#supermax

The paddock throbbed with noise. Radios chattered, fans chanted, engineers waved clipboards like traffic controllers. The smell of rubber and exhaust clung to the air like a second skin.

Carlos cut through it all with his head down, helmet dangling at his side, jaw locked tight. Tenth in qualifying, possibly points territory if everything went right, but today it hadn’t. The balance had been off from the first run, the rear twitchy through Sectors Two and Three, and he could still feel the fight of it in his wrists, sore.

He ducked out of the crowd, past the press pens and PR handlers, until he found a patch of quiet along the garage wall. The concrete was warm under his palms. He leaned forward, staring out at the pit lane, jaw ticking with every replay in his mind.

Elena spotted him from across the garage. It wasn’t hard. He was the only one who looked like he might punch the tarmac. She’d been watching since the debrief, pretending to busy herself with notes and data, but her mind was already running laps of his run in her head. 

She shouldn’t have known his telemetry by heart. She shouldn’t have ONLY known that HIS Turn 12 had been cleaner than yesterday, that HIS entry speed was up by three kilometers, or that he’d lifted less on the exit of Turn 3 than the engineers had expected.

But she did.

Because since Max’s promotion, there was no one left to absorb her excess focus. Daniil was fine, but it felt like the garage had a sterile quality, like everyone was tiptoeing. So she focused on Carlos. Just Carlos.

She grabbed two water bottles from the cooler and followed him out.

He didn’t look up when she stopped beside him, just muttered something under his breath in Spanish and kept staring at the empty track.

Without a word, she pressed one of the bottles into his hand. “Drink,” she said softly.

He exhaled through his nose, half a laugh, half defeat. “You think water’s gonna fix that rear end?”

“No,” she said, setting the second bottle on the ground beside him. “But dehydration will make it worse.”

That almost earned a smile. Almost.

She leaned beside him, scanning the pitlane, then spoke after a beat. “You improved your entry speed in Turn 12.”

He frowned. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Four kilometers faster than yesterday. You carried the apex cleaner.”

He turned to her, suspicion edging into surprise. “You remember that off the top of your head?”

Elena didn’t look up from the page. “I pay attention.”

Carlos studied her face, the calm precision of her tone. “To Daniil and I like that?”

She hesitated. “No.”

Something in her chest twisted as soon as she said it. Too honest. Too revealing.

For a moment, neither spoke. Around them, the paddock roared, there were air guns, shouting engineers, a burst of laughter from the next garage, but it all sounded far away.

Finally, he said quietly, “Guess that means I should stop being an idiot and listen to what you are saying, huh?”

She smirked, faint and quick. “That would be nice.”

He huffed a laugh, one that was barely there, but it loosened something in her chest she hadn’t realized was tight. For a second, the sound of it, low, genuine, felt like oxygen after a long stint underground. She had to remember he was frustrated, not at her but at circumstance.

She shouldn’t have looked at him then, not properly, but she did. The late light caught the sweat still clinging to his jaw, the salt-darkened edge of his fireproofs, the scrape of frustration softening into exhaustion. She wasn’t close enough, but she could imagine that he smelled faintly of breaks and the cologne she always caught traces of when he passed through the garage. It was something clean but deep, sharp, like cedar and asphalt after rain.

God, when had that become comforting?

Her eyes flicked to his hands, still wrapped loosely around the bottle she’d given him. They were broad, rough-edged, the kind of hands that steadied a car at 250 kph and somehow made her feel… steady too. Ridiculous.

Elena turned back toward the track, pulse ticking faster than she wanted. She forced her tone flat. “You should get some rest before we do anything else with the car today.”

He nodded, still watching her, and for a moment she swore he might say something else. But he just reached for the second water bottle, the one she’d left on the ground, and held it out to her. “Then you should too.”

Their fingers brushed when she took it, barely a second, but enough.

She pulled her hand back first, too quickly. “Go,” she said, half-smiling.

He did.

When he disappeared back into the garage, she let out a breath that felt like it stuck to her throat. The track waved with heat and she finally picked herself up, brushing off her slacks, pressing her wrist against her temple, muttering to herself, “ηλίθιος.”

