#(( tags

username CHILLS.

username yup. and f1 just turned into a marketing campaign. this sport is fucked

username this already feels historic oh my gosh.

username there are F2 drivers who spent their whole lives working for this seat.

username the way everyone either loves her or hates her already is insane

username and suddenly people how have never watched racing are invested

"Turn it off."

The voice came from behind you. You didn't bother looking over your shoulder. You already knew the expression on Ryland, your manager's face. His jaw tight, the twitch in his temple that appeared whenever you ignored protocol.

The television screen in front of you kept replaying the same five seconds—your bike flipping end over end, the sickening screech of metal on asphalt—before cutting abruptly to a glossy montage of her new Mercedes logo.

"Seriously," he said, stepping in your line of sight and blocking the screen. "You're obsessing."

You thumbed the volume higher.

The crash played again—frame by frame, pixel by pixel—burning itself into your retinas. Your fingers tightened around the remote. One screen, your body tumbled across the gravel like a discared doll, limbs twisted at angles that still made your ribs ache in phantom sympathy.

"Stop torturing yourself." Ryland sighed, clicking the TV off manually. "You know what they want from you today. Confidence and certainty. Not—" His genture ecompassed the darkened screen and the tension in your shoulders. "This."

You exhaled from your nose, rolling the stiffness from your neck. Your phone buzzed on the table. Another article sent to you. Does YN LN Have What It Takes In Mercedes?

Ryland sighed again, deeper this time, and tosses a folded Mercedes polo onto the sofa beside you. "Put this on. The car leaves in twenty."

You didn't move immediately.

Your phone buzzed again—another headline, another hashtag, another dissection of your worth. You flipped it facedown without looking.

Twenty minutes later, you stood in the hotel elevator with Ryland's words still rining in your ears—confidence and certainty—as if you could just conjure them from thin air.

The polo clung to your shoulders, the Mercedes logo pressing into your back with every breath. You watched the numbers above the door tick downward, each floor a countdown to the inevitable.

The lobby was worse than you imagined.

A sea of cameras surged the moment the elevator doors parted, flashes popping like gunfire. Microphones were jabbed toward you from every angle.

"How does it feel being a walking PR stunt, YN?" "Will you cry when you realize you can't handle the car?" "Do you even know how to drive a car competitively?"

You blinked against the assault of cameras, your pulse hammering in your throat. Every shouted question landed like a stone against your ribs.

"Do you have anything to prove to the paddock?"

The PR handler assigned to you suddenly appeared at your elbow, murming through a clenched smile. "Don't engage. Keep walking."

Her fingers dug into your elbow just enough to hurt. You could feel the woman's pulse hammering through the contact—fear disguised as professionalism.

"Smile," the woman hissed through clenched teeth.

You bared your teeth and hoped for the best.

formulafocus

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formulafocus 📸: YN LN on her way to the Mercedes garage in Silverstone. The rookie was met by an aggresive media crowd, with several reporters questioning whether she belonged on the grid at all.

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username This made me so uncomfy just watching honestly.

username you can literally see her trying to stay composed

username these questions were disgusting.

username and if she snapped back they'd call her emotional???

The Mercedes garage in Silverstone felt electrifying. You stepped inside and immediately felt the weight of eyes on you. Mechanics glanced up from their workstations, their expressions unreadable beneath the brims of team caps. Some nodded politely. Others didn't bother hiding their skepticism.

You said nothing. You knew what they saw: the girl from that one crash, the motorcycle rider, the gamble.

At the back fo the garage, the car waited. Not just any car—your car.

It sat gleaming beneath the garage lights and it was beautiful. You exhaled slowly. You've seen F1 cars before—from grandstands, from pitlanes—but never like this. Never yours.

A mechanic cleared his throat. "First time up close?"

You didn't answer the question. You didn't need to. The way your fingers hovered milimeters above the car—close enough to feel the heat radiating from its test run—said everything.

First time up close and first time it was yours.

A shadow fell across the car's nose.

"You're blocking the airflow," a voice said. Amused.

The voice had come from your left—low, teasing, edged with something you couldn't quite place. It wasn't hostility. Not curiosity.

Lewis Hamilton leaned against a tool cart, arms crossed, helmet tucked under one elbow. His team suit was unzipped to the sternum. He looked relaxed in a way that only someone who belonged here could.

"Airflow's important," he added, nodding toward your hand still suspended near the front wing. "Especially here."

