning serious again. "There is one more thing."
Your stomach tightened instinctively. "What now? Are you buying the team too?"
"No," he said, not matching your joke. "No one knows."
You blinked. "What do you mean, 'nobody knows'? The board? PR?"
"I mean nobody," his expression hardened, underlining the gravity of the situation. "The announcement won't be public just yet. Contracts are locked in a vault."
"Okay..."
"Toto doesn't know."
You stared at him, genuinely terrified for him. "How is that even possible? You see him every day!"
"It's possible. We've kept it entirely under wraps."
"You're telling me that I know you're leaving for Ferrari before Toto knows?"
"Unfortunately for your stress levels, yes."
"You are a terrible friend," you muttered, pressing your hands to your forehead.
"I know."
"You are a nightmare of an employee."
"Mhm."
"You're completely out of your mind."
"Definitely."
For the first time all evening, Lewis genuinely smiles, the heavy cloud lifting from his face for a brief moment.
"I'll tell him tomorrow morning," Lewis said, his voice dropping. "Before we leave."
The room fell back into a heavy silence. It wasn't an awkward quiet, but the weight that follows life-altering news.
Lewis leaned back against the edge of the table, folding his arms loosely across his chest, watching you process the fragments of the future.
You still weren't sure you fully could.
Ferrari. Next season. No Mercedes silver. No black race suit. No garage across from yours. No Lewis sitting next to you, stealing your snacks and complaining about anything.
It felt fundamentally wrong, like someone had casually announced that it was the end of the world.
Eventually, you shook your head, trying to clear the fog. "I still can't believe you actually did it."
"Trust me. Neither can half the people who signed the paperwork."
You watched him for a moment, the gears turning in your head. "What happens to your seat?"
His expression shifted, his eyebrows knitting together. "What?"
"Your seat, Lewis." You gestured to the paddock below. "The seat. It's the most coveted drive on the grid."
Lewis blinked, as if he hadn't fully permitted himself to think about the aftermath yet. "Oh."
A small, amused smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Already thinking like a team principal. Very Toto of you."
"Someone has to keep their head," you muttered.
He chuckled, but you just waited, refusing to let him off the hook.
"So?" you prompted. "Who is it?"
Lewis shrugged. "Honestly? No idea."
"Bullshit."
His grin widened, bright and familiar. "You know me too well."
"Exactly. You absolutely have someone. You've spent years anchoring this team."
"Everybody has theories," he countered.
"What are yours?"
Lewis considered it for a long moment. "George, obviously."
You frowned. "George already has a seat. I mean who fills your spot."
"You asked who takes my place," he teased, enjoying the distraction.
"You know exactly what I mean, Lewis."
He laughed, letting go of the playfulness. "Fine." He looked out at the darkened track. "Kimi."
You tilted your head, surprised. "Kimi? Kimi Antonelli?"
Lewis nodded. "He'll be ready soon."
"He'd be so young. The pressure of a Mercedes seat straight away?"
"So was I," Lewis said softly, a quiet pride in his voice. "When I started at McLaren, the pressure was immense. But if you're quick, you're quick."
You rolled your eyes, trying to break the sudden solemnity. "Nobody likes it when you use yourself as the gold-standard example."
Lewis looked mock-offended, putting a hand over his heart. "It's a perfectly valid example! Seven titles says it's valid."
"It's annoying."
"It's history."
"It's annoying history."
"It can be both," he grinned.
You couldn't help but laugh, a genuine, throat-clearing sound. For a few beautiful seconds, things felt entirely normal again.
Just two teammates bickering in an empty hospitality room after a long day of work.
Then, the reality settled back over the room like a heavy blanket.
Kimi. George. Mercedes. Future lineups. Future seasons. A future... without him.
The realization landed harder than you had ever expected. You looked down at your hands, suddenly finding yourself incredibly interested in the intricate stitching of your team race gloves, tracing the white thread with your thumb just to avoid his eyes.
Lewis noticed immediately. Of course he did; he read you as easily as an open book.
"What is it?" he asked, his voice softening.
You shook your head, keeping your eyes down. "Nothing."
"Hey."
You let out a long, ragged sigh, the defense mechanisms crumbling. "It just... it feels weird, Lewis."
His expression softened completely, the competitive edge vanishing. "Weird?"
"Yeah." You finally looked up, meeting his eyes, feeling a strange tightness in your throat. "I've spent my entire Formula One career with you. Every single milestone."
The words came out before you could stop them, raw and unfiltered.
The room fell into an absolute, breathless quiet. Because it was the absolute truth. Every podium celebration where you’d sprayed champagne at each other, every miserable post-race debrief after a double-DNF, every strategic disaster, every glorious victory. Every late-night flight across the world, every stupid joke over rushed team dinners in random hotels, every ridiculous argument over setup choices and front-wing flaps.
Every single race weekend of your professional life, Lewis had been the constant.
You suddenly realized, with a sharp pang of grief, that you couldn't picture a Mercedes garage without him standing somewhere in it.
You couldn't imagine looking across the awning and seeing a different driver's name over the neighboring garage door. And that realization hurt far more than you were prepared for.
"You know what's stupid?" you asked, your voice trembling just a fraction.
Lewis stayed quiet, letting you speak.
"You told me five minutes ago," you said, a self-deprecating laugh escaping you. "And my brain keeps acting like next season is next week."
A small, understanding smile appeared on his face, though his eyes were tinged with sadness.
You shook your head, looking back toward the window. "Like I'm going to walk into the paddock next year, and you're just... gone."
The word hung in the air, heavy and definitive. Gone.
Lewis looked away briefly, his jaw tightening, his throat moving as he swallowed down his own emotion.
Because despite all the thrill of the new challenge, despite the historic allure of Ferrari, despite the millions of dollars and the fresh start—this wasn't easy for him either. He was ripping away a piece of his own life, too.
"You'll be fine," he said, though it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as you.
You immediately scoffed, a watery smile on your face. "That's not the point, and you know it."
"I know."
"No, seriously." You pointed a finger at him, trying to anchor yourself. "You've spent so long teaching me how to navigate this paddock. How to handle the politics, how to save my tires, how to keep my head straight."
"And you're doing incredibly well," he said, his voice firm and unwavering. "You don't need me to hold the map anymore."
"I'm serious, Lewis."
"So am I."
You shook your head again, looking away. The frustration you felt wasn't anger at him. It was grief. A tiny, premature grief. The sorrow of something ending long before the final curtain had actually dropped.
Lewis understood that immediately. He stepped forward, closing the distance between you, his voice dropping to a gentle, grounding whisper. "Hey."
You looked up at him.
"We still have an entire season left," he reminded you, a soft light in his eyes. "One last ride together. Let's make it miserable for everyone else on the grid."
You laughed, wiping at the corner of your eye. "That's such a Lewis thing to say."
"What?"
"Only you hear 'an entire season' and think a bunch of weekends are a long time It flies by, Lewis. You know it does."
Lewis grinned, a bit sheepishly. "Fair point."
You stared at the floor, the silence returning, gentler this time. Then, you finally asked the one question that had been burning a hole in your chest since he first said the word leaving.
"Are you happy?"
The room went entirely still. The ambient sounds of the track seemed to fade away completely.
Lewis took longer to answer than you expected. A lot longer. He looked down at his boots, then out at the dark track, weighing the question with absolute sincerity. Then, he looked back at you and nodded.
"Yeah," he said. It wasn't an immediate, PR-ready exclamation. It wasn't an enthusiastic shout. It was just a quiet, deeply personal honesty. "Yeah. I think I am. I needed a change. I needed to know I could still do it somewhere else."
You held his gaze for a long moment, reading the peace in his eyes, and then you nodded back. Because that was enough. You understood. You didn't have to like the choice, and you certainly didn't have to be ready for the fallout tomorrow morning, but you understood him.
Lewis smiled softly, the tension fully dissipating from his face. "Besides," he shrugged, a mischievous glint returning to his eyes. "You might end up really liking whoever replaces me. Maybe they'll actually let you win a game of FIFA on the flights."
You immediately barked out a genuine laugh, the heavy atmosphere lifting. "Impossible. I'll make their life a living hell out of principle."
"Harsh," he chuckled.
"I'm completely serious."
"George will be absolutely devastated to hear that."
You picked up your discarded racing glove from the table and threw it at his chest. Lewis dodged it effortlessly, his reflexes as sharp as ever, and for the first time since you had walked through that door, both of you laughed freely, filling the quiet hospitality room with warmth.
But later that night, the warmth was gone.
You lay awake in your hotel room, staring blankly at the shadows dancing across the ceiling. The clock on the bedside table read long after midnight, but sleep felt miles away. The laughter from the hospitality suite had evaporated, leaving behind the cold, stark reality of the secret you were now carrying.
Every time you closed your eyes, your mind didn't flash to the Ferrari red, or the chaotic media headlines that would dominate the world tomorrow. It didn't think about Toto's inevitable reaction, or the stock prices, or the contract semantics.
Your mind kept returning to a single, quiet realization.
There would come a Thursday afternoon next year where you would walk through the turnstiles of a paddock, step into the familiar brackets of the Mercedes garage, and look to your left—
And Lewis Hamilton wouldn't be there.
And somehow, in the quiet darkness of the desert night, that was the only part you couldn't stop thinking about.
f1gossipcentral
liked by user, and 6,239 others
f1gossipcentral🚨| MERCEDES' GOLDEN DUO LEWIS HAMILTON AND Y/N L/N SPOTTED TOGETHER AFTER QUALIFYING
After securing pole position, Y/N was reportedly spotted heading to a private room where Lewis was already waiting. The two remained inside for over an hour.
Fans who saw them outside the building say the conversation looked highly emotional.
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user54 nah because why does this look like a breakup and they're not even dating 😭😭😭
user7 she got POLE why does she look sad???
user89 calling it now. this is contract related.
user12 something about this makes me nervous and idk why. THERES NO PHOTOS IM GOING CRAZY
user3 everyone saying contract news but whose contract???
user80 whatever happened in that room, they better tell us immediately because my imagination is running out of control
The interview was supposed to be the easy part of the evening.
It was mapped out as a quick sit-down with the host. A few standard questions about your pace. A few predictable comments about you strategy.
Then, you'd be free to slip out the back, disappear into the quiet sanctuary of your hotel room, and spend the rest of the night processing the shift that had just fractured your world.
You just needed to pretend, for ten minutes, that you weren't carrying one of the biggest secrets in Formula One history.
Instead, you stepped onto the set and felt the heavy, suffocating heat of the studio lights beaming down on you.
Nobody in this room cared about your pace. The lap time was already old news. They didn't want to talk about apex speeds or engine modes. They wanted to talk about you.
They wanted the drama. The comeback story. The scandal. The raw survival of it all.
"First of all, congratulations! After everything that's happened this season... all of this has got to feel incredibly satisfying."
You forced a flawless, practiced smile to your face. "It does. The team gave me an amazing car today, and everyone back at the factory has worked tirelessly for this. It's great reward to them."
The interviewer nodded, acknowledging the corporate answer before immediately pivoting. "But let's talk about the journey to get back to this spot."
Of course. There was no escaping it.
"You've had an extraordinary, deeply challenging few months," she continued, her tone dropping into something more solemn. "The intense investigation involving Christian Horner, the relentless media circus that followed it, the immense scrutiny on your personal performances, the endless speculation about your future in the sport..."
Behind her, the massive studio screen flickered to life. It didn't show telemetry or racing lines. It displayed a montage of the past year. There was shaky, chaotic footage of you arriving at circuits surrounded by a wall of photographers, flashing lenses illuminating your tense face. There were screenshots of sensationalist headlines, social media trends, and the absolute chaos of the Red Bull paddock drama.
Then, the screen cut to footage of you now: you pulling into the number-one, tearing your helmet off, and pointing to the sky.
The contrast between the two versions of you was almost ridiculous. It felt like watching two different people.
The interviewer leaned forward, her eyes locked onto yours. "How difficult was it navigating all of that while trying to perform at the highest level?"
You paused. The silence stretched a bit too long for live television. It wasn't because you didn't know the answer, it was because, looking at the footage of your own survival, you suddenly knew exactly whose philosophy you wanted to mirror. You knew whose strength you had been leaning on.
"It was incredibly difficulted," you admitted softly, "There were days where waking up and putting on the suit felt like a job, you know? But I wasn't doing it alone."
The interviewer leaned in closer, "The team?"
"The team, definitely. My family. My closest friends." You let out a small, genuine smile. "The people who remind you who you are when the rest of the world is trying to tell you who you should be."
The interviewer glanced at her notes. "One thing we've heard repeatedly from people inside the garage is just how much unwavering support you've received from your teammates throughout this entire ordeal."
Your chest tightened so fast it felt like a physical blow.
"Lewis in particular," the interviewer added.
Right on cue, the giant screen behind her switched images. It showed the immediate aftermath of qualifying from just an hour ago. There was Lewis, still in his unzipped race suit, wrapping his arms around you in a fierce, protective hug by the scales. There was footage of him standing back, clapping with a genuine, proud smile on his face as you took the pole position tire award.
The sight of his frozen, smiling face on the screen brought a sharp, physical ache to your chest.
It felt almost cruel. Because nobody else in this blindingly bright studio knew. None of the technicians, none of the producers, none of the thousands of fans watching at home had any idea that less than an hour ago, in a quiet room, that exact man had told you he was leaving. Next year, he wouldn't be wearing silver.
"He seems to have been there for you every single step of the way," the interviewer murmured warmly.
For a terrifying second, you couldn't breathe, let alone answer. It wasn't because you were about to burst into tears; it was the sheer, suffocating effort of trying not to become emotional.
"I don't think people fully understand how much he's helped me behind closed doors," you said quietly. "Everyone looks at him and sees those wins. They see the records, the statistics, the global success, the icon."
You smiled faintly. "They don't see the man who checks on people when the cameras are turned off."
The interviewer nodded slowly.
"They don't see him sitting in an engineering meeting for an extra hour, completely exhausted, just because a younger driver needs advice," you continued, your voice steadying with immense pride.
"They don't see him making sure that everyone around him is okay, shielding them from the nonsense of this paddock. He carries a lot of weight so that others don't have to."
The interviewer smiled warmly. "It sounds like he means a great deal to you."
You looked down at your lap, your fingers tracing the edge of your team kit. Just for a split second, you let the mask slip in the shadows.
"Yeah," you whispered.
You unclipped the microphone from your collar, handing it back to a waiting assistant with a quiet word of thanks. You exchanged a polite nod with the interviewer and stood up from the chair.
As you walked toward the exit, heading for the quiet paddock outside, one of the young production assistants stepped aside to let you pass. He offered you a casual grin.
"Thank you for the interview today, it was great," he said lightheartedly. "At least after all that madness, you've still got Lewis in your corner."
The comment was completely thoughtless. It was innocent, casual paddock small talk meant to be supportive.
You nearly froze mid-step, your foot hovering slightly above the concrete floor. A sudden, wild wave of conflicting emotions crashed over you.
For one horrible, unstable second, you didn't know if you were going to burst out laughing or start crying right in front of him. The absurdity of it was almost too much to bear.
Instead, you forced your muscles to comply, turning your head to offer him a tight, polite smile. "Yeah."
The assistant's smile widened, entirely oblivious to the devastation behind your eyes. "Yeah. Guy's a rock. He's not going anywhere."
You looked at him for a beat longer, the words echoing in the empty spaces of your mind. You didn't correct him. You couldn't.
You simply gave a small, quiet nod, turned your back to the studio, and kept walking out into the warm night.
Because as you made your way toward the quiet safety of the hotel transport, the heaviest truth of the evening finally settled deep into your bones. The hardest part about carrying a historical secret wasn't the active act of keeping it hidden.
It was the crushing, isolating exhaustion of pretending the world hadn't already changed--when, for you, the world had already ended and rebuilt itself in a completely different color.
pairing: jenson button x fernando alonso x wolff!reader
summary: f1 fans suddenly turn into internet sleuths to find out who the father of yn wolff’s baby is
a/n: another fantastic @sinofwriting idea
Masterlist
f1gossip
liked by user, user, user, and 1,829,273 others
f1gossip: This is one secret out of the bag — YN Wolff, daughter of Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff, was recently spotted out and about and very visibly pregnant. The question now remains — who is the father?
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user1: I wanna know how far along she is?!
↳user2: and how on earth did she keep it hidden for so long — the paps love her almost as much as they love the drivers…
↳user1: that's another good question!
user3: yn! God I love her
user4: totally a stupid question but did Toto…like know? Or is this gonna be a surprise to him too?
↳user5: omg imagine the phone call if this was how Toto learned of it?
↳user6: all those poor headphones…what did they ever do to deserve that abuse?
↳user5: 😂😂😂
user7: I want to know who'd be brave enough to go after yn when Toto has made it very clear that drivers are off limits…
↳user8: well I think we're going to have a front row seat…
Bluesky
user9: it's gotta be someone at least adjacent to f1 right?
↳user10: considering she doesn't seem to have a life outside of f1? I'm thinking that's a safe bet
↳user9: rude but very true I think
user11: she's always hanging out with George…
↳user12: George who is her fathers driver? Who has a very lovely girlfriend? Who has publicly called her his sister? That George?
↳user11: I was just pointing out that they hang out all the time!
user13: I'm saying max because that would be really really funny
↳user14: so this is just Toto's newest way to get verstappen to Mercedes? To send his daughter to seduce him to the silver arrows?
