Chapter Text
The noise fell over Oscar’s ears like a heavy blanket the moment he stepped into the motorhome. Half an hour ago, the Zandvoort circuit had been roaring; now, all that remained was the low, resonant hum of generators and the distant shouts of fans behind the fences. Piastri leaned against the cool wall, closing his eyes. He felt every muscle, every heartbeat. This was victory.
And he was looking for one specific person.
Lando was standing at the other end of the room, already talking to Andrea. He was composed, as always: sharp, with an impeccable shoulder line. Only Oscar could see the way his right knee was twitching, or how tightly he was gripping a water bottle, trying to corral the post-race adrenaline.
Their eyes met over the engineer's head. No smile, no nod. Just recognition.
When Stella stepped away, Lando approached him. Casually. As if he didn't actually need to bridge that distance.
"Congratulations," Lando said, his voice devoid of a single gram of falsehood or a hint of rivalry. "Good race."
Oscar leaned in to say something, but instead, he simply thudded his head against Lando’s shoulder. Gentle, but firm. It was their secret, non-verbal way of resetting the tension. He felt the cold dampness of his own sweaty racing shirt soak into Lando’s dry polo.
"If you hadn't been there, I wouldn't have survived the pressure," Oscar whispered, catching the familiar scent of cologne and the crisp, cool air that always seemed to emanate from Lando.
Norris only sighed. He rested a hand on the back of Oscar's head, pressing slightly.
"Who would have?" Lando’s voice was quiet, almost intimate, right by Oscar’s ear. He gently stroked the nape of his neck—the only thing keeping Piastri from simply collapsing right there in that noisy sanctuary. "You do this better than anyone, Osc. Just don’t forget to breathe."
Oscar nodded, unable to pull away just yet.
"Come on. We have to get through this hell of media and beer, and you look like you're about to fall asleep standing up." Lando pulled away first, and Piastri instantly felt the world become loud and uncomfortable again.
Lando beamed, slapping him on the shoulder—a gesture that was too firm, too confident for the public eye.
They walked side by side, their orange polos brushing briefly. Lando had already switched to "public mode"—his shoulders squared, his smile widened, and his gait took on that easy, boyish nonchalance. Oscar, meanwhile, felt as if he had to don his armor all over again, the armor he had just shed in Lando’s arms.
The sun was dipping toward the horizon, painting the sky over the circuit in golden-orange tones—colors that perfectly matched the McLaren uniform.
The air still vibrated with the ghost of engine roars, but the scent had changed: it was the tart, sharp aroma of racing fuel, rubber, and the faint smell of cooling, expensive coffee from the press center. In the background, there was a constant hum: receding footsteps, the click of cameras, fragments of phrases in a dozen languages.
Lando and Oscar stopped before a low, branded barrier separating them from a dense pack of reporters and camera crews. The lighting here was harsh and fluorescent, yet it couldn't hide the tired but satisfied spark in the drivers' eyes. Small dark patches of sweat and moisture were visible on their orange shirts.
"How does victory feel, Oscar?" a reporter asked, leaning over a microphone with a major sports channel logo, eyebrow arched to catch a reaction.
Oscar leaned his shoulder against the barrier, looking entirely relaxed. His calm was practiced and professional.
"Pretty good," he said, tilting his head slightly. "I think I held the lead well."
Lando immediately wedged himself into the frame with a touch of bravado, resting his hand on the barrier right in front of Oscar’s waist.
"And what about you, Lando?" another journalist asked.
"A bit boring," Lando stretched out a grin, then quickly—away from the cameras—nudged Oscar’s right elbow with his own, a reminder of some internal joke shared only between them. "So sorry I went off. Но Oscar did a great job. We tried to work as a pair from the start. Our pace... it’s the best in the paddock right now, isn't it, Osc?"
Oscar nodded, his smile widening a bit more than was strictly necessary for an interview. This smile wasn't for the reporters; it was for Lando. Oscar felt the spark of connection not as anxiety, but as pure, rushing relief. He caught that look—that glimpse of the real Lando hidden behind the Hollywood grin.
Grounding.
"Lando, they say you were very aggressive in Turn 1," the next question came, instantly shifting the focus to the senior driver.
Lando laughed, looking away as if embarrassed. He did it so naturally that even Oscar, for a second, thought it was a genuine reaction.
"Me? Aggressive?" He shook his head. "I just didn't want anyone else in my spot. I knew Oscar would be there, and I knew I had to protect our position. It was a team game."
He looked back at Piastri, his smile turning softer, more private. Oscar gave a barely perceptible nod, never breaking his professional smile for the reporters.
The cameras clicked, the lights dimmed. The media crowd moved on to the next group of drivers, leaving them in relative silence by the barrier. The air became just hot again, smelling of cooling fuel and wet asphalt.