It wasn’t about him. Not really. It was about her heart, traitorous thing, misfiring at the worst possible time.

The garage noise swelled behind them, but the space between them felt different, no longer brittle, just taut, alive again. For the first time since before Abu Dhabi, her pulse wasn’t steady when he was near.

Later, she would tell herself it stopped in Mexico, that whatever had tightened in her chest was temporary and manageable. But winter had a way of proving her wrong.

Faenza Factory, Winter 2016

The Faenza factory was quieter in winter. Not silent. It was never silent. But it was much calmer. The whir of the wind tunnel in the distance, the low hum of computers, the occasional clang of a dropped wrench echoing across the cavernous floor. Most of the staff were gone for the holidays. But Elena stayed.

Not because she had to, but because her plans had gone awry. Instead of going home for the three weeks like she had planned, her older brother Andreas warned against it, saying that her mother and father were busy, so she changed her flights. Instead, flying out next week, but for now, work was a good place to be.

She liked the quiet. It was the only time she could truly hear herself think. 

At her desk, telemetry data sprawled across three monitors, sector splits, throttle traces, and brake pressure curves. Two different drivers, two different cars, both of them were the team's responsibility. And by proxy. Her responsibility. Carlos Sainz. Daniil Kvyat.

She knew which data set was his without checking the file names. His lines were tighter, but restless, and every one of the corners looked just a little too alive. Unlike Daniil who almost drove defeated. Daniil was defeated from his positioning, in life and races, haunted in both by one Max Verstappen. Carlos’s throttle came in half a heartbeat too early, like he was trying to force the lap into submission.

“Elena.” She startled slightly. Ashton leaned against the doorway, coffee in hand, wearing that smirk that meant he’d been watching her overthink something again.

“You know most engineers don’t run analysis in the dark, right?” he said. “It’s quieter this way.” “Quieter, sure. But you’ve been looking at that same trace for twenty minutes.” “I’m…checking throttle sensitivity at entry.” He stepped closer, peering at the monitor. “Or memorizing the driver’s every bad habit.”

Elena’s lips pressed together, but she didn’t argue. Because he wasn’t wrong.

She could see every emotion in the lines, frustration, overcompensation. She’d learned to read Carlos that way, through his data instead of his face. And lately, it felt too intimate. Maybe she was crazy, to read this far into it. It was her job, it was his job.

Ashton tapped the screen. “You’re not just reading data anymore.” “I’m evaluating.” “Uh-huh.” He chuckled softly. “You’ve got to stop pretending you don’t care.”

When he was gone, she sat there a long time, staring at the same set of traces, until the numbers blurred and all she could see was movement.

Milton Keynes, January 2017

The week after her official vacation trip home for the holidays, she found herself at Milton Keynes.

Technically, she was there for data migration, a few Toro Rosso systems had been linked to Red Bull’s during the mid-season driver swap, and she’d volunteered to help untangle it. But she didn’t tell anyone that part of her just wanted to see Max again.

She spotted him instantly, hunched over a simulator rig, posture as crooked as ever. “Still ignoring engineers and trying to do it yourself, I see,” she said dryly.

He whipped around, grin already forming. “Elena! What are you doing here?”

“Fixing whatever chaos you left behind when you defected.”

He laughed, the easy, unfiltered sound she’d missed. “I didn’t defect. I got promoted.”

“Promoted to Redbull, we both know that they have a… Unique way of running things.”

“Doesn’t matter, I won a race, you know.”

“I know,” she said smiling, genuine and warm. “I’m proud of you, πρωταθλητής.”

He ducked his head at that, cheeks pink. “Thanks. I kind of miss you a lot. Daniel is nice, but he doesn’t yell at me like you do.”

“That was not yelling.”

“It was affectionate yelling.”

Daniel Ricciardo appeared as if summoned, towel slung around his neck, grinning wide enough to light the corridor.

“So you are the famous Elena,” he said. “You are the one who helped Mad Max here prep for the drives?”

“I only kept him from biting off heads, sometimes,” she said.

Daniel laughed. “You should come around more. We could use someone with a sense of humor.”