↳user15: crazier things have happened
user16: I'm gonna say someone older — she's been hanging around the paddock for years
↳user17: going off that, I'm going to say Lewis
↳user18: he watched her grow up?
↳user17: please she was practically a adult when he joined the team
↳user18: and what? He changed teams so there wouldn't be a conflict of interest or something??
↳user17: you know I'm right
↳user18: I know you're an idiot
user19: has anyone noticed how much time she's spent near the Aston garage? And with the Sky reporters? If Patrick isn't there
↳user20: please she's said multiple times before that she loves nando and jenson because they are usually down with whatever chaos she's got planned
↳user19: likely excuse me thinks
yn_wolff
liked by georgerussell63, lewishamilton, nicorosberg, and 3,199,222 others
yn_wolff: spent the day loving my boys 💚💚
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user21: oh my god you're having a boy?!
↳user22: a new baby Wolff in the house 🙌🙌
georgerussell63: Must you?
↳yn_wolff: whatever do you mean Mr. T Pose??
↳georgerussell63: It's iconic!
↳yn_wolff: it's stupid!
user23: oh yeah that's definitely flirting and not sibling annoyance /s 🙄🙄
↳user24: I'm not giving up hope just yet
↳yn_wolff: please give up that particular hope…me and George??? 🤮🤮
↳georgerussell63: In your dreams.
↳yn_wolff: anyone want to run George over? There might be a seat in a Mercedes if you do
↳georgerussell63: You can't just say something like that yn!
↳yn_wolff: Watch me!
alex_albon: a seat in Mercedes?
↳yn_wolff: yeah I can probably swing it
↳alex_albon: hmmmm 🤔
↳georgerussell63: Alex!
↳alex_albon: Sometimes sacrifices have to be made
user25: I'm seeing the slick way you got everyone talking about George and not your pictures Miss Wolff and I'm in awe
↳yn_wolff: 😉
Private Messages: Fernando, Jenson, and yn
Bluesky
user26: I thought I was going crazy! Like that is definitely 2 different hands
↳user27: it definitely is
user28: I legit sat there with my boyfriend trying to figure out if it was 2 different left hands or a left and right hand situation
↳user29: verdict?
↳user28: it's 2 different left hands
user30: …does this mean that yn has 2 boyfriends?
↳user31: well it's either that or she's publicly cheating…
↳user32: get it girl!
↳user33: love this for her
user34: ok this opens up so many possibilities!
↳user35: how many drivers have tattoos though?
↳user36: not a lot of them I don't think
↳user34: we don't know for sure that she's saying a driver though!
user37: I'm putting money down on fernando
↳user38: she could do better
↳user37: who? George? Get real
f1
liked by user, user, user, and 2,182,383 others
f1: BREAKING: Fernando Alonso to miss Thursday's Media Day in Austria due to personal reasons. He will also miss FP1 with Aston Martin's reserve driver Jak Crawford deputising in one of the team's mandatory young driver sessions. Alonso will be back in the car in Friday's FP2 session.
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user50: you know what I'm thinking?
↳user51: that he's just going to miss doing interviews?
↳user52: Watch Max start taking notes…
↳user50: IM THINKING that he's the father of yn's baby and that she just gave birth — she was getting close to her due date
↳user51: ohhhh…so you're the crazy type
↳user50: just you watch — I'm right and you'll all see
↳user53: so the crazy is just out for everyone to see…
user54: I hope everything is ok…
↳user55: I'm sending well wishes to him, regardless of the reason why he's not there
user56: I'm going to laugh at everyone who thought he just became a dad when it turns out it was just a doctors appointment or something
↳user50: I'll accept your apology then too
skysports
liked by user, user, user, and 1,882,919 others
skysports: Despite being on schedule for this weekend's F1 race, Jenson Button will not be in Austria due to family matters.
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user57: well this just got interesting…🤨
↳user58: is his family matters meeting with Fernando's family matters??
user59: but what does it mean? WHAT DOES IT MEAN??
↳user60: …it means he won't be in Austria??
↳user59: stop ruining my fun!
user61: is this a safe place?
↳user62: historically…no
↳user61: I'm going to say it anyway — fernando/jenson/yn!
↳user63: well that's hot 🥵
↳user62: what is it about yn that brings out the crazy in people?
↳user61: I'm not crazy!
↳user64: are you sure?
yn_wolff
liked by sebastianvettel, maxverstappen1, aussiegrit, and 2,822,912 others
tagged: jensonbutton, fernandoalo_oficial
yn_wolff: Happy Father's Day to my 2 hot DILFs
view all comments
user65: oh my god I love them already
↳user66: she is an icon she is the moment
user67: us: wondering who's her partner. her: getting dicked down by TWO hot men
georgerussell63: While I'm glad people will stop insisting that we're a couple, did you really have to go with that caption?
↳yn_wolff: captain buzzkill go away
↳fernandoalo_oficial: and stop flirting with yn while you're at it.
↳georgerussell63: I'm not flirting with her!
↳yn_wolff: that's what they all say
↳user68: YN Wolff I love you just a little bit
↳yn_wolff: that's what they all say 😉
user69: …but they're so old??
↳yn_wolff: yes that's why they're dilfs
↳yn_wolff: also age just brings experience
↳yn_wolff: and talent
↳yn_wolff: and honestly endurance 😉🥵
↳user69: …where can I get one?
mercedesf1: What is this? — Toto Wolff
↳yn_wolff: whoops. I knew I was forgetting something
↳jensonbutton: that's putting it mildly, darling
↳mercedesf1: No — Toto Wolff
↳yn_wolff: yeah you're way to late for that to be effective
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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summary: fans are confused then shocked when ollie walks in beaming
a/n: @sinofwriting thanks for the idea!
Masterlist
f1gossip
liked by user, user, user, and 1,821,190 others
f1gossip: And Ollie is walking on sunshine this weekend! The Haas driver was all smiles as he entered the paddock this Father's Day weekend for the Austrian Grand Prix.
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user1: I LOVE HIM
user2: how could anyone hate him, honestly
↳user3: no idea
user4: he was literally bouncing and twirling around? Something must have happened for him to be so incandescently happy
↳user5: right? Like he's a happy guy usually but this was beyond the norm for him
↳user5: also good vocab choice!
↳user4: thanks it was my word of the day on my calendar
user6: I need some of whatever he's had
↳user7: same!
user8: I'm guessing girlfriend
↳user9: ^^^ he hasn't had one in a while
↳user10: oh I love ollie in a relationship — he's always so soft when talking about them
user11: relationship reveal WHEN
↳user12: hopefully soon!
olliefan
liked by user, user, user, and 3,546,766 others
olliefan: HES WHAT?!?
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user13: oh my gosh
user14: did that seriously just happen???
↳user15: wait what happened?
↳user14: Ollie just blurted out that he's in the f1 dad's fan stage
↳user14: and when the moderator and the other dads questioned him, he laughed and said his girlfriend wouldn't be happy with him but confirmed she had just given birth a couple of days ago
↳user16: oh my god YES!
↳user15: we went from speculating that he had a girlfriend to news that he's now a dad 😭😂
user17: omg I can't wait to see the little bear cub
↳user18: Bear cub??? 😭😭😭 shut up that's so cute
user19: ok likelihood that this mystery woman and their kid will come this weekend?
↳user20: unlikely she apparently literally just gave birth
↳user19: awww damn
user21: ok but the other dads just start to give him advice? So cute
↳user22: they saw a New Dad and their Dad Instincts kicked in
↳user21: THATS XACTLY WHAT HAPPENDD
Bluesky
user23: you are so literally unserious I love it
user24: cameras are your best friend — they grow up too fast
↳user24: but also don't forget to just enjoy the time with them
↳olliebearman: yes! That is good to remember
user25: don't be fooled by everyone telling you "you NEED to buy these expensive tools to look after your kid" people have been raising kids for years without all the bells and whistles
↳olliebearman: …I'll definitely start to keep that in mind…
user26: coffee and energy drinks are gonna become your new best friend — also you gotta start napping when they do
↳olliebearman: but they're so cute?? How am I supposed to stop watching them
↳user27: shut up that's so cute
f1gossip
liked by user, user, user, and 2,101,111 others
f1gossip: Despite the chaos of media day this race weekend, Ollie Bearman's weekend continues to be all smiles and sunshine with a p4 finish!
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user28: HE WAS SO CLOSE
↳user29: some day soon he'll be on the podium!
user30: ok but Ollie dedicating that race to his family???
↳user31: we NEED him to podium cause that's just lovely
↳user32: I don't know if me and my ovaries would survive an Ollie podium…
user33: ok but fingers crossed they come to silverstone?!?
↳user34: oh please please please
↳user35: I just want to know who the girlfriend is! We've had all weekend and no one has any idea
↳user33: this too!!
Private Messages: the Grid
f1gossip
liked by user, user, user, and 2,182,428 others
f1gossip: And nature has invaded the paddock today at Silverstone — Ollie Bearman's partner YN LN and their child, affectionately nicknamed Bear Cub, both join the Haas driver for his home race this weekend.
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user36: THEYRE HERE THEYRE HERE THEYRE HERE
user37: they nicknamed baby bearman as Bear Cub 😭😭😭
user38: I'm so impressed that they’re still not allowing pictures or even letting people know cub's name
↳user39: this!! This is how you protect your kids
↳user40: I love all of this
user41: ok but yn?? I've only had her for a day but I love her
↳user42: SAME
↳user41: she makes Ollie light up so much…
↳user42: that boy is in LOVE
user43: petition for them to come to every race ever??
↳user44: counter signed!
olliebearman
liked by yn, estebanocon, haasf1, and 2,821,192 others
tagged: yn
olliebearman: P1 and all because of my lucky charms — thank you YN for everything you've given me
Toto’s Favorite Intern - Platonic! F1 x Gen Z!Reader Series!
Where you, Y/N Wolff, Toto’s niece who became the Social Media Intern in Mercedes, turn the paddock upside down. How will they handle this hellion?
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
You can’t understand me — Platonic!F1 Grid x Young!Filipina!Driver Reader
You are a Filipina driver who can freely swear in your dialect during interviews and races. The grid cannot understand you, and it goes unpenalized.
Vettel’s Sister Personal Chef - Platonic!Sebastian Vettel x Indian!Chef!Reader
Where Sebastian found a newbie chef in the red bull hospitality and proceed to steal her from the hospitality.
Big Girl Job - Platonic!F1 x Brother!Max Verstappen x Sister!Interviewer!Reader
Where you, Sister of Max Verstappen, grew up in the paddock, now a Big Girl with her big girl job. Having a reunion with the retired drivers and a little insight of the young you in the paddock.
Hello Neighbor - Sebastian Vettel x Poc!Reader
Where a city escape leads you to a quiet European town, where a garden, kind neighbors, and an unexpected meeting with Sebastian Vettel slowly turn into love, shared purpose, and a new chapter together.
Lucky Charm - 2010!Sebastian Vettel x Popstar!Reader
Where From Abu Dhabi to Monza, Sebastian Vettel found himself falling for you, and when he became champion in 2010, he made sure the world knew you were the reason.
Lucky Jacket - Sebastian Vettel x Reader
What starts as chance meetings turns into friendship, and by the end of 2010, into love.
Ice Man's Journalist - Kimi Raikkonen x Journalist!Reader
A young Sky News intern surprises Kimi Räikkönen in 2009 with sharp, thoughtful questions, sparking the start of an unexpected connection between the blunt Iceman and the soft-spoken journalist.
Bitches Mad Again - Platonic!Kimi Raikkonen and Platonic!Sebastian Vettel x Influencer!Reader
Where you got invited to the Ferrari paddock as Ferrari's guest, you expected nerves, cameras, and excitement. What you didn’t expect was your boyfriend causing a public scene in the garage. Luckily, Sebastian and Kimi make sure you’re not left alone.
Soulmates, Trauma, Suzuka - Uncle!Kamui Kobayashi x Nephew!Kageyama Tobio (Haikyuu) x Rejected!Soulmates!IwaOi x Platonic!Soulmates! George Russel, Lando Norris, Alex Albon x Platonic!Soulmate!OC!Gian Manalo
From aiming to continue his grandfather's legacy in volleyball to aiming a home race win in suzuka which the last mjapanese to ever do so is his uncle Kamui Kobayashi, Trauma might have made him abandon Volleyball, but racing brought the spark back.
summary: following a tense but stabilizing race weekend in bahrain, the paddock is forced to confront the aftermath of a major internal scandal that has permanently altered team dynamics across the grid.
pairing: formula one + female!driver!reader
warnings/tags: paddock politics, protective!lewis hamilton, kimi antonelli cameo, ferrari!lewis and redbull!yn hinted? wink, team restructuring foreshadowing, this honestly feels like a filler chapter before the real deal
reblogs, likes, and comments are so so appreciated! if you want to read more from me, kindly submit in my inbox !!! xoxo
f1 ✓
liked by lewishamilton, and 6,238,379 others
f1 ✓ BREAKING: Red Bull Racing have announced that Christian Horner has been relieved of his duties as Team Principal.
Laurent Mekies will assume the role of Team Principal effect immediately.
user8 wait, mekies???? from vcarb straight to the redbull main team???? talk about being in the right place at the right time lol
user23 Can we please remember that Max had nothing to do with whatever Horner was pulling?
user52 oh the netflix producers are foaming at the month rn. rent is PAID THIS SEASON
user4 not even a 'thank you for your service' LMAOOO serves his dusty ass right
user37 somewhere out there toto wolff is definitely smiling
The paddock never properly settled after a race like this. Normally, Sunday night in Bahrain had a distinct, predictable rhythm to it - mechanics laughing just a little too loudly over post-race beers behind the garages, and units still glowing with either the vibrant energy of a win or the quiet, collective sigh of disappointment.
Tonight, none of that existed.
Under the unflinching lights of the Bahrain circuit, the place felt entirely stripped of its usual spectacle. A heavy, ringing silence hung exactly where noise should've been.
The Red Bull garage had been sealed off. Officials stood rigid, their expressions tight. Inside, team personnel moved under strict supervision, collecting equipment in careful motions.
You didn't stop to look for long. The sight left a bitter taste in your mouth.
Stepping out of the Mercedes motorhome, you felt the full, crushing weight of the day finally settle into your bones. The desperate adrenaline that had carried you through the race completely evaporated, leaving behind something heavy.
"Hey."
The voice came from your left - low, familiar, and cutting cleanly through the ambient hum of the paddock generators.
Lewis was leaning against a stack of tires. He was still in his team kit, his hand tucked deep into his pockets.
"Lewis," you exhaled, your shoulders dropping. The defensive posture you'd been holding since the you stepped out of the car began to crack.
"How are you holding up?" he asked quietly. He paused, letting the question breathe, before adding a sharper, more protective edge to his tone: "And don't even think about saying that you're fine. I've already heard enough PR bullshit today to last a lifetime."
A tired, breathless laugh escaped you. "I don't even think I have the strength to lie to you, Lewis."
Your fingers flexed unconsciously at your sides. Looking down, you only just noticed they were still faintly trembling, a lingering tremor from the stress of the cockpit.
"What happened today is going to change this sport forever," Lewis said, looking at you. "And people are going to try and make you carry the weight of it because you were right in the middle."
He reached out - a brief, grounding gesture - his hand resting firmly on your arm.
"You did your job today," he said, his voice softening. "Now go rest. All of this is going to start tomorrow. You don't need to fight it all night."
Something in your chest finally loosened at that. The knot wasn't gone, and the situation wasn't resolved - but it was suddenly less tight.
"Thanks, Lewis."
He gave a small nod back, then stepped aside to give you space - as if giving you a clear path out of the paddock was part of his instruction.
You started walking again, pulling your bag tighter over your shoulder. But you didn't make it far.
Near the shadowed exit corridor where the cars were parked, someone was standing completely still under a light pole.
It was Max.
He wasn't moving. He was just standing there, his head angled down, a half-empty water bottle hanging loosely from his fingers.
When your footsteps echoed, his head snapped up.
For a long, agonizing second, neither of you spoke.
"Y/N."
His voice was entirely stripped of its usual competitive edge. There was no bite to it. No challenge. Just pure exhaustion.
"Max."
"I didn't know," he said immediately.
The words came out raw. It wasn't phrased as defense. It wasn't a calculated headline correction for the journalists. It was just a heavy fact he desperately needed you to hear directly from him.
“The setups, the data changes, all of it - Alistair, Horner, whatever the hell was happening behind the scenes - I didn’t know what it was actually connected to.” His grip tightened on the plastic water bottle, crinkling it slightly.
“If I had known anyone was touching your car like that… if I knew they were tampering with your side of the garage, I would’ve parked my car. I would’ve walked away from the team. I don’t care what kind of championship was at stake.”
The words began to tumble out faster now, a rare crack in his stoic demeanor, like he was trying to outrun the threat of misunderstanding.
“You have to believe me, Y/N.”
You studied him for a long moment, letting the silence settle.
You looked for any hint of performance, any competitive angle, or any sign of damage control for his brand. But there was nothing. There was no angle at all. Just a driver who realized the ground beneath his feet had been poisoned by the people he trusted.
“I know,” you said quietly.
Max’s eyes didn’t leave yours, searching for any lingering doubt.
“I never thought it was you,” you added, your voice steadying. “We race hard. We always have. But I know the difference between hard racing and whatever happened here.”