"God, I hate this circus," Oscar exhaled quietly, looking away from the departing journalists. His voice was hoarse.
"Liar," Lando laughed soundlessly, bumping his shoulder against Oscar's. It was a friendly but firm contact. "You love being the center of attention. You’re just an intellectual snob."
Oscar grunted, conceding the point. Lando knew his work ethic too well.
They were pulled away by the general tide—toward drink stations, engineers, and team managers. Handshakes, pats on the back, endless "great jobs." Oscar floated through it, responding automatically, his smile becoming strained. He felt the energy he had just saved beginning to drain away.
At the edge of his vision, Norris was always there. Bright, radiating working energy, the gravity center for the team. He joked with mechanics, discussed data with Andrea; his laughter was loud but controlled. Piastri caught fragments of his phrases—technical details, questions about tires. Lando had already switched to analysis and celebration mode.
Finally, the official part began to subside. The crowd thinned. Oscar, taking advantage of a moment when no one was holding him back, retreated into the shadows under the grandstands, leaning against a cool concrete pillar. He closed his eyes, trying to find that quiet place inside himself. He just needed to shed the noise.
Footsteps, fast and distinct, interrupted him. He recognized the gait without even opening his eyes.
"Running away?" the guy's voice sounded right in front of him.
Oscar opened his eyes. Lando stood there, hands shoved into his tracksuit pockets, hair plastered to his forehead, his pass dangling from his neck. He looked exhausted but focused.
"Breather. I just need to breathe for a moment," Oscar corrected him.
"Same difference. Come on," Lando didn't waste time. "We need to get out before Stella finds us again with those endless reports. I found something."
He didn't explain. He just turned and walked away without looking back, knowing Piastri would follow. They always did this: found quiet corners to discuss the race without cameras or managers.
Oscar pushed off the pillar and followed. They walked through the back corridors of the circuit, past equipment trucks and workers. Lando led him confidently, turning into non-obvious passages until they stood before a small, nondescript door labeled "Maintenance."
"Seriously?" Oscar raised an eyebrow.
"Best view and zero social media managers," Lando pushed the door, and it gave way with a metallic creak.
Inside, it smelled of paint and dust. A narrow metal staircase led up to a technical platform right under the roof of the grandstands. They climbed up, and Oscar froze.
From here, at this height, the track looked like a black ribbon scarred with tire marks. The stands stood empty and majestic. And above it all stretched the sky, blazing in the last rays of the sun. The air was clean and cool, and only a muffled hum reached them from the city leaving the circuit behind.
There was no one else here. Just them and the fading echo of the race.
Lando leaned against the railing and pulled two water bottles from a box, handing one to Oscar.
"Here," he said simply. "Get your balance back. Five minutes, then back to Stella."
Oscar took the bottle. He took a long drink, feeling the coolness spread down his throat.
They stood in silence, shoulder to shoulder, looking at the empty track. The place where, just hours ago, they had fought for every meter to prove who was faster—a confrontation necessary to push the team to the top.
"Thanks," Oscar said softly.
Lando turned his head, his profile sharp against the sunset.
"For what? The water?"
"For everything," Oscar gestured to the space around them.
Lando smiled, this time a tired but satisfied smile, devoid of any public persona.
"Who else would chase after you, Piastri?" He leaned his elbow back on the railing, looking at him. "You’d get stuck in a crowd of fans without me. And I need a healthy teammate for the next race."
Oscar snorted. He knew Lando always thought several steps ahead, and his care always had a practical foundation. In this insane world of speed and pressure, Norris was his most valuable resource—his partner, his coordinate.
And when their hands accidentally touched on the cool metal of the railing, Oscar didn't move away. He just left his hand there, feeling the world finally find the right, slow speed.
The sterile light of the lamps in the debrief room felt almost tactile, casting cold glints off aluminum panels and sharpening the graphs on the panoramic screens. The faint scent of scorched rubber lingered in the air, while servers hummed steadily behind the wall. Andrea Stella stood frozen by the central monitor; his laser pointer was still—an orange dot blinked on the curve at the break of Turn 7.
"Oscar, the telemetry doesn't lie. You’re cutting the kerb too aggressively. In this sector, the rear-left tire overheat is critical," Stella’s voice was level, devoid of reproach, but all the more pressuring for it. "On the exit of Seven, the temperature spikes. Move your entry point half a meter out—we’ll reduce the heat and extend the life."
Oscar sat motionless, arms folded. Everything inside him protested: he remembered the vibration in the wheel, that brief dip in balance when the rear of the car literally "tried" to step out with the slightest touch of throttle. Jumping the kerb wasn't a mistake to him—it was "hooking up," a compromise between speed and control.
