#f1 2021

The suitcase never really got unpacked.

Elena would unzip it just enough to pull out another team polo, another pair of jeans, another charger she'd sworn she'd put somewhere else. Laundry cycled through the washing machine between flights, folded only if she had time, shoved back into the same black suitcase before the next airport.

Home.

Airport.

Hotel.

Circuit.

Airport.

Home.

Repeat.

Somewhere along the way, the weeks stopped feeling like weeks. Countries blurred together through airplane windows and paddock gates, every Monday spent recovering from the last race while preparing for the next one. The calendar never slowed down long enough for her to realize another month had disappeared.

She'd spent three months in her apartment, making it feel like home. Making it her space that she had moulded to be the perfect place for her to rest.

Morning light spilling across hardwood floors. A kitchen stocked with coffee she actually liked instead of whatever the hotel happened to offer. A place where she could leave her shoes by the front door and know they'd still be there when she came back.

She finally had it in France, and she was almost never inside it.

Even Toro had started taking it personally.

The orange maincoone met every arrival with the same unimpressed stare, tail flicking sharply against the floor before following her from room to room like he was conducting an inspection of his own home. He sniffed the suitcase with obvious disdain and then climbed inside it the moment she emptied it then refused to move.

It was less a protest and more a declaration.

You're not leaving again.

"I'm home," she murmured, scratching beneath his chin.

He blinked once, completely unimpressed by her claim that clearly wasn’t true. At that point Max’s home was more home to Toro than her own place.

Twenty-four hours later, she was kneeling beside that same suitcase, folding another set of Mercedes shirts into neat stacks while Toro watched from the bed with narrowed green eyes.

"I know," she sighed before he could silently accuse her again.

He turned his head away, and the judgment he gave felt like it was earned.

Monaco, the fifth race of the season, was different. For once, the airport wasn't followed by another hotel. She was driven home after media day by a Mercedes chauffeur (the crowds were deemed unsafe by the driver for her to walk the two miles home).

Home.

She unlocked the apartment door just after sunset, greeted by the familiar scent of coffee beans she'd forgotten she'd left on the counter and Toro's impatient meow echoing down the hallway before she even had both shoes off.

She laughed as he wound around her ankles, nearly tripping her on the way to the kitchen. "Missed you too αγοράκι.”

The shower was hotter than any hotel she'd stayed in all year. Her pajamas were warm from the dryer as she slipped them on, shuffling to her balcony to sit and drink her evening tea, which she was convinced tasted better out of her own mug.

When she finally climbed into bed, the mattress didn't feel unfamiliar beneath her. It hadn’t been obvious to her until now, that sleeping in beds that weren’t hers, were almost more exhausting.

It felt normal. A little dip on the far side of her mattress told her Toro decided to come to bed aswell. And just like always, he found the little spot behind her knees when she was laying on her side. It was annoying on occasion but it was his favorite spot so who was she to say no. Elena fell asleep to the gentle sound of the town outside and Toro purring under the blankets.

When Sunday came the garage buzzed with restrained optimism before the lights went out.

By the time the checkered flag fell, Red Bull erupted. Max had won his second race of the season.

The podium stood tall and proud, Carlos on the second step, and Lando climbed onto his first Monaco podium in P3.

Three people she loved. Three people she'd watched grow into drivers who were absolutely capable of standing beneath the champagne spray with the deafening crowd.

She wanted to be out there celebrating for them, with them. She wanted to tease Max about finally conquering Monaco. She wanted to hug Carlos and tell him congratulations on his first of what she assumed was many smooth operations in Ferrari. She wanted to tell Lando she was proud of him for his second podium of the season.

Instead, she stood inside the Mercedes garage while mechanics began stripping the car apart after a P7 finish.

There was no celebration, more so confusion. This was the other side of formula 1 that so many people neglected to think about.

Someone was already replaying the strategy timeline on a monitor. Another engineer argued that track position had doomed them before the first pit stop. Someone else insisted tire degradation had been worse than predicted. Every conversation circled back to the same question.

What went wrong?

Elena stared at the race trace glowing across her laptop. The tire life files, pit traffic, undercut window, it didn’t quite feel… complete.