You dropped your arm. "Didn't realize I was interfering with your wind tunnel."

Lewis smirked, pushing off the tool cart. "You'd be surprised what throws off the balance." He nodded toward the car, "Every milimeter counts."

The garage noise swelled around you, but Lewis' attention remained fixed on you in a way that felt heavier than curiosity.

"You've got the hands for it," he said suddenly.

You blinked, caught off guard by the unexpected compliment. Your hands—scarred from years of gripping handlebars—twitched reflexively at your sides.

Lewis didn't elaborate. Just tilted his head slightly. "MotoGP riders have good reflexes. Better than most F1 drivers, honestly. Your reaction times will tell you that."

The garage PA system carckled overhead with a muffled announcement, drowning out what you might've said in response. Lewis straightened as a mechanic called his name, but he didn't move immediately.

His gaze flicked to the car between you then back to your face.

"You ever driven anything with four wheels competitively?"

Your lips curved into something between a smirk and a grimace. "Not unless you count stealing my best friend's go-kart when I was twelve."

Lewis chuckled, adjusting his grip on the helmet tucked under his arm. "Close enough." His eyes darted toward you again. "You know they're going to test you harder than anyone else, right?"

"I expect nothing less."

Lewis' smirk deepened, but there was something almost approving in the way his eyes lingered on your scarred hands. "Good." He pushed off the tool cart fully, rolling his shoulders. "Because they won't go easy on you just because—"

"—just because I'm a girl?" You finished dryly, arching an eyebrow.

Lewis chuckled, shaking his head. "Because you're a rookie. Cars don't care about whether you a man or woman. Only if you're fast."

The garage PA crackled again, summoning him to some meeting or another. Lewis rolled his eyes but started backing away, still watching you with that gaze.

"You'll want to meet Toto before the press junket starts. He seems scary but he's a big softie. It's really nice meeting you, teammate."

f1paddocklive

liked by username, and 5,396 others

f1paddocklive Lewis Hamilton speaking to YN LN in the garage today.

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username couldn't hear much from clips but you can see the immediate switching from teasing her to defending her abilities. lewis saw that media narrative forming and shut it down FAST.

username guys why are shipping them after one conversation

username Another important part that people are missing is that Lewis isn't complimenting her just to be nice. He is dead serious about what he's saying.

username they were flirting your honor

f1

liked by lewishamilton, yourusername, and 5,082,812 others

f1 Lewis Hamilton and rookie driver YN LN in the Mercedes garage ahead of testing.

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username OH?????

username lewis immediately clocked her talent

username He looked genuinely interested in what she had to say

username they are officially a package

username finally someone treating her like a DRIVER

username Lewis has always supported women in motorsport idc

Toto Wolff's office smelled like coffee and leather. Very expensive leather. You hesitated at the door, fingers tapping an uneven rhythm against your thigh.

"Good to see you. Close the door, please."

You closed the door. The office windows overlooked the paddock, rain streaking the glass like tears. Toto swipped something off his screen and set the tablet aside, folding his hands atop the desk.

"You crashed in Barcelona at the Catalan Grand Prix three years ago," he said abruptly.

Your fingers twitched at your sides. The scars on your palms throbbed in phantom response—you knew exactly which crash he meant. The one where your bike had bucked like a wild animal mid-corner, throwing you into the gravel at 200 kilometers per hour. The one they kept replaying on every sports channel.

"Yes," you said, matching his bluntness.

Toto leaned forward, elbows resting on the desk. His wedding band clicked against the wood.

"You remember what you did wrong?"

The question landed like a gut punch. Not what happened. Not how it felt. What you did wrong.

You remembered every millisecond of that crash—the way the bike had wobbled beneath you, the sickening lurch as the rear tire lost grip, the split-second decision that had sealed your fate.

You leaned too early. Adjusted too late. A mistake measured in centimeters that cost you months of recovery.

"I leaned into the corner before the bike settled. I didn't wait for the grip."

Toto's expression didn't change. "And yesterday?"

Yesterday. Your first simulator session. The engineers had watched you like hawks circling their prey. You'd spun twice. Locked the break once.

You swallowed against the dryness in your throat. Yesterday's data would've painted you in brutal honesty—every oversteer, every missed apex, every rookie mistake.

"I braked too late into Turn 4. The car didn't rotate properly because I was carrying too much speed."