He had already drawn breath to give his usual, emotionless "Understood, we’ll look into it," when a sharp click broke the silence.
Lando, who had been disinterestedly twirling a marker, tossed it onto the table. He wasn't looking at the graphs. His gaze was fixed on space, as if he were re-running that lap in his mind.
"That won't work, Andrea," Lando cut in. His voice was unexpectedly firm, without a trace of his usual playfulness. "If he goes wider, he’ll lose the front end at the apex of Eight. The car was too 'nervous' on the rear axle today."
Lando finally turned his head and looked directly at Oscar. In that look was something only someone who had sat in that same cockpit at 40 degrees Celsius could understand: the physical sensation of a balance shift.
"Oscar wasn't killing the tires," Lando continued, shifting his gaze to Stella. "He was keeping the car from spinning. If you force him to drive 'correctly' by your calculations, he’ll just start losing three-tenths every lap because of understeer. I felt the same thing in FP3."
A heavy silence hung in the room for a second. The engineers traded glances. Oscar felt the invisible band tightening around his chest suddenly snap. He didn't need to pick his words or justify himself anymore. Lando hadn't just stood up for him—he had legitimized his instincts in the face of the system.
Oscar gave a barely visible nod as he met his teammate’s eyes.
"Exactly. The car just won't stay on the line without that jump," he confirmed quietly.
Stella slowly lowered the pointer, looking intently at both drivers. In that moment, they weren't Number One and Number Two. They were a single front, forged by a shared experience on the edge of the possible.
"Fine," Stella sighed almost imperceptibly, and in that sigh was an admission of defeat to their intuition. "We’ll recalculate the model with a balance correction. We’ll see if we can compensate through the differential settings."
The hotel room was drowned in a thick gloom, sliced only by the cold neon glow of a tablet. Five hours had passed since the checkered flag, but the phantom hum of the engine still vibrated in his bones, and his fingertips trembled slightly, retaining the memory of the steering wheel’s grip. His body, drained by G-forces, demanded sleep, but his mind refused to capitulate—it replayed every hundredth of a second lost under braking over and over again.
Oscar sat on the carpet, his shoulder blades pressed against the hard base of the bed. Data cascaded down the screen in endless columns: tire pressures, brake disc temperature gradients, angles of attack. He knew this math by heart, but he kept staring at the columns of data, hoping that hidden within this dry logic was the answer to the main question: where was the limit?
A quiet, almost delicate knock at the door cut through the silence. Oscar startled, drifting out of his trance. It was past two in the morning.
He stood up, feeling his muscles protest every movement, and opened the door. Lando stood on the threshold. Gone was the gloss of sponsor patches and the signature cap—he was just in a stretched gray t-shirt, lounge shorts, and hair that had turned into a chaotic vortex. In his hands, he clutched two chilled bottles of alcohol-free beer.
"You're not sleeping either?" Lando asked. It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact. He had seen the sliver of light under the door and knew the taste of this insomnia all too well.
Oscar stepped back silently, letting him in.
"Brain won't shut off."
Lando walked deeper into the room and, discarding formalities, sat on the floor—in the exact same spot Oscar had been a second ago. He handed his teammate a bottle.
"Throw the tablet away. If you haven't found that extra tenth in five hours, it's not going to save you now—it'll just kill what's left of your nerves."
Oscar slowly sat down beside him. The distance between them shrank to a barely perceptible warmth. In this silence, stripped of camera lenses and the stern gazes of engineers, Lando seemed uncharacteristically grounded.
"You were damn good today, Osc. Winning at Zandvoort, in that orange cauldron..." Lando took a sip and gave a short chuckle. "That’s a reason for pride, not for burying yourself alive in numbers."
"Sometimes it feels," Oscar said quietly, studying the label on the bottle, "that I just don't feel the car the way the sensors do."
"Sensors don't know what fear is," Lando turned to him, his voice becoming serious, almost stern. "And they don't know what it's like to catch a car on the brink of a snap at three hundred kilometers per hour when the asphalt feels like liquid oil. You squeezed everything out of that piece of carbon fiber today."
Oscar met his gaze. There was no practiced sympathy in it, only the hollow solidarity of people who had survived the same meat grinder. It was that "us against the world" feeling that isn't written into contracts but is forged in the garages.
"Will it get easier tomorrow?" Oscar asked, feeling the tight knot in his chest finally begin to unravel.
Lando huffed, leaning his head back against the bed.
"Tomorrow? Tomorrow is the damn simulator, an endless flight, and a ton of marketing nonsense. It won't get easier. But for now... just finish that and close your eyes. I’ll sit here for five more minutes—to make sure you don't reach for that tablet the moment I walk out."
Oscar nodded, feeling for the first time in long days that in this insane, cold mechanism of Formula 1, he was, despite everything, not alone.