"We’re treating the pit stop like it's the problem," she said quietly, as she pulled up some of the early laps concerns that were brought up through Lewis’s radio.

A nearby performance engineer looked over. "It was."

"It was the point where everything unraveled." She zoomed further back through the data. "But we'd already narrowed ourselves into that decision twenty laps earlier."

He frowned.

"What do you mean?"

She tapped a sequence of laps near the beginning of the race before turning it to the performance engineer. "We compromised track position here because we expected cleaner air later."

Another click as she moved forward in the race, "That forced us to extend this stint."

Then to data from three laps later, "Which made the tire cliff unavoidable." She looked back at the screen. "The pit stop wasn't the mistake."

Elena almost felt stupid for not seeing this before. "It was just the first moment we didn't have a good option left." They wouldn’t have noticed during the race, but if they learned what was wrong they could fix it later.

Silence settled around the workstation as everyone looked at the data. It wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable, it was the sound of eight people thinking thousands of thoughts at once.

"What would've changed it?" a voice asked behind her.

She turned to find James standing there, arms folded, eyes fixed on the telemetry instead of her. That was one of the nice things about Toto and James, they were involved in the process, in the problem solving.

Elena hesitated for a moment or two, "We'd have needed to recognize earlier that our assumptions weren't matching the race we were actually in."

James nodded once, "So what tells us that sooner?"

She blinked, then looked back down at the data, tracing through possibilities. Usually she thought through more before she made a statement, but, now she felt like she was grasping at straws. Like somehow James knew the answer and was just testing her. It was making her anxious.

Breath Lena

"We'd need a different trigger," she said slowly. "Something that flags when the race has diverged from our simulations before we're committed to a strategy."

"What kind of trigger?"

"I… don't know yet."

James was quiet for another moment. Then he pulled over an empty chair and sat beside her with the team. "Let's find one."

The conversation continued long after most of the garage had emptied. It was just another engineering discussion after another difficult race.

That night she got home and Toro was waiting, tail swishing over the couch. After a shower and some fresh clothes, she climbed onto the couch to cuddle with the cat, and enjoy the night at home.

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Russia GP, 2021

By the time Formula One arrived in Russia, the championship had stopped feeling like numbers on a standings sheet.

It had become the atmosphere of the entire sport.

It lingered in engineering meetings that lasted a little longer than they used to as they worked through problems. In strategy briefings where every hypothetical eventually circled back to the same red and blue competition comparison graphic on the timing screens. In radio checks. In debriefs. In conversations that ended the moment someone from another team walked past.

No one said it aloud but then again, they didn’t have to. Everyone knew exactly what was happening and what the two teams had to loose if they let something slip.

The race itself unfolded almost exactly the way Mercedes had hoped. Lewis crossed the line first.

The garage erupted, not with the unrestrained joy she'd seen after victories earlier in the year, but with something sharper. More relieved than celebratory, because despite the near 53 second gap between Lewis and Max, that was still too close for comfort with the wdc on the line.

Every hug carried the weight of points reclaimed in the battle. Every smile was accompanied by someone already calculating the championship gap with the new totals.

Max had recovered to second almost a minute after Lewis, and Carlos finished third.

It was, Elena thought as she pulled off her headset, the most Carlos podium imaginable. He had managed to qualify front row, and hold onto that top spot for nearly the whole race despite having only the 12th fastest lap time. It was a perfectly driven performance, and yet it was almost completely overshadowed.

While the garage slowly settled into post race routine of everyone migrating to the podium, the cooldown room broadcast flickered onto one of the monitors mounted above the engineering stations.

Someone turned the volume up even if it was a mute broadcast. No one asked them to, but everybody had the unspoken request of knowing where each driver stood.

Elena found herself lingering nearby.

Her eyes settled on the space between Lewis and Max. It wasn't what they said, it was everything that they didn’t. Lewis held himself with dignity, and there were no sharp remarks, or visible hostility. Great, no tension for the cameras to dissect.

But every glance felt hardened. Even the moments that should have been casual carried an invisible weight. The podium was full, but empty, because two of the three drivers weren't living in the moment, they were living in the next race.