They talked for nearly an hour, about setups, strategy, the weirdness of team politics. Even non-F1 subjects, how Daniel loved dirtbikes, favorite circuits for events outside of racing. Elena let herself relax. Daniel’s charm was easy, Max’s non-enthusiastic enthusiasm was infectious as he could be, and for a little while she felt like she belonged here, not as a visitor but as a peer. Maybe she could find a home, find comfort in teams as big as this.

Faenza Factory, March 2017

Back in Faenza, her inbox began to fill.

First came an email from Haas Ferrari with the subject line: Preliminary Discussion, Engineering Opportunities. Then one from McLaren, politely inquiring about her availability for a “consultative review.” A third from Mercedes AMG followed not long after, “Growth Opportunities In Position”. Even closed in an Informal goodbye from their head of engineering hiring, "You’re being hunted, Vasilakis. Hope you like silver paint".

Each new notification made her pulse jump, the same way it did right before lights-out, just excitement braided too tightly with dread to pull apart.

She didn’t tell anyone. She wanted, needed, a moment where the future was still hypothetical, still safe. But Ashton caught her anyway. She was standing by the printer, phone in hand, the glow of the Mercedes email still lighting her thumb.

He stopped beside her, gaze flicking to her screen. A raised brow, nothing more dramatic. “So. The big teams are calling.”

“It’s just an inquiry,” she said, too quickly.

“Inquiries that come with six-figure relocation budgets.” He reached past her to collect a stack of papers from the printer, but his eyes stayed on her, not the phone. “That’s not small talk, Elena.”

“I’m not looking to move.”

Ashton let out a soft breath. Not judgmental, just observant, which was somehow worse. “Then what’s stopping you?”

She lifted one shoulder trying to be nonchalant to brush it off. “I like Faenza.”

“You like familiarity,” he corrected, tone gentler than she expected. “There’s a difference.”

She swallowed. The hum of the printer filled the pause between them as it continued its quest for printed sheets.

“Look,” he said, lowering his voice. “You’re talented. Everyone knows it. And you’ve hit the ceiling here. One of these offers will turn into a long term contract, and when it does, you’re going to have a choice to make.”

Her throat tightened.

“It’s not about loyalty,” Ashton continued. “It’s about fear. You’re comfortable here. That’s not the same as being fulfilled.”

She stared at her screen, three emails, three futures, three versions of herself she wasn’t sure she was ready to meet.

“I don’t know if I can do it,” she admitted quietly.

“You can,” Ashton said. “You’re just scared because it’s big. The next step always is.”

She didn’t answer, couldn’t. The unknown felt vast, like standing at the edge of a track she’d never seen before. And for the first time, she realized the thing holding her in Faenza wasn’t a person.

It was the fear of stepping into a life large enough to change her.

That night, the factory was empty again.

Elena sat alone in the analysis room, the hum of the servers the only sound. On her monitor glowed a single file she hadn’t meant to open again, Mexico GP Qualifying - CS55. Not because it was his lap, not anymore, but because it represented the work she had built here, the proof of what she could do in a place she understood down to its wiring and dust.

She replayed the lap.

Again.

And again.

Her eyes followed the telemetry curve, the sweep of the throttle, the brake modulation through Turn 3, the flick of steering input through the chicane. The numbers blurred, not into thoughts of a driver, but into a rhythm she knew intimately. A pulse that matched her own.

Without realizing it, her hand traced the lines on the screen. Not sensually. Not nostalgically. But the way someone touches the blueprint of a life they’ve spent years constructing. She could almost feel the car’s pitch through her palms, the vibration of the kerb beneath the chassis, the weight transfer as it danced on the edge of grip. She’d spent years tuning, refining, predicting these reactions. She could read them the way some people read sheet music.

Her throat tightened, not with longing for a person, like she had feared, but with the ache of mastery. Of knowing she was good at this. That she belonged here.

And of knowing she might be about to outgrow it.

And somewhere, under all that fear, was the thought she’d been avoiding since the emails came in. 

What will Carlos think?

Not- Will he stop me? Not- Does he want me here?

But something quieter, and much more human. Will he be proud of me? Will he think I’m ready? Will he believe I can do this? Carlos had always believed in her in ways she hadn’t known how to believe in herself. Even during the months she could barely look at him, even at the worst, he’d never once doubted her talent.

