The Team // A Formula One AU

Carlos

Everyone is chatting excitedly on the bus from the airport and I feel dizzy. I'm scared of being away from my family for so long but I'm also excited to be so far away from home. I love travelling. The plane journey wasn't very long and I've already seen lots of the English countryside from the bus. Everything is green. I can't wait until we get there.

"Have you ever been to England before?" The boy sitting in front of me asks.

"No," I say. My English isn't very good yet but I want to try to talk, make friends and get better. "I have never."

The boy smiles. "You mean you haven't."

"I haven't." I grin back. "Where do you... Come from?"

"I'm from Mexico. My name is Sergio, but you should call me Checo." He sticks his hand backwards through the gap between the seats and shakes mine.

"I'm Carlos. I'm from Spain, and I support McLaren."

"I support McLaren too!" A tiny boy yells from across the aisle. The guy in front of him looks up from his phone where he has been texting the whole journey. He's laughing.

"Thanks, now the whole bus knows. I'm from the Netherlands, and I'm a Red Bull guy," He says, turning to join our conversation and putting a handful of crisps in his mouth.

"What are you called?" I ask him.

"Nng... Hathh," he replies with his hand in front of his mouth. 

"Uh..."

"Hmaff!"

"Matt?" I guess. He tries to chew faster and goes on his phone. He types his real name and shows it to me.

"Oh! Max, sorry."

"You're funny, Carlos." The excitable McLaren boy tells me. Max goes back to his phone, shaking his head.

"Thank you," I laugh. "What are you called?"

"Lando Norris. I'm from Bristol."

I wrinkle my nose. "I've never heard of that country."

Lando bursts out laughing and collapses into his seat. "It's not a country, it's a city in England! I just got picked up from the airport because my bus stopped there."

"Calm down, lads!" Tom shouts from the front of the bus. I guess we're making too much noise, but he's smiling anyway.

"What's lads?" I ask.

"It means boys," Lando replies. "But you don't say 'what's lads'. You have to say 'what is a lad?'"

"Oh. Okay," I say. I think I'm the worst at English here. I'm going to improve soon though, I'm sure.

I keep talking to Lando for ages, Max occasionally turning around to laugh at what I'm saying and at my accent. He exchanges a few words with Lando in a language I don't recognise. I hope my language skills aren't a problem when we start driving.

"By the way, do any of you know why our training camp is in England?" Max asks, "why didn't we just fly straight to the USA?"

"That would've been much more convenient for me," Checo sighs. I wonder how far other people have travelled to be here.

"It's because Tom's English, and so are the engineers. He said it's a training camp for them just as much as it is for us."

We all turn to who spoke, he seems to be another British guy.

"How do you know?" Max asks him.

The guy shrugs. "Tom's my dad's best friend. I'm George Russell, by the way."

"Is that why you're in the team, because your dad knows the principal?"

"Absolutely not," George grins, but Max still looks sceptical.

"I guess we'll find out on the track."

Either way, it's good to have someone who knows what's going on. We really weren't told anything before we had to sign our contracts.

The bus gets noisy again and it seems everyone's busy making friends. I can't believe how nice everyone is. We drive into a town and I look out of the window as I think we're nearly there. We turn a tight corner and Max's phone slides across the floor and into the aisle. He doesn't seem to care though, he's busy holding Lando's cap too high for him to reach.