A fraction of the visible tension left his shoulders, though he still looked incredibly weighed down. He looked away, staring at the scuffed toe of his shoe.
“They’re talking about stripping points now,” he said after a quiet moment, his voice hollow. “Voiding the last few race results. The whole paddock is toxic. It just… it makes everything feel completely pointless. Everything I did out there today, every lap…”
He let out a short, humorless breath. “It feels like it means nothing.”
“It isn’t pointless,” you cut in.
Your tone sharpened before you could think to soften it.
He looked up, surprised by the sudden iron in your voice.
You took a step closer - just enough that the distance between you stopped feeling like avoidance, bringing yourself fully into the light of the lamp post.
“Hor-” You stopped yourself, cutting off the name before it could pollute the air. You recalibrated, looking him dead in the eye. “He didn’t drive those laps, Max. You did.”
Max’s jaw tightened, a muscle feathering in his cheek.
“And I’m not interested in winning a championship because your team collapses under a federal and FIA investigation,” you continued, your voice firm, leaving no room for argument. “That’s not how I want to win. That’s not how you’d want to keep it, either.”
A long pause followed. The sheer weight of that reality settled heavily between you.
“The FIA will deal with the legal side,” you said, gesturing vaguely back toward the pit lane. “Toto, the lawyers, the stewards - that’s their world to tear apart. Let them handle the politics.”
Your eyes held his steady, refusing to let him look away.
“But next race? I’m coming for you properly. Just you and me on the track.”
You let the challenge hang in the warm desert air.
“So don’t you dare disappear into this mess, Verstappen.”
Something shifted in his expression then. It wasn't relief, exactly—but a visible re-centering. The hollow look in his eyes receded, replaced by a spark of the familiar, stubborn competitor underneath.
A faint, sharp half-smile tugged at the very corner of his mouth.
“You’re serious,” he said quietly.
“I’m always serious. You should know that by now.”
That earned a real, genuine breath from him. It was almost a laugh, but not quite—just enough to break the suffocating gravity of the night.
“Then you better be ready,” Max said, his voice dropping back into something far steadier, something instantly recognizable. “Because I won’t back off. Not for the FIA, and certainly not for you.”
A thin line of tension—clean this time, competitive and pure, untainted by the politics of the paddock—formed between you.
“Good,” you replied.
You held his gaze for one final, silent moment, ensuring the understanding was absolute, and then you stepped back.
f1gossip
liked by user, and 4,230 others
f1gossip Max Verstappen and Y/N L/N were seen speaking privately outside the team garages late last night following the Red Bull leadership upheaval.
Sources say the conversation lasted several minutes and appeared "visibly emotional and highly intense."
Neither driver was seen interacting with media afterward.
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user67 they look like two ppl who just found out the system they grew up in is rotten and they dont know what to do with it
user5 or hear me out: they're js laughing at horner's ass
user8 AND THE WORST PART IS NEITHER OF THEM LOOK ANGRY LIKE???? WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT
user90 max's whole aura here is screaming that he would've done something if he just knew. i'm SICK
user7 lewyn this, landoyn that, what about maxyn????
Saudi Arabia felt entirely different.
It wasn't that the paddock had grown quieter, or that the sport had suddenly become easier. It was simply… lighter. For the first time in months, you stepped through the turnstiles without that familiar, exhausting tightening in your chest.
Saudi was alive with a vibrant, chaotic energy that Bahrain had never been allowed to possess. Somewhere down the line, a team was blasting music from a garage speaker, the bass thumping a steady rhythm through the ground.
Normal. God, you had missed normal.
The moment you stepped past the final security gate, a barrage of camera shutters exploded to your left.
"Over here! Just a second!"
"How does it feel coming into Saudi?"
"Do you think the fallout from Bahrain has fundamentally changed the title fight?"
"Any comment on the ongoing Red Bull investigation?"
You offered the media pack a polite, practiced smile and kept walking, your stride steady. For once, the shouting didn't make your pulse spike.
The questions didn't feel like traps designed to catch a confession. They were just questions. There were no hushed accusations following your footsteps today, no pitying glances, and no hidden meanings laced in the commentary.
You passed through the glass doors of the Mercedes hospitality unit and were immediately greeted by the sound of laughter. Actual, unburdened laughter - the kind that had been entirely absent from the team for weeks.
Stepping into the back of the garage, the atmosphere was electric but grounded. Engineers crowded around the telemetry screens, gesturing wildly and discussing setup changes over steaming paper coffee cups.
Someone down by the engineering desk was aggressively arguing about front-tyre core temperatures. Near the back, one of the mechanics nearly tripped over a stray tool case while carrying a carbon-fibre front-wing component, drawing a chorus of good-natured jeers from the rest of the crew.
It was chaos. Wonderful, ordinary, beautiful racing chaos.
Your eyes immediately gravitated toward the center of the garage. Your car sat under the bright fluorescent lights, immaculate, pristine, and entirely untouched.
Looking at it, you didn't feel that lingering poison of paranoia. There was no suspicion creeping into your mind, no dark wondering about whether a mapping file had been subtly altered or a sensor intentionally miscalibrated.
It was just a race car again.
"Morning, champ."
Luca appeared right beside your shoulder, holding a massive, steaming coffee mug.
You turned to look at him, really taking him in. He looked… healthy. The deep, bruised circles that had been permanently etched under his eyes for the last month were entirely gone.
His shoulders weren't hunched defensively against the weight of the garage anymore. He no longer looked like a man who was surviving on pure caffeine and panic.
"You actually slept," you noted, a smirk tugging at your lips.
He looked instantly offended, lifting his chin. "I have always slept. My sleep is legendary."
"Luca, you look ten years younger. It's jarring."
"I hate you," he shot back seamlessly.
You laughed. The sound was bright, bouncing off the industrial walls of the garage, and it surprised both of you. A genuine, easy laugh.
Luca actually paused, looking almost emotional for a brief fraction of a second at the sound of it, before his usual, brilliant grin returned to his face.
"Systems are completely perfect," he said, tapping the clipboard in his hand. "Security protocols passed. The telemetry line is completely clean. Radio systems are clear."
You narrowed your eyes playfully. "No crossed wires today?"
Luca immediately let out a dramatic, soul-crushing groan, throwing his head back. "Oh my God. Please. Just let me die in peace."
"I don't know, Luca," you teased, stepping closer to the car. "Should I really trust the team radio today?"
"I am begging you, on my hands and knees, never to mention routing switches to me again."
You laughed harder, the stress of the past entirely evaporating. He covered his face with his hands in mock shame.
"I have genuine trauma from that weekend."
"You deserve the trauma."
"I saved your entire car!" he cried defensively.
"And you almost put Lewis directly onto my internal team radio."
"I said I was sorry!"
The two of you were still laughing, the camaraderie warm and easy, when a deep, smooth voice interrupted from the shadows of the tire racks.
"What's all this then?"
You turned. Lewis had entered the engineering bay, his black fire suit already tied loosely around his waist, his iconic yellow helmet tucked securely under his arm. He looked between you and Luca, an amused brow raised.
Luca pointed an accusing, dramatic finger right at you. "She won't let me forget it, Lewis. Not ever."
Lewis's mouth twitched, a slow, knowing grin spreading across his face. "Oh, no. This is incredibly funny. Please, keep going."
"You too?" Luca cried, throwing his hands in the air.
"Absolutely," Lewis chuckled, adjusting his grip on his helmet. "I'm not letting him off the hook either."
The three of you were still smiling, enjoying a moment of pure, untainted team unity, when a sudden movement near the secure garage entrance caught your attention.
Someone young was standing awkwardly just inside the doorway, hovering near the red boundary line painted on the floor.
He had thick, dark curls, wore a pristine Mercedes team-issue kit that looked brand new, and had a heavy VIP junior driver lanyard hanging around his neck.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, looking like he wasn't entirely sure whether he was legally allowed to cross inside.
Lewis noticed him first. A warm, genuinely encouraging smile immediately spread across his face.
"There he is," Lewis said, his voice raising slightly to carry over the sound of the air guns.
The young driver straightened up instantly, pulling his shoulders back.
You recognized him almost immediately. Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Everyone who followed his dad and the garage knew his name. He was barely old enough to possess a legal road driver's license, and yet Toto already spoke about him in hushed, reverent tones, like his eventual arrival on the grid was an absolute inevitability of physics.
Lewis waved him over with a welcoming jerk of his chin. "Come on in, mate."
Kimi approached the three of you, his hands tucked politely behind his back. Up close, he looked entirely overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the operation, his eyes wide as they darted from the data walls to the car.
"Morning," he said, his accent thick but careful.
"Morning," Lewis replied warmly. "You remember Y/N?"
"Of course," Kimi said immediately, his eyes snapping to yours.
You smiled, stepping forward to ease his visible nerves. "That's reassuring. Glad I'm making an impression."
A sudden, bright blush crept up the kid's face, reaching the tips of his ears. "I mean—obviously. I watch all of your races. The onboard data from Bahrain was... it was incredible."
Lewis’s grin widened, a mischievous glint in his eye as he leaned against a tire stack. "Oh, you've done it now, Kimi. You're feeding her ego."
Kimi looked instantly magnified with horror, waving his hands. "I didn't mean—I just meant the driving—"
"No, no," you laughed, waving off his apology with a smile. "You're completely fine. Don't listen to Lewis."
The young Italian looked visibly relieved, a small sigh escaping him. Up close, he seemed even younger than you had expected from the press photos. Not immature by any means but just thoroughly, undeniably young.
There was a raw, unjaded eagerness about him that struck a chord deep within you. It reminded you instantly of your own first years wandering through the paddock, back when the world still felt vast, when everything looked magical, and when every single thing seemed entirely possible.
"You here observing for FP1?" you asked, gesturing toward the engineering console.
He nodded quickly. "Yes. Just observing the run plans. Meetings mostly, with the simulator team later."
"Enjoy the calm while you can," you offered dryly.
He smiled, a surprisingly sharp intelligence gleaming in his eyes. "I don't think Formula One is ever really calm."
You blinked, momentarily caught off guard by the maturity of the statement. Then, a laugh broke from your lips. Lewis let out a hearty laugh right beside you, clapping a hand onto Kimi's shoulder.
"See?" Lewis said, looking at you. "He's learning the harsh realities already."
For a brief, suspended moment, the three of you stood together in easy, natural conversation. It felt oddly comfortable, a seamless bridge between the present and whatever was to come.
Kimi asked a few highly technical questions about Melbourne's notorious thermal tire degradation on the long runs, and you broke down your approach. Lewis chimed in occasionally, offering his own nuanced observations about the curbing at Turn 12.
The whole exchange lasted maybe five minutes. It was nothing important. Nothing particularly memorable. At least, it didn't seem memorable at the time.
Eventually, one of the senior Mercedes communications staff called Kimi's name from the back of the garage, waving a clipboard.
Kimi looked back over his shoulder, then turned to you both with a respectful nod. "I should go. They want me in the engineering briefing."
Lewis nodded back, his tone protective. "Good luck today, mate. Take it all in."
"Thanks, Lewis." Kimi turned his gaze fully toward you, his expression earnest. "And… good luck out there today, Y/N. Go get them."
You smiled warmly. "You too, Kimi."
He gave one final, almost shy smile before turning on his heel, disappearing deeper into the bustling labyrinth of the Mercedes garage. You watched his retreating figure for a silent second, noting the way the mechanics naturally stepped aside to let him pass.
"Nice kid," you said quietly, turning back to Lewis.
Lewis's expression had softened significantly. He was watching the doorway where Kimi had just vanished. "Yeah," he murmured. "He really is."
For a split second, something entirely unreadable—something heavy, distant, and deeply complicated—flickered across Lewis's features. A shadow of a thought he wasn't ready to share. But it was gone almost instantly, replaced by his usual calm demeanor.
You didn't think much of it. In the paddock, drivers always had a million things on their minds. Instead, you turned your attention fully back toward your car, the hunger for the track finally taking over.
lewishamilton ✓
liked by lando, yourinstagram, and 5,842,905 others
lewishamilton ✓ Good to see you, mate @/kimi.antonelli
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kimi.antonelli ✓ Grazie, Lewis! An honor to learn from you both. Still processing the telemetry data 😅
user95 KIMI BLUSHING???? OH HE IS SO PRECIOUS STOP IM ACTUALLY CRYING HES JS A LITTLE GUY
user73 can we talk about how lewyn are THE parents in the paddock and this post w kimi is basically them announcing their adoption
yourinstagram ✓ lol don't let lewis fool you, kimi. he only posted this to tell everyone you've given me a big ego boost
⤷ lewishamilton ✓ I see no lies here, the ego was definitely fed 😉
user8 y/n looking at kimi like a proud older sister is so cute
lando ✓ why does kimi look like he's being interrogated by two senior citizens
⤷ yourinstagram ✓ oh watch ur mouth
Saturday arrived faster than expected, and with it, the easy atmosphere evaporated. Qualifying became absolute war.
Max had laid down an absolutely incredible, breathtaking lap on his final run. The timing screens glowed a defiant, ominous red at the top.
P1 – MAX VERSTAPPEN: 1:15.912
You sat perfectly still in your cockpit, the engine humming violently behind your spine, staring at the digital dash.
P2. +0.084
Luca’s voice cracked through your earpiece, entirely devoid of its usual humor now—sharp, focused, and intense. "Final run, Y/N. Track position is absolutely perfect. The gap to the car ahead is ten seconds. This is your shot. Pull it all together."
You reached up and snapped your visor down. The chaotic world of the pit lane instantly disappeared behind a wall of tinted polycarbonate.
Green light at the end of the pit exit. Throttle down.
Sector One was a masterpiece of precise braking. The car bit into the apex, rotating perfectly. The telemetry screen on the pit wall lit up. Purple.
Sector Two arrived, and the car practically danced beneath you, sliding just a fraction on the limit of adhesion. Through the high-speed sweep of Turn 9 and Turn 10, there was absolutely no hesitation in your hands.
No fear. No lingering ghosts of Bahrain. You committed completely to the throttle, skimming the exit curb by millimeters. Purple again.
You could hear the harsh, ragged sound of your own breathing inside the helmet. You could feel the rear tires beginning to overheat, screaming for mercy, the car begging for one final, desperate push.
You gave it absolutely everything you had left.
Through the final tight corner, you got the power down early, the rear stepping out slightly before hooking up. DRS wide open. The engine wailed as you crossed the timing line.
Sudden, total silence on the radio. Then -
P1 – 1:15.642
The team radio absolutely exploded into life, nearly deafening you.
"YES! POLE POSITION! POLE POSITION, Y/N! YOU DID IT!" Luca was screaming so loudly the audio was clipping, his Italian accent breaking through in pure joy.
Toto Wolff’s calm, authoritative voice broke through the static. "Brilliant, Y/N. Truly a masterclass. Absolutely brilliant."
mercedesamgf1 ✓
liked by toto_wolff, f1, and 6,327,590 others
mercedesamgf1 ✓ Y/N L/N TAKES POLE POSITION FOR THE SAUDI ARABIAN GRAND PRIX! What a lap, what a drive! 👑
Let's go get it tomorrow, team! 🔥
#SaudiArabianGP #F1 #MercedesAMGF1 #YNLN
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user41 if y/n has a million fans i am one of them. if y/n has one fan it is me. if y/n has zero fans i am no longer on this earth
user63 everyone pack it up y/n just dropped the most devouring, mothering, historic lap saudi has every seen
user4 toto's probably giggling and kicking his feet in the garage rn
user15 y/n really woke up and decided to drop a historic pole lap just to humble the grid before dinner
user61 THE PURPLE SECTORS ARE BACK BABYYYY
By the time you rolled the car into the pit lane and steered it toward the number one board in parc fermé, the grandstands surrounding were entirely on their feet, a sea of roaring fans.
You unbuckled, climbed quickly out of the tight cockpit, and stood straight up atop the nose of your Mercedes, raising both arms high into the air.
The roar that met you was deafening, a physical wave of sound.
You weren't the fragile survivor anymore. You weren't the victim of a political scandal. You were the absolute benchmark of the grid.
As you finally climbed down from the chassis, Lewis was already waiting by the mandatory FIA weighing scales. He was already clapping, a genuine, proud smile lighting up his face. He stepped forward and pulled you into a quick, rib-crushing hug.
"Pole sitter," he said proudly into your ear before pulling away. "Incredible lap, mate."
You laughed, your heart hammering against your ribs. "Yeah. I'll definitely take it."
He smiled back, his eyes warm. But then, almost instantly, the smile began to fade. It was a slight, subtle shift—a sudden dropping of his expression, so faint that the television cameras tracking you wouldn't catch it. But you were standing right in front of him. You noticed.
Lewis glanced around the bustling parc fermé area, subtly ensuring that none of the nearby mechanics or team PR officials were close enough to overhear. Then, he looked back at you.
There was something entirely strange in his eyes now. A flicker of deep nervousness. Maybe sadness. Maybe a heavy mixture of both.
"Hey," he said, his voice dropping to a quiet, serious undertone.
You frowned, your triumphant adrenaline stuttering. "Yeah? What's up?"
He hesitated. An entire, agonizing beat passed between you. Then another, the celebratory noise of the grandstands suddenly feeling very far away.
Finally, he spoke, choosing his words with immense care. "After the debrief… when we're back in the private rooms… I need to tell you something."