Lewis had been more professional since the Brocedes Incident, much more secluded. But this was a new level even for him. Elena had heard stories of Lewis before she started working at Mercedes, but since she had joined Lewis Hamilton had always been pretty even keel and focused. He wasn’t unfriendly with other drivers but there were few that he really spent time with. But with the tension? Everything felt turned to a 10. Lewis was so rigid and focused she was worried.

She folded her arms tighter across her chest as the realization dawned on her. This wasn't a rivalry anymore. Because rivalries ended when the checkered flag fell. But this? This fell into another category completely, this was in every meeting, interview, garage, drivers dinner. This was a war for a drivers championship.

It wasn't just consuming the two drivers anymore, it was consuming everyone around them.

An engineer slid past her carrying a laptop back to the chargers. He was mid conversation with another, “I still can’t believe Williams dragged another points finish out of that thing.”

The mechanic who was being spoken to chuckled, “Russell either ends up in the points or sends it into the barriers trying. No middle ground. What the hell is with that kid.”

“Four points finishes in a row,” someone else added, “Plus a podium in belgium…” She shook her head with a laugh, “I dont get how he makes the car look better than it has any right to.”

Toto happened to be walking by the station, post race espresso in his hand. He slowed enough to catch the conversation. It was usually fairly easy to tell if Toto was eavesdropping, he wasn't subtle. “Mm, he keeps making the conversation easier.”

That was all, nothing more, and no explanation, just continued down the garage towards the podiums. And as quickly as it had assembled, the gossip group had dispersed, shifting back to the celebration and tear down.

Elena was left to her own devices, mind lingering on the interaction. George was in the conversation, she had known that for a while. Lando and Alex never wasted an opportunity to remind everybody that George got into F1 by showing up to Toto's office, and representing himself with a suit, tie, and a powerpoint.

Decisions were being made far up the chain, and it involved George in the conversation. But, she couldn’t say anything to him, not wanting to get his hopes up, and it wasn’t her place to say.

Elena caught James watching Toto disappear down the garage. Their eyes met for only a second, and neither of them said anything. They really didn’t need to, in Elena's eyes the conversation was clear, and James knew that,

For the first time, Elena realized that while everyone else was consumed by the fight for one championship, Mercedes was already beginning to think about the next one. People high up on the food chain were looking beyond a potential eighth championship for Lewis, they were looking to replace Valtteri with some young talent. It was never going to be Lewis.

Did he know? Did Lewis? Were they planning on bringing George up mid season?

And somewhere in the back of her mind, almost without realizing it, the realization clicked, why they were training so many people on Lewis’s car this year. The team would be undergoing reconstruction… she wondered what role she was playing on the chessboard in Toto Wolff's mind.

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Abu Dhabi GP, 2021

The garage was quieter than Elena had ever heard it. There were still toolboxes rolling across concrete, carbon fiber panels disappearing into freight cases, laptops closing one by one as data uploads finished. Mechanics spoke in low voices, engineers compared notes that neither team would look at again until winter testing.

Formula One didn't stop because someone's heart was broken.

The freight still had to leave and the season still had to end.

She stayed because there was nowhere else she was supposed to be. Helping disconnect telemetry racks, coil cables into neat loops, and check inventory lists before handing them off to logistics. It wasn't glamorous work, but neither was losing.

Every so often she caught herself glancing toward the garage entrance. Toward the celebrations she could hear echoing down the lanes.

Mercedes had spent the entire season fighting for Lewis, with Lewis. Only for the hard work to be stolen in the last lap due to a restart. The least she could do was stay until the lights were turned off.

Hours seemed to pass before she finally spotted him. Lewis stood near the back of the garage, race suit half unzipped, helping one of the mechanics close a shipping crate.

He looked… Older. Not physically, he was just heavier, emotionally. Like twelve months, preparing, racing, fighting, he looked like it all finally settled across his shoulders at once.

Elena hesitated before finally deciding to walk over. He noticed her almost immediately, his smile was polite but tired. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

For a long second after, neither of them spoke. Elena wasn’t sure what one was supposed to say after a day like today. Instead, she lifted the other side of the next crate lid and helped secure it. Finally, she managed a quiet, “I’m sorry.”