But leaving meant separating their trajectories. It meant stepping into a future where his lap times, his telemetry, his problems were no longer the center of her work. It meant growing into someone who, possibly, might no longer need him in the same way she worried that she wanted to need him.

The fear wasn’t that he’d resent her. It was that he’d smile, congratulate her, tell her she deserved the world…

…and she wouldn’t know how to look him in the eye while taking a step that left him behind.

She exhaled slowly, pressing her palms flat on the cool metal of the desk. “Maybe it’s time,” she whispered.

Not to chase anyone. Not to outrun anything. But to stand on the threshold of something bigger than she’d let herself imagine.

She switched off the last monitor. The telemetry faded, but the echo of the lap, the echo of everything that had been built, throbbed faintly in her chest.Because whenever she imagined a clean break, a new team, a new garage, a new beginning. It wasn’t the fear of losing him that held her back. It was the hope that he’d want her to leap… and the terror that she finally might.

Russian GP, 2017

The flight home was quiet in that hushed way long hauls always were, the cabin lights dimmed to a warm amber, engines humming like a lullaby beneath their feet. Only the rustle of paper or clink of plastic broke the stillness. Most of the Toro Rosso staff were already slumped in their seats, chasing whatever sleep they could salvage before landing.

Carlos and Elena hadn’t gotten that far. A laptop glowed between them, blue light catching the tired lines under their eyes. They were supposed to be reviewing race footage, Carlos insisting his turn-in at the hairpin was divine brilliance, Elena pausing and rewinding with the detached cruelty of someone who knew the truth and would not let him escape it.

“You brake too late,” she murmured, voice soft but precise.

“I brake perfectly,” Carlos shot back, leaning closer. “That’s why I passed him.”

“And then you cooked the tires.” She tapped the touchpad. “Perfectly.”

He huffed and rewound the clip again, back, forward, and back again. He opened his mouth to launch Round Four of the debate, but when he glanced sideways, Elena had already begun to fold into the pillow she’d wedged under her shoulder. The footage kept looping, commentary fading into a distant drone.

The pillow slipped. Her head tipped gently against his side.

Carlos went still. Utterly, catastrophically still.

He eased the laptop fully onto the tray table, hands careful in a way that betrayed him more than anything else. Then the engines’ rhythm caught up with him too, pulling his chin toward his chest. Sleep washed over them both.

Three rows up, a mechanic slowed mid-stride on the way to the bathroom, grinning. He raised his phone.

Click. Click. Two seats over, someone stifled a laugh. The photo spread down the aisle like contraband sweets, gathering whispers as it went.

“Advanced driver coaching.” “No wonder they’re late to debriefs.” “Should we book them a double room in Baku?”

It was all teasing. Nothing was truly meant by the whispers, just good fun by the team, but by the time wheels touched down in London, the image had reached every WhatsApp group in the team.

Elena turned her phone on and instantly groaned, burying her face in her hand. “I close my eyes for one hour…”

Carlos stretched, attempting a shrug. “At least they got my good side.”

He scrolled later though, too long, too quietly. The others saw a joke. He felt something tucked beneath the warmth of the moment, something he didn’t dare examine too closely.

Elena didn’t delete the photo either.

She told herself it wasn’t worth starting a fight about boundaries or professionalism. Not when she was already living a double life she hadn’t confessed to anyone, meetings with Mercedes, calls with Haas, an upcoming tour at McLaren. All tentative. All unofficial. All real.

She’d planned to tell Carlos soon. She kept waiting for the right moment, a quiet stretch between races, a night when he wasn’t bruised from disappointment or exhausted from the media. But there never seemed to be one. Every time she tried to find the words, something in her chest pulled taut. Not out of fear of his reaction, but fear of the unknown stretching out ahead of her.

Would he be proud of her? Would he think she was abandoning Faenza? Would this be the moment their paths finally split for good?

She shoved her phone into her pocket, exhaling.