The sharp, sudden tone in his voice made your stomach instantly tighten into a hard knot. "What kind of something, Lewis?"
Lewis looked away for a brief second, staring out at the asphalt, before forcing his gaze back to yours. The supportive teammate smile was entirely gone now.
"The kind that's easier to say in private," he replied softly.
Your pulse skipped a beat, a cold drop of dread hitting your chest. "Is everything okay? Is it the car?"
He didn't answer the question. Instead, he placed a heavy, gloved hand firmly on your shoulder and squeezed it once—a gesture that felt less like a celebration and much more like a goodbye.
"We'll talk later," he said quietly.
Then, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd toward the media pen.
He left you standing there right beside your pole-winning car, completely surrounded by thousands of cheering fans, exploding confetti, and flashing media cameras—but with a strange, icy feeling rapidly settling deep into your chest.
And for the first time since leaving the desert of Bahrain… you couldn't shake the terrifying certainty that everything was about to change.
I'm the one who asked about Max and GPs daughter, but it could also be a niece,I don’t know much about GPs personal life,sorry for any mistakes
Honestly, I would just go completely imaginary tbh 😂 he’s born 1980, so he would need to be a teenage dad to have a kid Max’s age, which honestly would be interesting, especially if I made him a single father…
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summary: MotoGP legend joins Formula 1 with Mercedes, entering a season of extreme scrutiny, media pressure, and divided public opinion as she fights to prove she belongs on the grid.
pairing: formula one + female!driver!reader
warnings/tags: smau + irl, mentions about misogyny, cursing here and there
notes: this is my old series also named more than a driver, but reimagined because the original series just could not get out of my privates no matter what i tried. so i thought that rewriting the whole thing is the best thing i could do, and i can explain driver!yn and her experiences in more detail than i did in the original. thank you !!!
reblogs, likes, and comments are so so appreciated! if you want to read more from me, kindly submit in my inbox !!! xoxo
SERIES
chapter one — unpleasant welcomes
chapter two — private testing
chapter three — tension rises in melbourne
chapter four — will luck run out in shanghai?
chapter five — internal interference
chapter six — culprits in paddocks
chapter seven — it was who?!
DRIVER!YN BLURBS
older brother/younger sister dynamic + lh44
— that dynamic where he constantly protects her from media pressure
mentor + sv5
— sebastian vettel as her mentor
protective!toto wolff
— remake from this blurb
chaotic livestreams + ln4
— driver!yn and lando constantly getting caught in livestreams together
motogp!yn era
— everyone wonders where the happy, smiley version of her is. then they see her past self during her motogp days
mercedes' special guest (ft. jude bellingham)
— there's a good looking guest in this week's paddock, who could it be?
golden appearance (ft. harry styles)
— she makes an appearance in harry styles' music video
cornered by the oldies + jb22, nr6, mw2, sv5
— driver!yn who's the retired drivers' princess
media training's worst nightmare
lh44 seeing driver!yn after signing with ferrari
keeps me grounded + lh44
redbull!yn with mv3
susie wolff's girl
playing live onstream + ln4
still number 1 + lh44
— lewis gets lowkey upset that she's getting comfy with her new teammate after he signs with ferrari
top 3 most handsome drivers
landoyn moments
first grand prix win (and an involuntary appearance at a party)
— what happened after her first grand prix win
you're leaving mercedes?
— her reaction to lewis leaving mercedes and finding out from the media
hot laps with Y/N L/N
an embarassing crush + sv5
deuxmoi posts about driver!yn
chicken shop date
cancelled podcast
bring back iconic podiums!
driver!yn's youtube videos
driver!yn with WAGs | part two
paparazzi shots and gossip sessions + lh44 (and roscoe)
romantic moments at the paddock
— she'd never date any of them, but everyone thinks and wants her to be
crashing out + ln4
the broski report
driver!yn's own WAG
— she’s never really had official public relationships during her career—while she keeps her love life private, it’s widely known that she’s had a few discrete relationships
Pairing: Max Verstappen x Charlotte Fischer (Original Character)
Summary: Charlotte Fischer has spent years making sure no one in Formula One knows who she really is.
At Red Bull, she is simply Charlotte: Cambridge graduate, simulator engineer, owner of a deeply judgmental cat, and the woman responsible for making the team’s broken 2025 car model finally tell the truth.
She prefers it that way. No family name. No questions. No one looking at her like she is someone’s daughter, someone’s mistake, or someone’s failure to protect.
Max Verstappen notices her anyway.
Warnings and Notes: I wrote fanfiction of my own fanfiction. This is the result.
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Group Chat: Team 33
(Members: Max Verstappen, Jos Verstappen, Raymond Vermeulen)
Max: Serious question.
Raymond: I already regret this.
Jos: If this is about tyres, ask GP.
Max: It is not about tyres.
Raymond: That’s worse.
Max: What do you do with a woman who is not impressed when you win races?
Jos: …
Raymond: …
Jos: What do you mean not impressed?
Max: I mean she said congratulations and then went back to work.
Raymond: Like immediately?
Max: Yes.
Jos: Good.
Max: What do you mean good?
Jos: It means she has eyes.
Raymond: Max.
Max: What.
Raymond: You have a crush.
Max: I do not.
Jos: You absolutely do.
Max: This is not helpful.
Raymond: You’re asking two men who watched you grow up how to impress a woman who does not care that you win races.
Jos: That’s new for you.
Max: She is very smart.
Raymond: Oh no.
Jos: Oh dear god.
Max: Stop.
Raymond: She works with you, doesn’t she?
Max: …
Jos: She’s not a fan.
Max: No.
Raymond: She’s not impressed by money.
Max: No.
Jos: She’s not impressed by trophies.
Max: Correct.
Raymond: Max.
Jos: Son.
Max: What.
Raymond: This is serious.
Jos: You really like her.
Max: I am just asking for advice!
Raymond: You never ask for advice.
Jos: Who is she?
Max: No.
Raymond: Tell us.
Max: Absolutely not.
Jos: Does she have a name?
Max: …
Raymond: Max.
Max: She fixes the simulator.
Jos: ENGINEER.
Raymond: ENGINEER.
Jos: This keeps getting worse for you.
Max: Why?
Raymond: Because you can’t impress her by being Max Verstappen.
Jos: You have to impress her by being a person.
Max: I am a person!
Jos: Does she laugh at your jokes?
Max: Sometimes.
Raymond: Oh you’re finished.
Jos: What have you done already?
Max: I brought her groceries once.
Raymond: YOU WHAT.
Jos: MAX.
Max: She had a migraine!
Raymond: …
Jos: …
Raymond: Okay.
That’s actually decent.
Jos: Don’t ruin it.
Max: How do I not ruin it?
Raymond: You stop trying to impress her.
Jos: You listen.
Raymond: You show up.
Jos: You don’t talk about winning.
Raymond: And you don’t scare her off by being intense.
Max: I am not intense.
Jos: You texted us for girl advice.
Raymond: At midnight.
Max: I hate both of you.
Jos: We want to know her name.
Raymond: Yes.
Max: No.
Jos: Is she tall?
Max: Yes.
Raymond: Dark hair.
Max: I’m muting this chat.
Jos: You’re in love.
***
Charlotte did not plan to tell him.
That was the important part.
She had spent too many years being private for privacy to be accidental.
Silence was not a habit with Charlotte Fischer. It was architecture. Carefully designed. Structurally sound. Reinforced in all the places people usually tried to enter.
So no, she did not plan it.
She simply returned to work two days after the migraine, found the sim wing behaving with its usual mix of competence and mild chaos, and saw Max Verstappen standing near the simulator with his race suit unzipped to his waist, talking to GP with the distracted intensity of someone pretending to listen while watching the room for something else.
Her, apparently.
Because his eyes found her almost immediately.
Charlotte stopped just inside the doorway.
Max straightened.
Not much.
Enough.
GP noticed too, because of course he did. His gaze flicked from Max to Charlotte and back again with the unbearable calm of a man filing away evidence for later use.
Charlotte ignored him.
Mostly.
She crossed the room, tablet tucked beneath one arm, and set her coffee down at her workstation. The far console lit automatically as she woke it, screens filling with data, graphs, the clean language of things that could be measured.
Work first.
Always.
Max waited.
She felt him do it.
That was new.
People usually either approached too quickly or avoided her entirely after finding out something unpleasant. They overcorrected. Softened their voices. Watched her like she might break, as if cancer were a ghost that could be summoned by the wrong tone.
Max did not do that.
He simply waited until GP walked away to terrorise someone else about track limits, then came over with his hands in his pockets.
“Hey,” he said.
Charlotte looked up.
“Hi.”
A pause.
His eyes moved over her face, quick and careful. Not searching for damage. Just checking.
“Better?” he asked.
That was acceptable.
Not are you okay?
Not how are you feeling?
Not the soft, unbearable voice.
Just better.
Charlotte nodded once. “Better.”
“Good.”
Another pause.
He glanced toward her screen. “You are not going to work through lunch because you missed two days, right?”
Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
Max looked back at her with infuriating steadiness.
“I was told to ask.”
“Hannah?”
“And GP.”
“Traitors,” Charlotte said.
His mouth twitched. “They seemed very proud.”
She should have left it there.
A normal conversation. Almost easy. Enough to acknowledge the groceries, the flat, the fact that he had seen her at less than full operating capacity and had somehow not become strange about it.
Instead, Charlotte looked at him, really looked, and felt the small loose thread of it tugging.
He knew some of the story.
Not because she had given it to him.
Because someone else had.
Because he had turned up at her door with crackers and electrolytes and terrible ginger chews, and because he had earned, inconveniently, the right not to stand in half-information.
Charlotte hated half-information.
It made systems unstable.
“Max,” she said.
He went still immediately.
Not alarmed.
Attentive.
“Yes?”
She glanced toward the corridor beyond the sim room, then toward one of the small meeting rooms off the side. Empty. Glass-walled, but quiet enough, and nobody in the department was foolish enough to interrupt her when her face looked like this.
“Do you have five minutes?”
Max nodded. “Yes.”
Max followed her into the meeting room and closed the door behind them. He did not sit until she did. Another small, irritatingly thoughtful thing.
Charlotte placed her tablet on the table, aligning it with the edge because her hands needed something precise to do.
“You found out about the tumour,” she said.
Max’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
“Yes.”
“From the sim team.”
“Yes.”
“They should not have had to tell you.”
His brow furrowed. “They didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” Charlotte folded her hands together on the table. “I’m not angry.”
“Okay.”
“But I dislike half-information,” she said. “And you have been very careful around me.”
Max opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Then, because apparently he had some sense of self-preservation, said, “Yes.”
Charlotte almost smiled.
Almost.
“I don’t need careful,” she said.
“I know.”
“It was an oligodendroglioma,” she said.
Max went completely still.
The word sat between them, clinical and ugly.
Charlotte had always preferred the clinical names. They were less slippery than euphemisms. Less dramatic than mass. More honest than health scare.
“Low-grade,” she continued. “Slow-growing. Which sounds comforting until you realise slow-growing also means it can take a very long time for anyone to notice.”
Max did not interrupt.
Good.
“The first symptoms were easy to dismiss,” Charlotte said. “Headaches. Fatigue. Some visual disturbances. I was working too much, sleeping too little, living mostly on coffee, so it was not a very difficult conclusion to reach.”
“Stress,” Max said quietly.
“Yes. That was the first assumption. Stress. Then migraines. Then possibly hormones. Then dehydration. Then, eventually, I had a seizure.”
His jaw tightened.
Charlotte looked down at her hands.
“That clarified things.”
“Charlotte.”
She lifted her eyes.
He looked like he wanted to say something and was fighting himself not to.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” A beat. “Keep going.”
That, too, was acceptable.
She leaned back slightly.
“They did imaging after that. MRI first. Then more imaging. Then a biopsy. It was in a difficult place, but not impossible. I was lucky.”
The word tasted strange in her mouth.
Lucky.
It was true, technically.
Also obscene.
“They operated,” she continued. “Removed as much of it as they safely could. Which was most of it. Not all. With that kind, sometimes removing everything is less important than not destroying the rest of the person in the process.”
Max’s face had gone very calm.
Too calm.
Charlotte recognised controlled anger when she saw it. She had lived around men with versions of it long enough to know the shape.
But his was not directed at her.
That helped.
“After that, radiation,” she said. “Then chemotherapy. Monitoring. Endless scans. Endless bloodwork. Endless people saying the word ‘support’ as though it was something one could simply collect from a shelf.”
His eyes flicked to hers.
She looked away before he could see too much.
“I have a titanium plate,” she said, tapping two fingers lightly just above and behind her ear. “Here. It keeps everything where it is meant to be.”
Max inhaled slowly.
“You have a metal plate in your skull.”
“Yes.”
“Most days, I am fine,” she said. “I work. I think. I drive. I crochet hats for my cat. I function normally.”
“Except the migraines.”
“Except the migraines,” she agreed. “And the scans.”
“How often?”
“Less often now.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the answer you are getting.”
Max considered pushing.
She watched him decide not to.
That mattered more than she wanted it to.
“The important thing,” Charlotte said, “is that it is stable. Boringly stable. I like boring. Boring is excellent.”
Max nodded once.
“Okay.”
She studied him.
No pity.
No horror.
No flinch at the word cancer, though she could see the weight of it in him. He did not rush to reassure her. Did not tell her she was brave. Did not say something useless about strength, as if survival were a personality trait instead of a sequence of medical interventions and stubborn luck.
He simply sat with it. With her.
“You dealt with all of that on your own.”
It was not a question.
Charlotte’s shoulders tightened anyway.
“I had doctors,” she said.
Max nodded.
“And Tilly.”
His mouth softened.
“Yes. And Tilly.”
“She was very helpful.”
“I believe that.”
“She has a better bedside manner than most consultants.”
That pulled a small laugh from him.
Charlotte looked up.
His face was still serious underneath it.
“You shouldn’t have had to do it alone,” Max said.
There it was.
The sentence she had been waiting for and dreading.
Her spine straightened automatically. “I didn’t ask for help.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t want anyone carrying that. It would have been unfair.”
“To who?”
Charlotte opened her mouth.
Stopped.
Max’s gaze held hers. Not pushing. Not letting her escape easily either.
That was annoying.
“It was mine,” she said eventually.
Max shook his head once.
“Cancer is not something you own because it happens to you.”
The sentence landed with unexpected force.
Charlotte looked at him.
He looked almost surprised by his own certainty, as if he had not planned to say it.
She swallowed.
“I survived,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m fine.”
“Most of the time,” he said, using her own words against her.
Charlotte narrowed her eyes.
“That was rude.”
“It was accurate.”
“GP has been a bad influence on you.”
“No,” Max said. “You have.”
That made her pause.
His expression shifted as soon as he realised what he had said. Not regret, exactly. More like awareness that something had slipped out from behind the guard.
Charlotte stared at him.
Max stared back.
The air in the room changed.
Very slightly.
Enough.
She looked away first.
“That is the information,” she said, briskly, because she had apparently decided to survive this by becoming insufferably administrative. “Oligodendroglioma. Surgery. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Titanium plate. Migraines. Stable.”
Max nodded slowly.
“Okay.”
“I don’t want pity.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want people treating me like glass.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want this to become the most interesting thing about me.”
“It isn’t.”
The answer came too quickly.
Charlotte looked at him.
Max did not look away.
“It’s not,” he said again. “It is something that happened to you. It is not all of you.”
Her throat tightened.
That was unfortunate.
She picked up her tablet to give her hands something to do.
“Well,” she said, voice dry enough to recover some dignity. “Good. Because the simulator is still more interesting.”
Max’s mouth twitched.
“Is it?”
“Infinitely.”
“I am also more interesting than cancer.”
“Debatable.”
He laughed.
A real one. Quiet, surprised, warm.
Charlotte felt something in her chest loosen and immediately distrusted it.
Max stood when she did.
Still careful.
Still not too close.
At the door, he paused.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said.
Charlotte looked at him.
There was no demand in his face. No triumph at being trusted. No expectation that this changed what he was owed from her.
Just gratitude.
That was almost worse.
“You showed up,” she said.
Max’s brow furrowed slightly.
“What?”
“With the groceries,” Charlotte said. “You showed up. I dislike loose ends.”
He studied her for a moment.
Then his expression softened.
“Right,” he said.
It was not right.
They both knew that.
Still, he let her have it.
Charlotte opened the door and stepped back into the sim room.
GP looked up immediately.
Hannah, from the far side of the room, did the same.
Charlotte ignored both of them with great dignity.
Max followed her out, and though he said nothing, he stayed near enough that she could feel the steady fact of him without being crowded by it.
She returned to her workstation and pulled up the data.
The model was still wrong.
Good.
That, at least, was easy.
Behind her, Max said quietly, “Lunch later?”
Charlotte did not look at him.
“Maybe.”
A pause.
Then, because she could feel him smiling and found that intensely irritating, she added, “If you don’t bring ginger chews.”
Max laughed under his breath.
“No ginger chews.”
Charlotte kept her eyes on the screen.
The data blurred for half a second.
She blinked it clear.
She had not planned to tell him.
But she had.
***
Gianpiero Lambiase considered himself a man of logic.
Correlation.
Cause and effect.
Input, output, consequence.
A car behaved badly because something was wrong. A driver complained because the car behaved badly. An engineer fixed the thing that was wrong, or at least found a more interesting way for it to be wrong.
Simple.
Predictable.
Manageable.