Lewis looked at her for a long moment then shook his head, he was hard to read most times. “That’s racing.” He pushed down one of the latches until it clicked into place letting out a long, slow breath. “We’ll come back next year.”

He didn't say I’ll come back, he said we’ll. After everything, he was still talking about the team, talking about the hundreds of people who helped build the car beside him. That was racing, working as a team, no driver could do it alone.

Her chest loosened and her head bobbed slightly, “We will.”

Lewis offered one last tired smile before another engineer called his name. He disappeared into the bowels of the garage out of view. She turned her own attention back to latching the other secure fixtures.

Eventually, someone from communications gently touched her shoulder, “Lewis asked if you could-” She held out a presentation case, “pick up the trophy.”

Second place. The second place trophy that he simply couldn’t carry today. Not after all the controversy, the second place trophy felt like a consolation prize.

“...Yeah.”

The paddock looked different after dark. Not dark in the sun has set kind of way, that was normal, the season finisher was always raced at night. But, without the fireworks, and with certain floodlights dimmed it just felt empty. The hospitality units were already beginning to clear out, the television crews had moved on, and forklifts quietly moved freight containers through service roads that only existed after the crowds disappeared.

She walked away from the FIA collection area with Lewis's trophy in its case tucked carefully beneath one arm. She was halfway to the first garage when-

"Bit ironic, isn't it?"

She turned, Carlos stood a few meters away, team kit pressed nicely, red glowing under the flood lights, a small velvet case of his own tucked beneath one arm. Third place. Of course he'd stayed behind to collect it himself. He didn’t need a ceremony retrieving it the final time, and he liked to do it himself.

She couldn't help smiling. "You too?"

He lifted the case slightly, "Apparently they don’t trust us not to drop them." He wasn’t wrong, from the moment the drivers walked off the podium they were placed in the fia collection area to be collected in a very padded protective case at the end of the night. Elena hadn’t even touched the trophy directly, an assigned person loaded it into the case for her.

A soft laugh escaped her before the weight of everything that had happened that day washed back over her like a wave. His eyes drifted to the trophy in her case, and the smile disappeared off his face too.

"How is he?"

She looked down at the handle, thumb brushing over the metal like she could buff out some scratch. "Disappointed."

Carlos nodded once. "Yeah." He did not offer any other opinions or analysis of what had gone wrong. Mercedes had done that enough already. It seemed like he understood, Carlos was usually very good at it. The silence between them was filled with awkward shifting and glances.

He adjusted the weight of his own trophy case. "And Max?"

The question landed differently because of what he hadn't asked. He didn't ask if Max was celebrating or where Max was. The question had implied that she had seen him, knew how he was taking the win.

Elena opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She hadn't gone to see Max actually. She'd stayed with Mercedes because that's where she belonged. Because leaving before everything was packed away would've felt like abandoning them. Because she'd spent the entire year helping build the car trying to beat Max.

And somewhere beneath all of those reasons was one she hadn't wanted to admit, and hadn’t been able to face since the USGP. She didn't know if he wanted to see her.

Carlos watched the realization cross her face. He'd always been annoyingly good at reading her, or maybe it was just that around Carlos, Elena didn’t hide her emotions as much. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then he smiled a small and gentle smile like he was reassuring her completely. "He will still be there, you know."

Her eyes lifted to his. There was something unbearably intimate about the way he said it. Not jealous or frustrated. If anything, it was the opposite. Carlos had spent enough years alongside her to understand what she was feeling. He knew what Max meant to her, that Max was the rookie who tested her patience and was also one of her closest friends.

She looked down again. "I don't know if—"

"You do."

She frowned and he took one slow step closer, close enough that she noticed the exhaustion written across his face too. His own spectacular maiden season with Ferrari. His Podium in Abu Dhabi hours ago. All overshadowed by a season-long battle in teams that weren't his. His own disappointment at spending another year watching a championship fought around him instead of with him. And still... he was worried about her.

"You've been standing in a Mercedes shirt all year," he said quietly. "If he was going to mistake that for how you feel about him..." He let the sentence trail off, a tiny smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. "...he wouldn't be Max. He will always forgive you."

She laughed softly through a shaky breath. "No."

"No."