But that night, lying in her apartment room staring at a ceiling she’d seen a hundred times, the warmth of his shoulder still lingered like an imprint, not romantic, not even welcome.Just… human. And impossible to ignore when she imagined the future she hadn’t yet found the courage to tell him she was reaching for.

Monaco GP, 2017

The garage had settled into its mid season quiet. Fewer frantic voices, fewer half-disassembled parts scattered across tables, just the soft clatter of tools being shelved for the weekend and the low murmur of engineers finishing their last reports. The air had that strange stillness unique to the end of a long day of performance, ending with a DNF and a P8. This part of the evening was when everything was both ending and about to begin again in Canada.

Carlos leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching Elena sort through a basket of bolts at the workstation. They’d found their rhythm again these past months, steadier now, not the brittle thing it had been right nearly two winters ago. Their banter flowed like muscle memory, their silences, once tense, had become comfortable again. She didn’t stand on one side of a boundary anymore and he on the other. They’d rebuilt something good.

Which was why the careful pause in her movements made him straighten immediately.

She lifted a sheet toward him from the table, printed letterhead, formal, unmistakable, and her eyes flicked up with that mix he knew so well, pride brightening her features, uncertainty coiled beneath it.

“Carlos…” She drew a breath, steadying herself. “Mercedes may be offering me a Performance Engineer role for Bottas. I wanted to ask what you think.”

For a heartbeat, something inside him simply… stilled.

He’d known, of course he’d known, that a team like Mercedes would come calling eventually. She was too smart, too stubborn, too capable, too relentless not to be noticed. But knowing something in theory and seeing it here, typed in clean corporate font, were two very different sensations. The air felt heavier, almost metallic.

She held the page a little tighter, like part of her was bracing for disappointment, or anger, or something she couldn’t quite name. She wasn’t asking permission. She was asking for him. For his thoughts. His support. His honesty.

He took the paper, scanning the deal slowly. Even he, with his messy understanding of the engineering world, could see what it meant. Higher responsibility, real influence on car development, a trajectory that shot upward rather than stalled sideways. It wasn’t just a step. It was acceleration.

It was everything she deserved.

He set the paper down with deliberate care, swallowing. “At least… we’ll still see each other. Same paddock, no?”

He tried for lightness, a small grin tugging at his mouth. But it didn’t reach his eyes. She didn’t comment on it, didn’t call him out or offer pity. She gave him the space to pretend the news didn’t feel like the ground shifting under his feet.

Because the truth underneath his careful posture was rawer. What if she left and the gap between their careers finally split too wide to cross? She was being recruited by giants. He was still hoping for a clean midfield car. Toro Rosso was a stepping stone, it meant to be temporary, but what if temporary was all he ever got? What if she outpaced him so completely there was no orbit where they’d still intersect?

“You’ll get a better opportunity too,” she said softly. Not forced, not placating, but genuine belief. She leaned against the edge of the desk, meeting his eyes steadily. “Teams know how talented you are. It won’t be long before the right one finds you.”

He exhaled a shaky laugh, looking down at his hands. She always spoke that way, with conviction so clean it made him want to believe in himself more than he naturally did. She said it like a fact, not a comfort.

God, he wanted her to be right.

But another thought curled in the back of his mind, unwelcome and cowardly. If he asked her not to go… would she stay? And worse, would he hate himself if she did?

Elena’s expression softened. She reached out in a small, unconscious gesture and brushed his hand as she picked up the paper. Barely a touch, barely a second. But full of the quiet familiarity they’d rebuilt from ruins.

“That’s a huge role,” he said finally, voice low. “You’ll crush it.”

Her smile was faint, but pride glowed through it, tempered by nerves she hid from almost everyone. She’d been preparing for this next step for months without admitting it, not even to herself. And now the moment was real, and big, and terrifying.

He could see the tremor in her fingers even as she tried to hold herself straighter.

He was afraid too, but for different reasons. Afraid of being the one who stayed behind. Afraid that the universe had decided one of them was destined for the front of the grid, and it wasn’t him.

For a quiet moment, the garage existed only around them, the low hum of machinery, the smell of oil and brake cleaner, the two of them standing in the bright overhead light. Pride. Loss. Trust. And that old, unspoken tether between them, never quite defined, never quite released.