Human beings, unfortunately, were not.
Which was why, after several weeks of watching Max Verstappen orbit Charlotte Fischer with all the subtlety of a safety car deployment, GP reached the only rational conclusion available to him.
If the system would not naturally converge, he would have to intervene.
Professionally.
Strategically.
With alcohol.
The pub night was, officially, a team morale thing.
That was the phrase he used, anyway.
Morale. Bonding. A low-pressure environment. A chance for everyone to stop glaring at sim data and remember that they were all, allegedly, people.
Unofficially, it was an operation.
GP had suggested it in a meeting with the exact tone he used when proposing a setup change he already knew was correct: calm, neutral, uninteresting enough that no one thought to question it.
Hannah had understood immediately.
Too immediately.
Her eyes had lit up with an expression GP did not trust at all.
“Oh,” she had said. “That’s a very good idea.”
GP had looked at her.
Hannah had smiled.
That was when he knew this was either going to work beautifully or become his fault forever.
Possibly both.
He arrived early.
Of course he did.
A good engineer inspected conditions before committing to a strategy.
The pub was decent enough. Warm lighting. Sticky tables. A bar that looked as if it had seen several generations of bad decisions and retained all of them in the carpet. The beer was passable in the sense that it existed and was cold.
GP did a slow sweep of the room.
Too close to the door: bad, Charlotte would escape.
Too near the bar: too much traffic, Max would get distracted by strangers.
Corner table: ideal. Limited exits. Good visibility. Natural grouping. High probability of interaction.
He selected the table.
Then the chairs.
Max here.
Charlotte there.
Hannah across, to prevent immediate retreat.
GP at an angle where he could observe without appearing to observe.
Race engineering, he had found, transferred surprisingly well to social manipulation.
Max arrived first.
Naturally.
He came in with the wary expression of a man approaching a damp street circuit on tyres that had not quite reached temperature.
“This is unnecessary,” Max said, even as he sat exactly where GP indicated.
GP took a sip of his drink.
“No one forced you to come.”
“You texted me three times.”
“I reminded you.”
“You said it would be good for morale.”
“It will be.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “Whose morale?”
GP did not answer.
That, in retrospect, may have been a mistake.
Max looked around the pub, clocked the empty chair beside him, and frowned.
“Why am I sitting here?”
“Because that is where the chair is.”
Max stared at him.
GP stared back.
A lesser man would have cracked.
GP had survived several championship campaigns with Max Verstappen. He could survive one suspicious look in a pub.
Ten minutes later, Charlotte arrived.
Or, more accurately, Hannah delivered her.
Charlotte came through the door with her coat still on, shoulders slightly hunched against the evening chill, expression polite in the way people were polite when they had been promised this would be brief and were already preparing to hold everyone to that promise.
Hannah walked beside her, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
GP made another mental note.
Co-conspirator: enthusiastic. Possibly dangerous.
“You made it,” Hannah said brightly, guiding Charlotte toward the table with the kind of subtle pressure normally used to direct drivers toward media obligations.
Charlotte gave her a sideways look. “I was promised one drink.”
“You were promised the option of one drink.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“You can have water,” Hannah said. “At a pub. Like a criminal.”
Charlotte opened her mouth to reply.
Then she saw Max.
GP watched the exact moment it happened.
A tiny pause.
Barely anything.
Her gaze flicked to Max, then to the empty chair beside him, then to Hannah, whose expression had become aggressively innocent.
Charlotte understood at once.
Good, GP thought.
Smart enough to know she had been ambushed. Polite enough not to make it everyone’s problem.
Max, meanwhile, had gone very still.
Not visibly to most people, perhaps. To most people, he probably looked normal. Maybe a little reserved.
GP was not most people.
Max’s shoulders had shifted. His attention had sharpened. His face had done that infuriatingly blank thing it did when something mattered enough that he did not want anyone to know it mattered.
“Hi,” Max said.
Charlotte’s mouth twitched.
“Hi.”
She sat.
Directly beside him.
The operation entered its most delicate phase.
GP took another sip of his drink.
No sparks. No dramatic music. No immediate disaster.
Just two people sitting next to each other with enough tension between them to power a small generator.
Excellent.
Conversation began badly, which was to say normally.
Work first.
Work was safe. Work was neutral. Work allowed Charlotte to answer questions without appearing to reveal anything and allowed Max to pretend he was simply interested in the latest simulator adjustments rather than the woman explaining them.
Hannah did most of the heavy lifting early.
Bless her.
She asked Charlotte about the model update. Asked Max about the last run. Asked GP something deliberately annoying about a correlation note so he could complain for ninety seconds and give everyone time to settle.
Charlotte kept her coat on for the first fifteen minutes.
That was data.
Max noticed too. GP saw his glance flick briefly to the coat, then away.
Interesting.
Max did not ask her if she was cold.
Good.
He was learning.
Instead, he shifted slightly when someone opened the door and a draft moved through the room, positioning himself between Charlotte and the worst of it without making a production of the gesture.
Charlotte noticed.
She said nothing.
But ten minutes later, she took off her coat.
GP made a mental note.
Nonverbal adjustment accepted. Continue.
Max was trying not to look at her.
He was terrible at it.
Charlotte was trying not to respond to him more than necessary.
She was somewhat better at it.
Not perfect.
GP caught the small things. The way her gaze returned to Max when someone else was speaking. The way Max’s attention changed whenever she said something dry under her breath. The way Charlotte answered him with one extra sentence when one would have been sufficient.
This was not flirting.
Not quite.
This was two heavily guarded people standing on opposite sides of an invisible line, pretending neither of them had noticed the line was there.
GP had seen worse starts.
Frankly, with Max, he had expected worse.
At some point, conversation shifted from work to cats.
GP did not know how.
He suspected Max had engineered it badly and Charlotte had allowed it because cats were one of the few subjects she seemed to accept without suspicion.
Max said something about cats being better than most people.
Charlotte replied, “That is an insult to cats. They are better than all people.”
Max laughed.
Not the quick public laugh he used when something was mildly amusing.
A real one.
Low. Surprised.
Charlotte looked pleased for half a second before she caught herself.
Then Max, emboldened by what GP could only describe as a dangerous increase in confidence, said something about Tilly’s mushroom hat looking aerodynamic.
Charlotte snorted.
Actually snorted.
Short. Inelegant. Completely unguarded.
GP nearly inhaled his beer.
Hannah’s eyes snapped to his from across the table.
There it is, GP thought. Repeatable condition achieved.
Max noticed too.
Of course he did.
He went still for the space of a heartbeat, then smiled down at his drink like an idiot.
Charlotte, realising she had betrayed herself by showing amusement, immediately reached for her glass and took a sip with excessive dignity.
Too late.
The data had been recorded.
GP leaned back in his chair, deeply satisfied.
He had watched Max win races for impossible positions. Had heard him describe understeer with the fury of a man personally betrayed by physics. Had talked him down, wound him up, managed him through rain, strategy errors, questionable stewarding, and cars that deserved to be pushed into the sea.
This, somehow, was more stressful.
Because with the car, GP could make changes.
Here, all he could do was create conditions and hope the driver did not bin it at Turn One.
So far, Max was keeping it on track.
Barely.
But he was.
Hannah lifted her glass slightly from across the table.
GP met her eyes.
A nod passed between them.
Wingman confirmed.
He hated that this was his life.
He also, privately, thought that he was very good at it.
After that, GP stopped intervening.
A good engineer knew when to stop touching the setup.
Push too hard and the whole thing became unstable. Leave it alone once it started working, and sometimes the system found balance.
So he let the evening run.
People moved seats. Someone ordered another round. A debate broke out about whether the simulator room coffee was technically drinkable or merely warm punishment. Hannah laughed at something one of the performance engineers said. GP argued for five solid minutes about tyre model assumptions because he was, at his core, still himself.
And Max and Charlotte stayed beside each other.
That was the important part.
They were not obvious about it.
Charlotte was too controlled for that. Max was too unused to wanting something without immediately knowing how to win it.
But slowly, almost imperceptibly, the space between them changed.
Charlotte angled slightly toward him.
Max stopped trying to force the conversation into something impressive and simply listened.
She told him something about Tilly refusing to wear the strawberry hat.
He told her one of his cats once fell asleep in his sim rig and refused to move.
Charlotte laughed again.
Softer this time.
Less surprised.
Max smiled like he had no idea what to do with being happy about something so small.
GP looked away.
Some things, even for a race engineer, were not for constant observation.
By the time the night began to wind down, Max and Charlotte were still talking.
Not loudly.
Not flirtatiously in any obvious way.
Just close enough that they did not have to raise their voices.
Their heads inclined toward each other, the rest of the pub blurring around them. Charlotte’s posture had lost some of its careful rigidity. Max had stopped checking the room every few minutes. For once, neither of them looked like they were waiting for the next problem.
They looked present.
GP stood, collecting his jacket.
Hannah appeared beside him, far too smug.
“Well,” she said quietly.
GP did not look at her. “Do not say it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were.”
“I was going to say excellent strategy.”
GP sighed.
Across the table, Max said something that made Charlotte’s mouth curve again.
Not quite a smile.
Close enough.
GP felt, to his own irritation, a flicker of warmth.
Race engineer. Problem solver. Occasional unwilling architect of human connection.
Honestly, this job had far too many transferable skills.
As he stepped toward the door, he glanced back once.
Max was listening to Charlotte with the same intense focus he usually reserved for explaining what the car was doing wrong at high speed.
Charlotte was letting him.
That mattered.
Maybe more than either of them understood yet.
GP smiled faintly to himself and pushed open the pub door into the cool evening air.
Sometimes, all a system needed was the right setup.
The correct conditions.
And one very tired race engineer willing to put two stubborn idiots exactly where they needed to be.
Comms_Jess: morning after pub night check
ARE THEY DATING YET
Aero_Matt: good morning to you too
Comms_Jess: answer the question
Sim_Ruby: no
Comms_Jess: how do you know
Sim_Ruby: because Charlotte arrived alone, on time, with coffee, and looked like she had slept exactly five hours and filed the evening under “manageable social exposure”
Garage_Pete: so romantic progress
Composite_Tom: massive romantic progress
Powertrains_Nina: Max arrived twenty minutes early
Aero_Matt: for what
Powertrains_Nina: unknown
Strategy_Leah: he has no meeting until 10
Comms_Jess: WHERE IS HE
Powertrains_Nina: guess
Aero_Matt: sim wing
Powertrains_Nina: sim wing
Comms_Jess: I AM ALIVE
Strategy_Hannah: Before this becomes unbearable: no, they are not dating.
Garage_Pete: yet
Strategy_Hannah: Pete.
Garage_Pete: sorry
Composite_Tom: but spiritually?
Strategy_Hannah: What does that even mean?
Aero_Matt: spiritually Max is already co-parenting the cat
Comms_Jess: Tilly’s Stepdad remains canon
Engineering_GP: Nothing about last night is canon.
Sim_Ruby: GP, you made a seating chart.
Engineering_GP: For logistical efficiency.
Strategy_Hannah: You put them beside each other in a corner table with limited escape routes.
Engineering_GP: Correct. Efficient.
PR_Sophie: Reminder that workplace relationships are a sensitive topic and should not be discussed in official channels.
Aero_Matt: this channel has “not business” in the name
PR_Sophie: That is not legally meaningful.
Garage_Pete: what if we discuss it as a theoretical regulatory framework
PR_Sophie: I am begging you to do work.
Comms_Jess: okay but last night
they left at the same time
same direction
he walked her out
she did not look like she wanted to file a complaint
that is something
Sim_Ruby: Charlotte not looking like she wants to file a complaint is not the same as dating
Composite_Tom: for Charlotte it might be
Powertrains_Nina: she laughed twice
Aero_Matt: three times if you count the Tilly reference comment
Strategy_Hannah: We are not counting laughs like sectors.
Engineering_GP: Thank you.
Strategy_Leah: Sector 1: snort
Sector 2: soft laugh
Sector 3: “I’ll be the judge of that”
Engineering_GP: I take back my thanks.
Comms_Jess: wait what happened with the grocery thing
Aero_Matt: what grocery thing
Garage_Pete: YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT THE GROCERY THING?
PR_Sophie: Why is there a grocery thing.
Sim_Ruby: Oh no.
Powertrains_Nina: this is the moment Ruby finds out
Comms_Jess: FINDS OUT WHAT
Strategy_Hannah: Careful.
Garage_Pete: not gossip way
just context way
Comms_Jess: I am seated
Sim_Ruby: Charlotte had a bad migraine a while ago and called in sick
Aero_Matt: okay
Powertrains_Nina: Max found out
Aero_Matt: of course he did
Comms_Jess: continue
Sim_Ruby: and he brought groceries to her flat
Comms_Jess: HE WHAT
Composite_Tom: there it is
Comms_Jess: HE WENT TO HER FLAT???
Strategy_Hannah: With permission-adjacent intent and no pressure. Before anyone makes this weird.
Engineering_GP: It was surprisingly well executed.
Aero_Matt: GP praising Max’s flirting logistics. Historic.
Engineering_GP: I am praising his lack of stupidity in a delicate situation. Different.
PR_Sophie: I am choosing to believe none of this is real.
Aero_Matt: denial is not a comms strategy
PR_Sophie: It is today.
Comms_Jess: so let me understand
Max Verstappen
who cannot be normal about a cat in a mushroom hat
brought migraine-safe groceries to Charlotte’s flat
then sat beside her at the pub
then listened to her talk about Tilly’s strawberry bonnet for five minutes
and they are NOT dating?
Sim_Ruby: correct
Comms_Jess: that is offensive
Composite_Tom: to whom
Comms_Jess: me. romance. narrative structure.
Powertrains_Nina: Did Charlotte let him in?
Strategy_Hannah: Yes.
Aero_Matt: OH
Garage_Pete: HUGE
Strategy_Hannah: For five minutes.
Comms_Jess: still huge
Sim_Ruby: For Charlotte, yes.
Strategy_Leah: Charlotte allowing someone into her space voluntarily is basically a podium
Engineering_GP: Do not compare emotional vulnerability to podiums.
Aero_Matt: but it helps us understand
Engineering_GP: That is sadly true.
Comms_Jess: did Tilly meet him
Powertrains_Nina: yes
Comms_Jess: AND?
Sim_Ruby: Tilly tolerated him
Aero_Matt: that’s approval
Composite_Tom: from cats that is marriage consent
Strategy_Hannah: Do not make this weird.
Garage_Pete: too late
***
The file was too thin.
That was the first thing that irritated him.
Not because thin files were unusual. Most people, if they were sensible, left less of themselves behind than fiction suggested. Lives did not always resolve into neat public records and searchable histories. Privacy still existed, occasionally.
But this was different.
This file had the shape of something deliberately emptied.
Charlotte Wolff.
Born in Austria.
Educated in the United Kingdom.
Cambridge graduate.
Then nothing.
No professional profile worth mentioning. No public social media beyond the kind of abandoned accounts people made at sixteen and forgot existed. No conference appearances. No consulting firm biography. No start-up footprint. No neat, high-achiever progression from Cambridge into a visible career.
Just a clean drop after graduation.
As if she had stepped out of the record and closed the door behind her.
He leaned back in his chair, the desk lamp catching on the edge of the file.
Interesting.
People did not disappear like that by accident.
Not people with money behind them. Not people with the kind of education that left fingerprints everywhere. Not people whose fathers could make a phone call and have half of Europe answer.
He had been asked to locate and confirm wellbeing.
Simple brief.
Discreet.
Professional.
But simple briefs were rarely simple when they came from men like Toto Wolff.
He turned back to the screen.
Cambridge was the first thread.
That, at least, opened easily enough.
Charlotte Wolff had graduated with honours. Quietly excellent marks. No disciplinary history. No scandal. No gaps. No drama. Just the clean academic record of someone who had arrived, worked relentlessly, and left with the kind of results people described as impressive because calling them obsessive felt rude.
Then he found the amendment.
Reissued records.
Different surname.
Charlotte Fischer.
Her mother’s maiden name.
He sat with that for a moment.
Not a marriage name. Not a clerical correction. Not some harmless administrative preference.
A choice.
A clean one.
A person did not take their dead mother’s name after university because it was convenient. They did it because the other name had become too heavy to carry.
Or too dangerous.
Or too much of someone else’s.
Once he had Fischer, the trail opened with almost insulting ease.
Employment paperwork.
Address history.
A visa update.
Internal motorsport directories that were never meant to be interesting to anyone outside payroll and compliance.
Red Bull Racing.
Simulator department.
Milton Keynes.
He stared at the line for a second.
Then he laughed once under his breath.
“Well,” he muttered. “That is pointed.”
Of all the places in Formula One she could have gone, Charlotte Fischer had chosen the rival.
Not Mercedes.
Not one of the satellite circles. Not a technical supplier. Not somewhere neutral and dignified where her father’s name would still have opened doors quietly.
Red Bull.
And not in a public-facing role either.
No cameras. No paddock walk. No glamorous engineering feature. No easy narrative about Toto Wolff’s brilliant daughter crossing enemy lines.
She had gone into the bowels of the machine.
Simulator work.
Hidden. Crucial. Unseen by design.
That choice told him more than any diary could have.
She had not wanted to be found.
She had wanted to be useful somewhere no one would know why she mattered.
He should have stopped there.
He had, technically, fulfilled the brief.