Another silence settled between them, different this time. Her fingers tightened around the trophy case. Carlos glanced toward the darkened paddock beyond them before looking back at her.

"Go."

Just one word. He didn’t need to give her some dramatic speech because she knew he was right, Max would never mistake her job loyalty as her lack of loyalty to one of her closest friends. She held Carlos’s gaze for another second. "Thank you."

His expression softened. "For what?"

She wasn't entirely sure, for understanding maybe. For seeing every version of her, the engineer, the friend, the woman standing in front of him trying very hard not to cry about being torn between a friend and a team.

She smiled instead of answering. Carlos understood anyway. As she turned to leave, his voice stopped her one last time. "Elena."

She looked back over her shoulder. His eyes flicked briefly toward the trophy she was still carrying.

"Tell Lewis..." He searched for the words. "...tell him it was an honor."

Nothing about rivals. Nothing about controversy. Just respect. Respect even though they’d be back to competitors the next year, without fail.

She nodded once, “I will." then walked away.

She found Max almost by accident. He wasn’t inside Red Bull, or surrounded by champagne being filmed on thirty cameras.

She found him outside behind the hospitality units where the noise seemed to finally dull to a quiet. He was sitting on a stack of equipment cases, elbows resting on his knees. Max was still in his race suit, which made sense, he was probably dragged into celebration from the moment he got out of that car. No time to change when you are being sprayed with champagne. The medal hung loosely around his neck, almost forgotten as he seemed to be in his own world.

Elena didn’t bother him at first, just watched. He didn’t look like a world champion in the moment, just looked like Max.

The seventeen year old who'd happened into Toro Rosso, who had too much confidence and not enough patience.

The kid she'd argued with over telemetry. Who stole food off her plate whenever she wasn't looking because he was on a strict diet for racing. Who had fallen asleep during debriefs after double headers because he refused to admit he was exhausted.

The boy she'd watched become a man while the entire world watched him become a superstar.

He looked up and saw her before she could make her presence known. Max smiled. Not the smile she had seen him during during celebrations, or what he’d give photographers, just Max.

Something inside her unclenched completely. All at once she realized he didn't hate her. That he’d never hated her. She crossed the remaining distance, stopping a few feet infront of him.

Everything she'd planned to say disappeared.

How do you summarize six years culminating into a chaotic battle?

How do you tell someone you've watched them become exactly who you always believed they could be?

How do you explain that you've spent an entire season trying to beat them without ever once wanting them to fail?

She swallowed settling on just four words.

"I'm proud of you."

The words barely rose above a whisper but she didn’t have to, in the quiet they were loud enough. She didn’t give congratulations or even mention his championship. Just the truth of what she had been watching all season.

For the first time in a long time, Max looked completely caught off guard. People had spent hours calling him a world champion. A legend who had just made history.

Nobody had simply told him they were proud, not like this. Not from someone who remembered him from before, before wins, before the world knew his name.

Max stood up without a word and crossed the space between them, wrapping both arms around Elena. Tight. A real hug. A hug that felt like he was trying to say everything and couldn’t say anything at all.

She closed her eyes, tucking her head into his neck. He smelled of champagne and salt. The tears came before she realized she was crying. And it wasn’t because Mercedes had lost, or because Max had won, it was because the season was over. She didn't have to stand in garages that were mortal enemies anymore. Somewhere along the way she'd convinced herself Formula One might finally have taken this from them.

It hadn't.

He held her just a little tighter. As if he somehow understood every thought she'd never said aloud. Eventually she pulled back, wiping quickly at her face.

Embarrassed.

Max looked at her for a second. Then the corner of his mouth twitched. "You know..."

She sighed immediately. "No."

"You cried way more than I did."

She shoved his shoulder. "Oh, shut up."

"I didn’t cry at all."

"Max."

"You were crying over my beautiful win, yes?”

She laughed despite herself, shaking her head. "You're unbelievable."

"I've been told."

She rolled her eyes, muttering something under her breath in Greek.

He grinned and they started walking without deciding where. Just side by side through an almost empty paddock like they had a hundred times before. The championship was finally over. Win or lose the season was over and in febuary they’d start all over again.

Tonight, they were simply two kids from their Toro Rosso walking home from another race.