Toto's fingers stilled against the desk. Then he leaned back in his chair, the leather groaning beneath him.

"Good."

Toto's single word—good—hung in the air like smoke after a burnout. You blinked, waiting for the punchline, the reprimand, the inevitable lecture about expectations.

Instead, Toto reached for his tablet and swiped something onto the screen before sliding it across the desk toward you.

"You recognize this?"

You leaned forward. The display showed telemetry from yesterday's simulator session—jagged lines representing throttle input, braking force, steering angle.

Your stomach tightened. There, clear as a fingerprint: the moment you overcooked Turn 4, the graph spiking red where you stomped the brakes too late.

"Yes," you said, forcing her voice steady. The data didn't lie. Neither did the ache in your neck from the simulator's violent snap of oversteer.

Toto tapped the red spike on the graph with one finger, his wedding band clicking against the screen. "You see the problem." It wasn't a question.

You nodded, the phantom weight of the simulator's steering wheel still pressing against your palms. The data showed everything—your hesitation before the turn, the panicked overcorrection afterward.

You could still feel the exact moment the virtual car had snapped out from under you, the simulated G-forces slamming you sideways as pixels spun across the screens.

"Now watch this." Toto swiped to another set of telemetry—smoother lines, more controlled spikes. "Lewis. Same turn. Same conditions."

The difference was brutal. Hamilton's braking point landed three meters earlier than yours, his steering inputs fluid where yours had been jerky.

Your throat tightened. You'd known the gap would be enormous, but seeing it carved into cold data felt like swallowing glass.

You stared at the telemetry curves, the lines burning into your retinas like hot brake rotors. Lewis's graph looked like a masterclass in precision—every input purposeful, every correction minimal. Hers resembled an EKG during a heart attack.

"You see it now." Toto didn't phrase it as a question. His finger traced Hamilton's braking line—a smooth, descending arc that bled speed gradually. "This is where champions live."

The office walls suddenly felt closer. You could hear your own pulse thudding in your ears, syncopated with the distant whine of an engine firing up somewhere in the paddock.

"Give me three sessions." The words left your mouth before you fully processed them. "I'll match that delta."

Toto's eyebrows lifted slightly, but he didn't laugh. Instead, he turned the tablet screen toward himself and tapped something that made both sets of telemetry vanish.

"Interesting," he said finally, setting the tablet aside. His wedding band clicked against the desk again—three deliberate strikes like a countdown. "Most rookies ask for time. You're demanding results."

You didn't blink. "I didn't come here to be most rookies."

Toto studied you for a moment longer—the kind of silence that could either be respect or pity—before nodding toward the window where rain blurred the Mercedes garage into streaks of silver and neon.

"You'll get three sessions. But not to match Lewis." He leaned forward, elbows resting on the desk, his wedding band catching the light as he tapped it once against the wood. "To beat him."

The words hung between you, heavier than the humidity pressing against the glass. You've spent years learning to read the unspoken rules in a room—the subtle shifts in tone that separated a challenge from a threat. Toto's voice held both.

Outside, a car fired up in the garage with a scream that vibrated through the floor. The sound prickled across your skin like static before a storm. You didn't look away from Toto's gaze. "And if I don't?"

"Then you'll still drive." Toto shrugged, the leather of his chair groaning beneath him. "But not for us." He said it casually, like discussing tire compounds over lunch.

The implication settled coldly in Your stomach: one season. Maybe less. Just long enough for the headlines to fade.

Three sessions. That's all you had to turn years of bike reflexes into something that could tame an F1 car.

The leather chair groaned as Toto leaned back, his wedding band tapping once more against the desk.

"You'll start tomorrow at Silverstone. Full wet setup." His gaze flicked to the storm raging outside, then back to you. "Unless you'd prefer to wait for drier conditions."

Your jaw tightened. You recognized the test for what it was—a chance to back down gracefully. MotoGP riders feared rain more than anything; two wheels and slick tarmac were a death wish.

But four wheels? Four wheels with aerodynamics and traction control? That was a different beast entirely.

"I'll take the rain," you said, matching his challenge with a steadiness you didn't feel.

lewishamilton

liked by lando, oscarpiastri, and 7,268,192 others

lewishamilton Great to be home.

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username HES THERE

username posting this the same day as her test announcement is crazy

username i think he sees himself in yn a little and its making me tear up

username imagine being an f1 rookie and a world champion shows up to watch your test sessions