Charlotte Fischer existed. She worked. She paid rent. She had a National Insurance trail, employment records, bank activity, utilities, a life assembled neatly enough to satisfy the question of whether she was alive.
But he was good at his job because he disliked unanswered questions.
And Charlotte Fischer was full of them.
So he dug.
Not clumsily. Never that.
He knew the difference between intrusion and pattern. Knew what not to touch. Knew how to read around sealed doors without kicking them open.
Colleagues described her in the same handful of words.
Brilliant.
Quiet.
Private.
Unshowy.
Unfailingly competent.
That last one appeared so often he began to wonder if it was a kind of affection. Some people were loved loudly. Some people were loved by a room full of engineers saying, with absolute certainty, she knows what she’s doing.
There were other words too.
Careful.
Stubborn.
Self-contained.
Protected.
That one interested him.
Protected, but not fragile.
Protected in the way people spoke about someone who would hate the word protected being used about her. Protected in the way a department quietly adjusted itself around a boundary without ever naming it.
No one seemed to pity her.
But they all seemed to know not to push.
That contradiction stayed with him.
So he kept going.
The medical trail was harder.
As it should have been.
Protected. Fragmented. Buried behind the appropriate walls.
But lives left pressure marks even when records stayed sealed.
A gap in work history that did not appear on the official profile.
Specialist appointments.
A hospital admission years back.
Neurology follow-ups.
Oncology referrals.
Monitoring that continued long after the kind of scare people dismissed and moved on from.
He pieced it together slowly.
Then, all at once.
Brain tumour.
Cancer.
Surgery.
Radiation.
Recovery.
He went very still.
The office around him seemed to quiet.
He had seen ugly things in this job. Marriages collapsing under surveillance. Heirs hiding addictions. Executives burying scandals under enough money to make morality feel optional.
But this was something else.
A young woman, estranged from one of the most powerful men in motorsport, had changed her name, disappeared into a rival team, and survived cancer without making a claim on any of the safety nets arranged for her.
No withdrawals from the trust.
No contact with the father.
No leverage.
No public sympathy.
No noise.
He exhaled slowly and sat back.
That explained the migraines noted in fragments of workplace gossip.
It explained the guardedness.
It explained why people around her sounded protective without sounding sentimental.
It explained the absence.
Not all of it.
Enough.
Charlotte Fischer had not vanished because she was lost.
She had endured.
That was different.
He looked again at the brief.
Locate. Confirm wellbeing.
A neat instruction.
A simple sentence designed to make this feel clean.
He now knew where she worked.
Where she lived.
What name she used.
What she had survived.
He knew enough to satisfy his client.
He also knew enough to understand that handing it over without restraint would be its own kind of violence.
Because this was not a missing person.
This was not a vulnerable adult wandering without support.
This was a woman who had built a life with intention. A woman who had removed herself from a family name, a family home, and a father’s financial reach with such precision that the silence itself should have been treated as an answer.
He opened the report template.
For several minutes, he did not type.
Then he began.
No embellishment.
No speculation dressed as insight.
No unnecessary address details beyond what the client’s legal authority allowed. No intimate reconstruction of the illness. No dramatic prose, though God knew the story invited it.
Just facts.
Charlotte Fischer was alive.
Professionally successful.
Employed in a senior technical capacity at Red Bull Racing.
Financially independent.
No indication of immediate danger.
No indication of criminal involvement.
No indication of instability.
No evidence of financial need.
He paused.
His fingers hovered above the keyboard.
Then, because professionalism did not have to mean cowardice, he added one final paragraph.
Subject appears to have deliberately and consistently structured her adult life to avoid contact with the client. Further inquiry or direct approach through her workplace is unlikely to be welcomed and may be perceived as intrusive.
He read it twice.
Then he added:
Recommendation: no further investigative action without subject’s consent.
There.
Not emotional.
Not moralising.
Clear.
He closed the report and leaned back in his chair.
For a long moment, he stared at the screen without seeing it.
Some mysteries were not meant to be solved.
Some people disappeared not because they wanted someone to follow, but because every previous form of being known had cost too much.
Charlotte Fischer had not fallen through the cracks.
She had found one.
And for the first time in a long career of finding people who did not always want to be found, he hoped his client understood the difference.
Because she had not vanished.
She had chosen herself.
And if Toto Wolff had any sense left at all, he would not mistake finding her for getting her back.
Hi anon. As someone who’s writing their own story I can tell you that what cress writes is not AI. The fact you are so adamant that she uses AI how about you go plan out a story and see how long it takes you to plan out.
I can tell you right now I’m two years into writing/ planning one of my many stories and let me tell you there’s days where I’m writing like no one’s business and the other days I have no inspiration to write. And on none of those days do I reach for a single ounce of AI.
So anon please do us all a favor and get off the internet. You are embarrassing yourself
Yeah, I think we can tell them that another 100 times and they will not understand it anyway 💀😬😘
if they want to be scared off by anyone I’ll gladly welcome them to read the hundreds of rough drafts I have saved in my good drive.
Let me tell you it’s unfiltered and unhinged to the point of anyone questioning if I have a sound mental state or not. It gets dark very quickly to the point that it’ll turn even the strongest of stomach. It’s dark it’s unfiltered and it’s concerning at points that even I question my own sanity
summary: y/n webber vettel swore she was done with formula 1 and race drivers forever. max is determined to change her mind
a/n: I’ve had this piece rumbling about in my mind since like November 2024 so I’m really excited to actually start posting it!
a/n2: a cheat code for some names — not_yn and mv are private accounts for yn and max, yn_vettel and max_v are locked accounts for yn and max, art_by_yn and maxverstappen33 are public accounts (yn talks to max with not_yn, family with yn_vettel, and everyone else with art_by_yn) (for the most part)
a/n3: all art is by anastasia trusova
a/n4: I’m not a lawyer nor a judge so we’re just all going to kinda gloss over that please and thanks
Masterlist | Series Masterlist
mv
liked by not_yn, charles, mick, and 622 others
tagged: not_yn
mv: made the move to Monaco — and found the perfect spot for art to be made
view all comments
not_yn: knapperd that is such a beautiful place
↳mv: I'm glad you like it — I've got a key ready for you whenever I see you next
↳not_yn: max…
↳mv: moppie as I keep telling you, I'm in this forever. of course I'm going to get a place that you'll love and give you a key to it
↳not_yn: I love you
↳not_yn: but I'm going to put my phone down now before I really start crying and get vater all concerned
↳mv: well we wouldn't have the worry the old man 😂
mick: when this comes out, I'm going to pretend I don't know you
↳mv: that's fair
↳mick: also you better not hurt her or else
↳mv: well now I'm curious…or else what?
↳mick: I'll tell Fernando
↳not_yn: oh please don't involve him
charles: you are setting the bar very high
↳mv: this is literally bare minimum
↳charles: it is not
↳not_yn: it kinda is?
↳charles: you are used to his high standards and your judgement is suspect
gina: I know charles is complaining about the standards you're setting but I love it and throughly approve — continue to treat her well!
↳mv: thank you Gina, I plan to liked by not_yn
↳charles: I'm not complaining!
↳mv: 😑😑 yes you are
art_by_yn
liked by nando, seb5priv, danric, and 1,823 others
art_by_yn: I'm excited to announce that my work will be showcased in the Monaco Art Gallery starting next Friday! This display is made up of pieces close to my heart and it's an honor to have been chosen! Lasting three months, I plan read more
view all comments
user1: oh I can't wait!
max_v: I'm so proud of you moppie
↳yn_vettel: thank you knapperd 💜💜
seb5priv: words cannot even begin to describe how proud I am of you yn — you deserve this and even more
↳yn_vettel: vater I'm literally about to start crying, I always aim to make you proud
↳seb5priv: there is nothing you could do to make me not proud of you
user2: buying tickets right now actually
nando: pequeña I am excited to see even more of your work — and to see how far you've come from the little girl who painted flowers in the fields outside your house
↳yn_vettel: did all you old men decide to band together to make me cry today? Because it's nearly working
↳nando: no but we are all so very proud of you and wanted to tell you
user3: searching how much tickets to Monaco are right now…I need to see these in person
lewis44: congratulations darling, I can't wait to see the exhibit
↳yn_vettel: it'll be good to see you again!
danric: thanks for the invite little vettel
↳not_yn: good things come from having Danny Ric at your event!
↳seb5priv: it better not happen again! I'm watching you
↳yn_vettel: go away vater!
Private Messages: David Coulthard and Mark Webber
Emails: ABC School
Emails: A. Smith, Lawyer
Emails: B. Loveland, Judge
Mailbox: Neighborhood Watch
Emails: Neighborhood Watch
skynews
liked by user, user, user, and 1,729,922 others
tagged: aussiegrit
skynews: Mark Webber, previously announced to be reporting in China this weekend, will not be there due to a private family matter.
view all comments
user1: no mark??? What the hell
user2: i hope everything is ok…
↳user3: i wonder what happened
user4: I've only had announcer mark for a single race but I love him. this makes me sad
↳user5: fucking same!!
user6: I wonder if this has anything to do with the rumors that apparently he's been running around Monaco?
↳user7: I heard about that! Wonder what that's all about…
Mail: Art Gallery Invitation
Private Messages: David Coulthard and Mark Webber
Emails: Private Investigator
Taglist
If you want to join my taglist, interact with my taglist post. I won’t be adding from anywhere else
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Pairing: Max Verstappen x Charlotte Fischer (Original Character)
Summary: Charlotte Fischer has spent years making sure no one in Formula One knows who she really is.
At Red Bull, she is simply Charlotte: Cambridge graduate, simulator engineer, owner of a deeply judgmental cat, and the woman responsible for making the team’s broken 2025 car model finally tell the truth.
She prefers it that way. No family name. No questions. No one looking at her like she is someone’s daughter, someone’s mistake, or someone’s failure to protect.
Max Verstappen notices her anyway.
Warnings and Notes: I wrote fanfiction of my own fanfiction. This is the result.
As always big thanks to @llirawolf , who listens to me ramble.
Charlotte Fischer had been at Red Bull since the week after she graduated.
She’d sent in her CV like anyone else. Interviewed in a windowless room with bad coffee and too many questions. Signed her contract quietly and moved her life to Milton Keynes with the vague sense that she’d chosen something irreversible.
Sometimes — usually when she was three coffees deep and the sim refused to behave — it amused her, in a dry, private way, that she’d ended up here of all places.
Red Bull Racing.
The irony wasn’t lost on her.
No one here knew who she was related to.
No one softened their tone around her. No one watched her for signs of brilliance or disappointment. No one projected legacy onto her shoulders.
She wasn’t anyone’s daughter.
She could just be Charlotte.
Just another engineer with too many tabs open and a stubborn relationship with data.
Charlotte liked it that way.
The simulator lived deep inside the building, far from daylight and distraction.
Charlotte liked to joke — only to herself — that you could lose entire days down there and no one would notice.
She’d learned the rhythms of the place: the hum of machines, the faint smell of warmed electronics, the way the air never quite changed. It was insulated from the outside world, from weather and seasons and expectations.
The sim didn’t care who her father was. It didn’t care who her mother had been.
It didn’t care that she’d once lain in a hospital bed counting ceiling tiles and wondering if this would be the last room she would ever see.
The sim only cared whether the model was wrong.
If the numbers were wrong, it told her.
If the assumptions were flawed, it punished her.
If she fixed it, it responded honestly.
There was no pity in it.
Only cause and effect.
She spent most of her time down there — long hours, irregular meals, headphones on, mind locked into the language of physics and probability. People sometimes forgot she existed until something broke or improved unexpectedly.
She didn’t mind.
Being invisible had its advantages.
There were days — quieter ones, harder ones — when she recognised the truth without flinching:
When it wasn’t Tilly the cat keeping her alive, it had been this.
The focus. The problems.
The sense that something complex could be understood if she stayed with it long enough.
She had survived because she’d had reasons to keep thinking forward.
Sometimes, late at night, she’d sit alone in the sim control room, lights low, replaying runs not because she needed to — but because the repetition was grounding.
The steady hum reminded her that she was still here, that time was still moving.
She didn’t think about her father much while she worked.
That part of her life felt distant, sealed off behind professional neutrality and old decisions. Here, she was judged on output, not origin.
Here, she was competent.
Here, she mattered.
Charlotte adjusted a parameter, watched the model settle, and made a note to herself for the next session.
Just Charlotte.
And that was more than enough.
***
The car was lying to him.
Max had known it for weeks, in that low, irritating way that lived between shoulder blades and instincts — the way a thing felt wrong even when the numbers insisted otherwise.
The simulator said one thing. The track said another.
And every time he brought it up, it got smoothed over with words like correlation and tolerance and development window.
None of which helped when the rear snapped like it hated him personally.
So when GP told him there was someone in the sim department who wanted ten minutes of his time, Max expected another polite meeting.
Another explanation.
Another we’re working on it.
He did not expect her.
She was standing half-turned toward the screen when he walked in, arms crossed loosely, posture straight but not stiff.
Tall. Longer legs than most people in the room.
Short dark hair that brushed her jaw, slightly mussed like she’d run a hand through it too many times.
Dark eyes — sharp, focused— flicked to him, assessed him, and then went straight back to the data.
No awe. No hesitation.
Interesting.
“Max, this is Charlotte Fischer.” GP said. “Sim engineer. Charlotte, Max.”
Charlotte Fischer nodded once. No smile. No fuss.
“Hi, nice to meet you.”
Her voice was calm. Neutral in a way that suggested it had been trained that way.
Max nodded back, suddenly very aware of the fact that he was still in his race suit and probably smelled faintly like heat and frustration.
“So,” he said, because silence felt loaded already. “You found something.”
“Yes,” she said immediately, uncrossing her arms and stepping closer to the screen. “The sim wasn’t wrong because of bad inputs. It was wrong because it was assuming the car behaved honestly.”
Max blinked.
“…Okay.”
She glanced at him then, just briefly, and there was something dry in her expression. Not amused. Not impressed. Just… certain.
“The aero load model is overcorrecting for yaw instability,” she continued. “Which means the sim compensates in ways the real car can’t. It’s smoothing behavior that doesn’t exist. So when you drive it, you subconsciously trust a balance you’ll never actually have on track.”
GP inhaled slowly, like someone bracing.
Max stepped closer, eyes narrowing at the replay she pulled up.
“That’s why it snaps,” he said quietly. “Mid-corner. Feels fine until it doesn’t.”
Charlotte nodded. “Yes.”
Not maybe. Not we think. Yes.
She pulled up a comparison run — sim versus real telemetry — and the discrepancy was suddenly obvious, glaring in hindsight. The sim was lying, and it had been doing it for months.
“I adjusted the assumptions,” she said. “Removed the artificial stabilisation. It’s… less pleasant to drive now.”
Max snorted.
“Good.”
That earned him a real look. One eyebrow lifted slightly. “I thought you might say that.”
He liked her already.
They ran the updated sim together.
The car was ugly, nervous, difficult — and suddenly, it made sense. The feedback matched his hands. The fear points lined up with reality.
When Max climbed out, adrenaline buzzing in his veins, he realised something else had changed.
He was smiling. “That’s it,” he said, turning toward her. “That’s the car.”
Charlotte inclined her head, like she’d expected nothing else.
“You’ll still hate it,” she said. “Just for the correct reasons now.”
He laughed before he could stop himself.
GP cleared his throat, looking between them with interest. “Good work,” he said to Charlotte.
She nodded again, already gathering her tablet, mentally moving on.
Max watched her for half a second too long.
Pretty was the wrong word. She wasn’t decorative. She was… arresting.
Tall, composed, dark hair sharp against pale skin, dark eyes that didn’t seek approval. Someone who fixed things quietly and didn’t need applause for it.
And something else — something he couldn’t quite name — tugged at him.
Familiarity, maybe. Or recognition.
As she turned to leave, Max found himself speaking without planning it. “You’ll be around for the next sessions?”
Charlotte paused, glanced back at him. “Yes.”
Just that.
Then she walked out, steps measured, already gone from the moment.
Max stood there, helmet under his arm, heart doing something annoying and unexpected.
GP watched him, unimpressed. “…Don’t,” he said flatly.
Max didn’t even look away from the door. “I haven’t done anything.”
GP huffed. “You’re thinking too loudly.”
Max smiled to himself, slow and crooked. Yeah. He definitely was.
***
Lunch was a brief ceasefire between debriefs and damage limitation.
They were halfway through eating when Charlotte appeared at the edge of the table, tablet tucked under her arm, tote bag slung over one shoulder.
She paused, polite. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Max looked up immediately. Tried not to look like he had.
Hannah smiled. “You’re not interrupting.”
Charlotte reached into her bag and pulled out something… knitted. Crocheted, actually. Thick yarn, carefully shaped.
It was a tiny hat.
A ridiculous, adorable, painstakingly made tiny hat.
“This is for Nimbus,” Charlotte said, handing it to Hannah. “Your daughters asked if the ears could be… exaggerated.”
Hannah gasped softly. “Oh my god. They’re going to lose their minds.”
Max stared at the hat.
Then at Charlotte.
Then back at the hat.
“…Is that,” he said slowly, “a cat-sized hat?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No embarrassment.
GP choked on his drink.
Hannah turned the little thing over in her hands, inspecting the stitches. “You’re a miracle worker. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Charlotte hesitated, then added, “If Nimbus hates it, tell them it’s my fault.”
“He won’t,” Hannah said confidently. “He tolerates nonsense remarkably well.”
Charlotte nodded once, satisfied, and glanced briefly at Max — just a flicker — before stepping back.
“Enjoy lunch,” she said.
Then she was gone again, leaving behind a crochet hat and a table full of stunned engineers.
There was a beat of silence.
Max broke it immediately.
“I need to see pictures,” he said, pointing at the hat. “Immediately. When your cat wears that.”
Hannah laughed. “Of course you do.”
“I’m serious,” Max said. “This is important.”
GP sighed into his coffee. “Please explain to me how this is now important.”
Max ignored him, eyes still on the hat.
Hannah smiled knowingly. “Charlotte has an Instagram.”
Max’s head snapped up. “She does?”
“Yes,” Hannah said casually. “She only posts her cat. Modeling the hats.”
Max froze. “…Only that?”
“Yes.”
“How many hats are we talking about?”
Hannah shrugged. “Seasonal. Themes. There was a little witch one at Halloween.”
Max was already pulling out his phone.
“What’s the handle?”
Hannah told him.
Max followed the account without a second’s hesitation.
The feed loaded.
Cat. Hat. Another hat. A different angle of the same cat. A caption that was aggressively understated.
Max stared.
Then smiled.
Then liked three photos in a row before realising he probably shouldn’t like all of them.
GP watched him with the weary expression of a man who had seen this before and knew how it ended.
“You are,” GP said, “deeply predictable.”
Max didn’t look up.
“She crochets hats,” he said faintly. “For cats.”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “And?”
“And she fixes our sim,” Max added. “And she’s tall.”
Hannah snorted.
GP stood, collecting his tray. “I’m leaving before this gets worse.”
Max finally glanced up, phone still in his hand, eyes bright.
“It’s already worse,” he said cheerfully.
And he liked another photo anyway.
Max was still scrolling when GP came back with his coffee.
Another cat. Another hat.
Max liked it.
Hannah watched him do it.
She didn’t say anything at first. Just leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, eyes flicking between Max, the phone, and GP with the quiet confidence of someone about to ruin a man’s day.
“Ah,” she said eventually. “There it is.”
Max frowned. “What.”
GP glanced over. Took in the scene in half a second. “Oh,” GP said flatly. “No.”
Max finally looked up. “What do you mean no.”
“You have a crush,” Hannah said, far too cheerfully.
Max scoffed. “I do not.”
GP sat down slowly, the way one does when bracing for disappointment.
“You followed an engineer’s cat Instagram within thirty seconds,” GP said. “And you’re smiling at your phone.”
“It’s a cat,” Max argued. “In a hat!”
Hannah raised an eyebrow. “You don’t follow my cat.”
“That’s because your cat doesn’t wear costumes,” Max shot back.
GP pinched the bridge of his nose.
“This,” he said, gesturing vaguely at Max, “is exactly how it starts.”
Max rolled his eyes. “You’re both being dramatic.”
Hannah leaned forward. “Max. You asked me to send you photos of Nimbus wearing the hat. You said it was ‘important.’”
“It is important.”
GP stared at him. “Why.”
Max opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
“Well,” he said, stalling, “because—”
Hannah smiled sweetly. “Because you like her.”
“I like that she fixed the sim,” Max said quickly.
“And crocheted a hat for my cat,” Hannah added.
“And has an Instagram for it,” GP said.
“And you followed it immediately,” Hannah finished.
They both looked at him.
Max exhaled through his nose, defeated.
“…Fine,” he muttered. “Maybe a little.”
Hannah clapped once. “Oh god. You have a crush.”
GP groaned. “We are not doing this in the middle of a season from hell.”
Max looked back at his phone. The orange cat stared out from the screen, tiny hat slightly askew.
“She’s just… interesting,” he said, quieter now. “And she’s good. At her job.”
GP gave him a long look. “So were many people before who you did not stalk via crochet content.”
Max shrugged.
Hannah laughed outright. “This is adorable. I give it three weeks before you ask her about yarn.”
“I am not asking her about yarn,” Max protested.
GP didn’t even look convinced.
Max liked another photo.
Just one more.
For science.
***
Meanwhile on Twitter:
@/gridwatcher:
🚨 extremely important max verstappen following update 🚨
he just followed… a cat account???
@/tyredegpls: a WHAT account
@/gridwatcher: no because look
it’s just
a cat
wearing crocheted hats
@/papayapanic: pls tell me you’re joking
@/gridwatcher: I WISH I WAS
handle is literally tillyshats
@/softsector: hold on
scrolling
oh my god
WHY IS IT SO CUTE
@/dutchdelight33: max: fighting a cursed car every weekend
also max: yes. tiny hat.
@/downforcegirlie: this is the most unhinged thing he’s done all season and that is SAYING something
@/gridwatcher: the captions are killing me
“she hated this.”
bestie SAME
@/tyredegpls: do we think max knows the person irl or is this just him discovering joy again
@/softsector: either way i support his healing journey through crochet cat hats
@/downforcegirlie: he’s gonna like every post isn’t he
@/softsector: he already liked three in a row. source: me, refreshing.
@/gridwatcher: someone please tell him twitter has eyes
@/papayapanic: no don’t
this is the only joy we have this season
@/gridwatcher: max verstappen following a cat crochet account is the most emotionally stable thing he’s done in months and honestly? relatable.
@/papayaemergency: the captions are like
“she did not consent”
“winter collection complete”
I’m crying
@/F1Detective: give us 24 hours
@/F1Detective (later): ok so:
– account has existed for years
– never posted anything F1 related
– follows exactly 12 people
– max followed it today
this is either chaos or romance
@/OrangeSector33: max verstappen silently liking crochet cat content during a catastrophic season is my new coping mechanism
@/MaxAppreciation: I just know GP saw this and sighed
@/SlowPitStop: this is how it starts
first the cat
then the yarn
then suddenly he’s knitting in the garage
@/RedBullChaos: max hasn’t liked anything else today
just the cat
priorities king 👑
@/DutchF1Watcher: I don’t care who runs the account
I just want them to know
they made the fandom happy today 🧶🐱
Sim_Ruby: because he is a dedicated professional athlete committed to improving performance
Aero_Matt: ruby
Sim_Ruby: because charlotte is here
Strategy_Leah: ah
Composite_Tom: there it is
Garage_Pete: wait are we allowed to say that now
Strategy_Hannah: No.
Garage_Pete: so yes
Strategy_Hannah: Also no.
Sim_Ruby: Max asked whether the updated low-speed model was ready
Aero_Matt: is it
Sim_Ruby: it was ready yesterday
Aero_Matt: and did he know that
Sim_Ruby: yes
Aero_Matt: Beautiful
Powertrains_Nina: I saw him walk past the sim wing three times this morning
Garage_Pete: maybe he was lost
Powertrains_Nina: max verstappen has been in this building since he was seventeen
Garage_Pete: emotionally lost
Composite_Tom: that checks out
PR_Sophie: Can someone confirm whether Max has actually followed the cat account or is this another rumour?
Strategy_Leah: confirmed
PR_Sophie: oh my god
Aero_Matt: what cat account
Sim_Ruby: Charlotte’s cat. Tilly. The crochet hats.
Aero_Matt: the WHAT
Garage_Pete: welcome to the lore
Powertrains_Nina: Tilly has worn, to my knowledge:
pumpkin hat
dinosaur hat
mushroom hat
flower hat
PR_Sophie: and max followed within approximately thirty seconds of learning it existed
Aero_Matt: that is not a crush
that is a telemetry trace
Engineering_GP: All of you have work to do.
Aero_Matt: so do you
Engineering_GP: Correct. Mine is apparently preventing a world champion from flirting like a concussed golden retriever.
Sim_Ruby: GP
Garage_Pete: A CONCUSSED GOLDEN RETRIEVER
Powertrains_Nina: accurate though
Strategy_Hannah: Unfortunately.
PR_Sophie: For legal purposes, no one is to discuss this outside internal channels.
Aero_Matt: we have legal purposes now?
PR_Sophie: Max liking five consecutive photos of a cat wearing hats is market-sensitive information.
Strategy_Leah: true
Composite_Tom: the FIA should investigate
Garage_Pete: penalty for excessive adorableness
Sim_Ruby: UPDATE: Charlotte just told Max the simulator was “less wrong than yesterday” and he smiled like she handed him a trophy
Aero_Matt: oh he is GONE gone
Powertrains_Nina: did she mean it as praise?
Sim_Ruby: for Charlotte? yes
Strategy_Hannah: That is basically a sonnet from her.
Engineering_GP: Do not encourage him.
Strategy_Hannah: I am not encouraging him. I am observing.
Engineering_GP: You gave him her cat Instagram.
Strategy_Hannah: That was cultural enrichment!
Garage_Pete: max just asked whether charlotte was having lunch
Aero_Matt: normal
Garage_Pete: then immediately said “not like that”
Strategy_Leah: less normal
Garage_Pete: then left without eating
Composite_Tom: catastrophic
Powertrains_Nina: has anyone told charlotte
Sim_Ruby: told charlotte what
Powertrains_Nina: that the entire building thinks max has a crush on her
Sim_Ruby: she knows
Aero_Matt: SHE KNOWS?
Sim_Ruby: she has eyes
Strategy_Hannah: And a Cambridge degree.
Garage_Pete: so what is she doing about it
Sim_Ruby: mostly pretending not to know
Strategy_Leah: valid
Composite_Tom: romance, but make it deeply repressed and data-driven
Sim_Ruby: MAX JUST BROUGHT CHARLOTTE A COFFEE
Aero_Matt: did she accept it
Sim_Ruby: yes
Composite_Tom: oh my god
Garage_Pete: wedding when
Strategy_Hannah: Do not be weird.
Garage_Pete: sorry
Powertrains_Nina: what kind of coffee
Sim_Ruby: black. no sugar. exactly how she drinks it.
Strategy_Leah: oh
Aero_Matt: OH
Composite_Tom: he knows her coffee order
Garage_Pete: we are so back
***
Charlotte arrived early enough that the building had not fully woken yet.
The corridor lights were still dimmed to half-strength, the air cool and quiet in the way she liked best, before the factory filled with voices and footsteps and the restless machinery of a race weekend being prepared in a thousand invisible ways.
She had a coffee in one hand, her tablet tucked beneath her arm, and half her mind already turning over the work she had left unfinished the night before.
There was still a discrepancy in the latest sim run that annoyed her.
Not enough to be alarming.
Enough to be personal.
She slowed when she reached the entrance to the sim wing.
Voices drifted from the coffee machine.
Two engineers stood near the counter, jackets still on, mugs in hand, bodies loose with the kind of ease people only had before the day had properly claimed them. They were talking the way people talked when work had not yet narrowed them down to data and deadlines.
“My mum keeps asking if I’m coming home for Easter,” one of them said, amused. “As if I can just teleport.”
The other laughed. “Mine’s already planning Christmas. It’s March.”
“Better than my dad,” the first replied. “He sends spreadsheets. Travel options. Budget comparisons. Last year there were colour-coded tabs.”
Charlotte stopped just out of sight.
Family talk had a way of slipping under her skin before she had time to brace for it. It was always the harmless conversations that did the most damage.
The little complaints. The fond exasperation. The casual certainty that someone was waiting somewhere, planning too much, caring clumsily but consistently.
She waited until the moment passed, then stepped forward.
The engineers glanced over, nodded in greeting, and moved aside to let her reach the coffee machine. Their conversation faded naturally as work reasserted itself.
Normal.
Unremarkable.
Charlotte returned the nod, polite and distant, then continued down the corridor with her coffee warming her hand.
She did not think about her family often.
Not actively.
It was not something she pushed away so much as something that had ceased to belong to her daily life. Like a room in a house she had stopped entering until, eventually, she no longer remembered the exact placement of the furniture.
She had a mother once.
That part was easy to remember.
Warmth. Beauty that had nothing to do with mirrors. A laugh that lived in the body more than the mouth. Hands that tucked hair behind Charlotte’s ear with absentminded tenderness. A voice that spoke to her as if she were already someone worth listening to.
Then she had a father.
Had.
The word still landed strangely.
She had not spoken to him in nearly four years now. Not properly. Not since the last argument — if it could even be called that. Arguments implied heat on both sides. Noise. Back-and-forth. Something alive enough to resist.
What they had…that was a rupture.
A single moment where everything unspoken finally surfaced, where Charlotte stopped absorbing it quietly and said, in every way she knew how, this hurts.
And he had answered with calm-downs.
With compromises.
With that familiar, polished instinct to keep the peace, as if peace had ever been neutral. As if it had not always been purchased with her silence.
She had walked out that night without slamming the door.
She had never gone back.
Cutting contact had not been dramatic.
It had been administrative.
She changed her number. Updated emergency contacts. Removed his name from forms and replaced it with her own. Changed what needed changing, signed what needed signing, and built a life that no longer required anyone else’s permission to continue.
It had not felt like loss.
That had surprised her, at first.
It had felt like relief.
She reached the simulator control room and set her things down. The machines hummed around her, steady and familiar, wrapping the room in a sound she understood better than most people’s voices.
This, she could trust.
Data did not ask where you were from.
It did not ask who raised you.
It did not assume connection where there was none.
She powered up her workstation, eyes scanning the screen as systems came online. The familiar glow caught against her coffee cup, her notes, the edge of her hand.
Families, she thought, were something you either got lucky with or learned to live without.
She had learned. And she had survived.
Still, sometimes, she could not help thinking about it.
It happened more often than she liked to admit.
Not deliberately. Not masochistically.
Just… in passing.
A screen left on in the background. A photograph in a paddock recap. A video clip that autoplayed before she could stop it.
Her father laughing with Jack on his shoulders.
Her father leaning down to listen to Rosa, one hand warm and familiar at her back.
Her father with Benedict, proud and attentive and present in a way that looked effortless from the outside.
A father.
Charlotte never sought those moments out, but they found her anyway, slipping into her periphery like static she could never quite tune out.
Every time, she wondered the same thing.
How can you do it for them?
How could he know how to kneel to a child’s height, how to listen, how to protect, how to make himself soft enough to be trusted — and still never have managed it for her?
She did not think it with anger anymore.
That part had burned out years ago.
What remained was quieter. Sharper.
Confusion, edged with grief.
She had been there first.
The thought arrived uninvited every time. Not as an accusation. Not even as a plea.
Just as fact.
She had been there first.
Stephanie’s face surfaced next, as it often did when Charlotte let herself follow the thread.
Stephanie, cool and immaculate. Stephanie, whose displeasure had never needed to become a raised voice to be felt. Stephanie, who had looked at Charlotte as if she were a problem that should have resolved itself through gratitude and silence.
Charlotte had spent years trying to be smaller around her.
Quieter.
Easier.
Less inconveniently alive.
It had never worked.
Nothing would have worked.
That had been one of the cruellest things to learn. That sometimes there was no correct version of yourself that would make someone love you. Sometimes the offence was not your behaviour, or your tone, or your awkwardness, or your grief.
Sometimes the offence was simply that you existed.
Susie belonged in a different category altogether.
Susie had never been cruel.
That mattered.
It also had not been enough.
Charlotte had learned early that kindness without intervention still left bruises. That sympathy did not stop harm if it stayed quiet. That a soft look across a dinner table was not the same thing as someone saying, enough.
She did not resent Susie.
Not exactly.
She simply had not trusted her.
And that, too, had felt inevitable.
Her mother was the only one untouched by complication.
Charlotte missed her with a dull, persistent ache that had nothing to do with time. No amount of years had softened it. No amount of success had replaced the absence. It lived in her quietly, beneath the skin, like an old injury that ached before rain.
She missed the way her mother had spoken to her like Charlotte’s thoughts mattered.
The way she had touched her hair when she was thinking.
The way she had laughed — full-bodied, unselfconscious, generous — as if joy was not something to ration.
She missed the safety of her.
The certainty.
Sometimes Charlotte tried to imagine what her life would have been if her mother had lived.
She suspected the answer was: simpler.
Not easier.
Just less lonely.
She rarely allowed herself to dwell on the question that haunted her most.
If she were still alive, would any of this have happened?
Charlotte knew the answer.
No.
Because her mother would never have let anyone make her feel optional.
She sat down at her desk, set her coffee beside the keyboard, and pulled up the latest sim data.
The discrepancy was still there, waiting for her.
Good.
That, at least, was something she knew how to fix.
***
Max hadn’t meant to listen.
That was the thing.
He was not sneaking around the sim wing like some sort of stalker who lingered near doorways because Charlotte Fischer happened to be on the other side of them.
He was simply walking.
And then he heard her laugh.
Not the small, contained sound she sometimes made when someone said something mildly funny and she decided, apparently by committee, that it deserved acknowledgement.
This was different.
Quick. Unpolished. Surprised out of her.
Max slowed before he could stop himself.
The office door was half-open. Voices drifted out into the corridor — easy, bright, the kind of conversation people had when the day had not fully sharpened around them yet.
Charlotte’s voice cut through the others.
Distinct.
Calm.
Impeccably British in that way that made Max think of expensive schools and people who used forks correctly even when angry.
“You know,” one of her colleagues said, audibly grinning, “every time you say can’t, I expect you to start announcing tea.”
Charlotte made an offended sound. “That’s not even fair.”
“It is,” another voice chimed in. “You sound like you went to the kind of school that has its own crest.”
“I did,” Charlotte said dryly.
Max stopped walking.
He pulled out his phone, because apparently he was now that person and if anyone asked, he could pretend he had received a message.
“Called it,” the first colleague said triumphantly. “I knew it. Boarding school.”
“Very pricey boarding school,” Charlotte corrected. “With uniforms that cost more than my rent.”
Someone laughed. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. There was a blazer. It had piping.”
“Oh, posh-posh.”
“Traumatised-posh,” Charlotte corrected. “There is a difference.”
Max’s mouth twitched despite himself.
He could picture it too easily.
Charlotte in some severe school uniform, dark hair shorter even then maybe, dark eyes already watchful, standing too straight because someone somewhere had taught her posture could be armour.
Charlotte learning early how to sound composed. How to make every sentence smooth enough that no one could grab hold of it.
He filed it away.
Boarding school.
Expensive.
Old money, maybe.
Or at least money somewhere.
That part did not quite fit with the rest of her, though. Not with the way she never talked like someone expecting anything to be handed to her. Not with the way she moved through Red Bull like she had carved out every inch of space herself.
Then one of her colleagues said, “Okay, but wait — you’re not even British, are you?”
There was a pause.
Small. Almost nothing.
Max noticed anyway.
“No,” Charlotte said. “I was born in Austria.”
That stopped him properly.
Austria.
The word clicked into place somewhere in the back of his mind, sharp and unexpected.
“In Austria?” the colleague echoed. “Then why do you sound like you were raised by the BBC?”
Charlotte huffed softly. “Because I moved young and learned quickly that sounding neutral was useful.”
The colleague laughed. “Neutral? Charlotte, you sound like you should be disappointed in my table manners.”
“I often am.”
More laughter.
Max did not laugh this time.
Sounding neutral was useful.
He turned the words over once.
Twice.
He had learned, in the few weeks since Charlotte had appeared properly in his orbit, that she rarely wasted words. She could make a joke, yes. She could be dry enough to make GP look up from his coffee. But she did not say things by accident.
Useful.
Not natural.
Not inherited.
Useful.
He stored that away too.
Austrian.
Moved young.
Accent chosen. Or trained. Or both.
He should have kept walking.
He really should have.
Instead, he stood there in the corridor with his phone in his hand, pretending to scroll through nothing, collecting pieces of Charlotte Fischer like small, mismatched parts of a car he did not yet understand.
Cat Instagram.
That had been the first piece, really.
The account with the orange cat in crocheted hats.
Tilly’s hats. sixty-seven posts. No selfies. No friends. No food pictures. No glamorous life tucked between work and travel.
Just a cat staring into the camera with offended dignity while wearing whatever newest crocheted creation her owner had made.
Max had followed the account within thirty seconds of finding it.
Hannah and GP had mocked him for that.
Fairly, maybe.
He had liked only three photos at first, because he had enough self-control not to like all of them immediately. Then he had gone back later and liked two more, because the cat had been wearing a tiny mushroom hat and he was not made of stone.
That had told him something about Charlotte too.
Not the obvious thing — that she liked cats, though that was important and frankly made her more interesting.
But the other thing.
That she made things with her hands.
Tiny, impractical, ridiculous things.
For a cat.
The same woman who spoke in clean, precise lines about sim correlation and flawed modelling assumptions spent her free time crocheting hats for an animal that looked furious about it.
Max liked that more than he knew what to do with.
Now Austria. Boarding school. The accent.
The little pause before she answered.
He put those beside the cat hats in his head.
None of it made a full picture.
All of it made him want to look again.
“So what,” the first colleague said, still teasing, “secret posh childhood?”
Charlotte made a sound Max could not quite read. “Something like that.”
That was not an answer.
Max knew that because he gave those kinds of answers all the time.
The ones that sounded enough like truth that people stopped asking.
“Come on,” the colleague pressed. “Austria, British boarding school, Cambridge, Red Bull. That’s a lot.”
“It looks more coherent on paper than it was in practice,” Charlotte said.
There it was again.
A sentence with a door behind it.
Max stared at his phone without seeing it.
“Did your parents just decide England would build character?” someone asked.
Another pause.
Longer this time.
Then Charlotte said, lightly, “Something like that.”
The same phrase.
Different weight.
Max’s fingers tightened around his phone.
Parents.
So there were parents. Or had been. Rich enough for boarding school. Connected enough for Cambridge. Absent enough, maybe, that Charlotte had learned to make her voice sound like something that could not be questioned.
He did not know.
That was the problem.
He did not know anything, really.
He knew she was tall. That he had noticed immediately.
Tall, short dark hair, dark eyes that looked at data like it had personally offended her. Pretty in a way that did not ask to be looked at and therefore made him want to look more, which was annoying and inconvenient and absolutely GP’s fault somehow.
He knew she was good.
Not normal good. Not useful member of the department good.
Very good.
The kind of good that made people in the sim wing listen when she spoke. The kind of good that had made the car, for the first time in weeks, feel honestly bad instead of dishonestly manageable. The kind of good that mattered, because Max hated being lied to by machines almost as much as he hated being lied to by people.
He knew she was not impressed by him.
That might have been the worst part.
Or the best.
He had not decided.
She did not look at him like most people looked at him. Not fans. Not sponsors. Not women who already knew his reputation before he opened his mouth.
Charlotte looked at him like a data point.
A very fast data point, maybe.
Occasionally useful.
Occasionally irritating.
But not miraculous.
Max should have found that insulting.
Instead, he found himself walking slightly slower past corridors where he knew she worked, checking whether she was in the sim bay before he asked a question he could probably have asked someone else, and thinking about an orange cat in a frog hat more often than was dignified.
“Anyway,” Charlotte said inside the office, her voice shifting back toward professional even as the others still sounded amused. “If we are finished psychoanalysing my vowels, the model is still wrong.”
Someone groaned. “You’re no fun.”
“I am enormous fun,” Charlotte replied. “In controlled conditions.”
Max nearly smiled.
There she was.
The door closed on the conversation a moment later, the voices muffling into work.
Max stood there for half a second longer.
Then he put his phone away and continued toward the sim bay.
By the time he arrived, Charlotte was already there, because of course she was. She sat at her desk with her posture perfect and her eyes on the screen, short dark hair tucked behind one ear, speaking to another engineer in that polished British register that now sounded different to him.
Not fake.
Never fake.
Constructed.
There was a difference.
Max watched her while pretending not to.
Austria, he thought.
Boarding school.
Cambridge.
Cat.
Parents with money, maybe. Or money around her. Or something complicated enough that she had learned to answer around it.
He added each fact to the quiet little folder in his mind labelled Charlotte Fischer.
It was becoming embarrassingly full.
She looked up suddenly, as if she had felt him watching.
Max, who was excellent under pressure and had won world championships, immediately forgot what he had come in for.
Charlotte raised an eyebrow.
“Did you need something?”
“Yes,” Max said.
A pause.
Her eyebrow rose a fraction higher.
He recovered badly.
“The sim,” he said. “I wanted to ask about the updated model.”
That was at least true.
Charlotte turned back to her screen. “Sit down, then.”
Max sat.
Too quickly.
Behind him, GP made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a cough and even more suspiciously like amusement.
Max ignored him.
Charlotte pulled up the model, all focus again, all precision. The polished accent. The steady hands. The brain that saw flaws in systems and fixed them before anyone else had found the right question.
Max listened.
Mostly.
But some part of him stayed in the corridor, holding the pieces he had collected.
He wondered how many versions of herself Charlotte Fischer had built to get here.
And, more dangerously, whether she ever let anyone see the one underneath.
***
The apartment was quiet in the particular way Monaco became quiet at night.
Not silent.
Never silent.
There was always the low hush of the city beyond the glass, the distant drag of tyres over tarmac, the occasional voice rising from the street below and dissolving into the dark. But up here, above most of it, the noise arrived softened. Cushioned. Expensive.
Toto Wolff sat alone at the dining table, laptop open in front of him, the glow of the screen cutting pale lines across the polished stone.
The paperwork was orderly.
Of course it was.
Trust statements. Account summaries. Investment reports. Tax documents. Things that made sense because numbers had the decency to declare what they were. They could be checked, balanced, corrected.
He had reviewed these accounts often enough to know most of them by heart.
Often enough to pretend this part would not still hurt.
He scrolled.
Benedict’s trust was active. University fees. Living expenses. Transfers made with the faint carelessness of someone who had always known the safety net was there.
Rosa’s was the same. Regular withdrawals. Sensible ones, mostly. A larger payment for an apartment deposit. A few indulgences Toto had noticed and chosen not to comment on.
They were using what he had built for them.
That was the point of it, he told himself. That had always been the point.
Then the next file opened. Charlotte Wolff.
Her name sat there in the same clean font as the others, understated and formal, as if it were simply another account to review. As if it did not reach through the screen and close around his throat.
Toto went still.
The balance was untouched.
No withdrawals.
No requests.
No transfers.
No activity beyond interest accrual and the neat, automatic work of money compounding around an absence.
For years.
He stared at the numbers for a long time.
Four years since she had blocked his number.
Four years since his calls had stopped ringing through and gone instead into that cold, immediate silence. Four years since messages had remained delivered but unanswered, until eventually even that stopped because he no longer knew whether she had the same number at all.
Four years since he had told himself the same cowardly thing over and over.
She will call if she needs something.
It had sounded reasonable at the time.
Respectful, even.
A way of giving her space. A way of not forcing himself into a life she had clearly decided to keep without him.
Now, looking at the untouched trust, he saw it for what it had been.
An excuse.
She had never called.
Not for money.
Not for help.
Not because she was frightened.
Not because she was ill.
Not because there was no one else.
She had taken his absence and made it permanent.
Cleanly.
Efficiently.
Like Charlotte did most things.
And the worst part — the part that sat heavy and sickening beneath his ribs — was that he had always known she would be capable of it.
Even as a child, she had been too self-contained.
Too careful.
Too ready to take responsibility for the temperature of a room before any adult had asked why a child was reading it so closely.
He could still see her sometimes, if he let himself.
Small at the edge of a dining table. Hands folded. Back straight. Eyes lowered, then lifted, then lowered again. Watching. Measuring. Learning what not to say.
He remembered the way her shoulders tightened when Stephanie spoke her name.
He remembered the way she grew quieter over the years.
He remembered noticing.
That was the unforgivable thing.
Not ignorance.
Not blindness.
Not some convenient failure of perception.
He had noticed.
He had seen enough to know.
The tension in her jaw. The way she left rooms before she could be dismissed from them. The way she stopped asking for things. The way she learned, year by year, to make needing him unnecessary.
And he had done nothing.
Not because he had not loved her.
That was the excuse he had reached for in darker moments, but even he had never managed to make himself believe it.
He had loved her.
He had simply loved his own peace more.
He had loved the fragile balance of the household more.
He had loved avoiding confrontation more.
He had loved the version of himself who could provide everything measurable and pretend protection was included somewhere in the cost.
Toto pressed his fingers to his eyes.
“I didn’t protect her,” he said.
The words fell into the empty apartment and stayed there.
They did not shock him.
They were too old for that.
Too worn down by repetition.
Too true.
Behind him, the door opened softly.
Toto did not turn around.
He heard Susie come in, the quiet click of keys set down, the pause that followed when she saw him sitting there in the dark with the laptop open and every line of his body pulled tight.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
It was not really a question.
Susie had always been better than most people at reading the shape of disaster before anyone named it.
Toto kept his eyes on the screen.
“I really fucked up with her,” he said.
The apartment seemed to hold its breath.
Susie did not ask who.
That was its own kind of mercy.
After a moment, she came closer. Her hand settled lightly on the back of his chair, not quite touching him yet.
“Charlotte,” she said.
Toto nodded once.
The name hurt more when Susie said it.
“She hasn’t touched the trust,” he said. “Not once.”
Susie’s gaze moved to the laptop.
Toto heard her inhale.
“Years,” he continued, and his voice sounded strange even to himself. Too flat. Too controlled. “No withdrawals. No calls. No requests. Nothing.”
Susie was quiet.
“I told myself she would call if she needed money,” he said.
The shame of it rose hot in his throat.
“God,” he muttered. “Money.”
Susie’s hand moved from the chair to his shoulder.
“That was never how Charlotte asked for help,” she said gently.
Toto laughed once.
Short.
Humourless.
“She didn’t ask,” he said. “That was the point.”
“I know.”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I did. Not properly.”
He looked back at the screen.
At the pristine account.
At the money he had set aside like proof of fatherhood. As if a trust fund could stand in for all the rooms where he had remained silent. As if Cambridge and doctors and security and a name on paperwork could add up to safety.
“I gave her everything except what she needed,” he said.
Susie said nothing.
There was kindness in her silence, but not absolution. He was grateful for that.
“She was a child,” Toto said, and this time his voice cracked around it. “She was a child, Susie. And I left her alone in that house.”
“You were there,” Susie said softly.
“That’s worse.”
Her hand tightened on his shoulder.
He closed his eyes.
“She looked at me that night,” he said. “Before she left. After I told her to calm down.”
The memory came back with brutal clarity.
Charlotte standing at the table, pale with fury, eyes too bright and too dry. Stephanie offended. Rosa defensive. Benedict silent.
And Charlotte looking at him.
Not waiting for him to fix it anymore.
Just watching him fail one final time.
“I thought I was de-escalating,” he said.
The word tasted obscene.
Susie did not soften it for him.
“You were choosing the room,” she said. “Not her.”
Toto nodded.
The truth of it settled between them like dust.
“I know.”
He had known then too, perhaps. Somewhere beneath the practiced instinct. Beneath the diplomacy, the management, the relentless need to make every conflict survivable by making it smaller.
Charlotte had not needed the conflict made smaller.
She had needed him to make himself larger.
He had not.
Susie drew out the chair beside him and sat.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
The laptop screen dimmed slightly, the numbers fading toward grey.
After a long moment, Susie said, “You could try reaching out again.”
Toto stared at Charlotte’s name.
“I don’t know how.”
“Start with the truth.”
He let out another brittle laugh. “Which part?”
“All of it.”
“That would take years.”
“Then start with one sentence.”
He looked at her then.
Susie’s face was calm, but her eyes were not easy. She was not offering comfort. Not exactly. She was offering something harder.
A way forward that did not pretend forward meant forgiveness.
“She blocked me,” he said. “I don’t even know if anything would reach her.”
“You could write.”
“She might not read it.”
“She might not,” Susie agreed.
“She might hate me.”
Susie held his gaze.
“Toto.”
He looked away first.
Of course.
“I don’t even know what she’s doing,” he admitted. The words came quietly, and somehow that made them worse. “Where she lives. Who she knows. Whether she is happy. Whether she is safe.”
His mouth tightened.
“I don’t know who she is anymore.”
Susie’s expression flickered.
Pain.
Regret.
Something she did not ask him to name.
“She made a life without me,” Toto said.
The laptop went darker again, Charlotte’s untouched account now barely visible on the screen.
He looked at it anyway.
“And I taught her how.”
Susie reached for his hand then.
He let her take it.
For once, there was nothing to fix. No strategy to find. No call to make. No negotiation, no restructuring, no transfer of money large enough to alter the shape of what had happened.
There was only the untouched trust fund.
The daughter who had not needed it.
The father who had mistaken provision for protection until the evidence became impossible to ignore.
And in the expensive quiet of the Monaco apartment, Toto Wolff finally understood that Charlotte had not left because he had given her too little.
She had left because the one thing she had needed from him had never been something he could buy.
This is not about what you personally think, or whether you believe George would or wouldn’t be capable of killing someone.
The issue is that you are creating fiction using the real names and surnames of real people, and putting them into disturbing fictional scenarios. Your little disclaimers at the beginning saying “this is fiction” won’t reach everyone, because not every reader is able to separate fiction from reality — and the comments under your own posts prove that.
Some people clearly don’t understand that the Rosa in your story is not the same Rosa who actually appears in the paddock. And honestly, this happens all the time. Actors get hate for roles they play, so why are we pretending that every reader will suddenly be mature enough to separate real people from fictional versions of them?
You can keep saying “it’s fiction,” and you can keep saying your previous stories never caused this kind of reaction, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is wrong and unethical.
If you want to write stories like this and you clearly have such a vivid imagination, then at least have enough respect and decency to create your own original characters with original names. Then no one would have a problem.
So your problem is the ethics of RPF in general.
Anon, you can personally have a problem with that however much you want. I really don’t care what you think after some of the stuff you have send me.
You can literally make sure that you personally never come across RPF when you spent time online. It’s however not your job to police how other people spend their time.
Also sorry, but the average reader is very much aware that there is a line between fiction and real life. Yes, there are outliers. These outliers will also exists when I write a werewolf story and get people that believe that werewolves are real.
It’s not my responsibility how other people consume media.
You clearly feel very strongly that RPF is only allowed in whatever narrow framework you personally consider ethical.
However, the world does not revolve around you. Other people are allowed to create art you don’t like, have opinions you don’t agree with and live their life in ways you personally wouldn’t.
Anon you have control over what you consume on your for you page. What appears on your feed is entirely up to you and your preferences. Don’t go blaming authors for the mistake you made by not curating your page to show what you like. Like don’t go pointing fingers and blaming others when it’s your for you page. Take responsibility for your own actions and realize you are the one at fault and not the author.
Also can be very clear here that if someone can’t differentiate between fiction and reality that is a used/reader problem that got nothing to do with the author. The author does not control how the readers process the story. So once again stop blaming other people for your own issues.
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