In Love With Formula 1

Part 11

I was walking through the paddock on Saturday morning after another solid practice day on Friday and the final practice session was about to start when Lando's sister Flo came over to me

"Fancy seeing you here, I thought you would be"

"It's nice to see you as well Flo" I said with a laugh

"You know Lando doesn't stop talking about you whenever I phone or text him"

"Oh really now, I might have to ask him what he says about me"

"He say's you are incredibly strong and pretty as well as being funny and stupidly good at karting"

"I'm the full package that never gets delivered what can I say"

We walked in to the hospitality area and had a drink and chatted about nothing of much substance, just about me winning that karting race hungover and Flo scaring Cisca the other night and showing me the videos of it. It was pretty funny to be honest. Lando's parents came over and joined us and we were just making predictions for quali and the race tomorrow. It was a nice conversation until my social battery ran out, I had to excuse myself for a bit and I just went in to the garage for a bit to watch what was happening on track. Some of the mechanics spoke to me about their predictions and we made a bet within the garage, I would be getting 200 pounds if we only had one Mclaren finish the race, everyone looked at me like I was mad but I was known for making bold moves or predictions. And I would be giving 200 pounds away if both cars finished in the top 7. Both were reasonable bets and it made my excitement slightly higher for the race tomorrow.

Quali was just about to start and I put on the headset and Lando was about to get in his car, he looked at me and I gave him a thumbs up and with that he got in his car and sped away on to the track, I did the same for Daniel the other side of the garage and off he went as well. By Q3 we had both Mclaren's, Mercedes and Redbull's with an Alpine of Fernando Alonso and the Aston Martin of Sebastion Vettel along with the Alpha Tauri boys. The grid was set up p1 would be Lewis p2 Valterri, p3 Max, p4 Daniel, p5 Pierre, Lando missed out on p5 by 3 hundredths of a second. I was a bit disappointed by this and I'm sure Lando was as well but the results came tomorrow so we just had to wait till the next day.

"Oi oi it's the karting champion" Daniel shouted out after me, I turned around to see him almost the other end, how did he see me from there. I walked towards him and he greeted me

"So what's the strategy for this one then?"

"I'm not a stategist Danny boy I can't tell you all my secrets"

"Well that's no fun"

"Shame" I said sarcastically

Daniel was still standing with me but he was having an interview with Sky sports now with Natalie, those two had the best friendship. Damon Hill was also there but he wasn't a part of the interview so I just said how I always looked up to him and his dad when I was little. He made a few jokes and we were both laughing rather loudly, so much that Natalie and Daniel were looking at us as well as having the camera pointed to us.

"Well this isn't very professional is it Damon" I said in the most serious voice possible however I failed because we both started laughing again.

"You are going to give me a competition of who's funnier now" Daniel retorted

I pulled the most ridiculous face and now everyone was laughing, we looked like a bunch of idiots. After composing ourselves Natalie started talking to me with Daniel and Damon either side of me

"So Izzie, you were at the Monaco GP and now you are here at Silverstone with Mlcaren again, why is that?"

"Well Mclaren has always been my favourite team growing up and as much as I hate to admit it Daniel here has been one of my favourite drivers for a while now so it was an offer I couldn't refuse"

"But you aren't here with Daniel are you, we hear you've been giving young Lando Norris a run for his money in karting over the past few weeks"

"He's just a rookie, with practice I'm sure he'll improve, maybe even get a few wins."

Daniel sniggered next to me after I said that and Damon looked at me and I think he put 2 and 2 together and figured out who I was. I looked at him and he looked at me like he had just seen a ghost, I gave him pleading eyes not to say anything and he got the idea which I was grateful for.

"Will you be making this a regular thing, being in the paddock on race weekends?" Natalie asked

"I mean I do love the race weekends but as a guest I'm not sure if it's for me, I might have to go and ask Zak for a job in the team" I replied with a grin

"Ahh I see well have a good race weekend and thanks for the interview"

"It's not a problem"

Damon pulled me to the side after the cameras were turned off and he looked at me with a bewildered look on his face.

"You're Izzie as in Izzie who won the karting world championship 2 times and you have at least 3 British titles to your name"

"That's me"

"Wow"

"Keep it quiet though no one else knows about it and I would rather it be kept that way until I either return to karting or I tell more people about it because I know how fast news spreads around the paddock"

"Of course but why did you stop racing"

"Ran out of money" I said with a straight face, it was a complete lie it was because of my parents but no one needed to know that.

"Okay, I promise I won't tell anyone about this"

"Thanks" I said as Daniel pulled me away and in to the hospitality.

"You are a born natural for interviews you would never be able to tell you haven't had one before"

"Maybe I just crave attention" I said with sarcastic emphasis on crave.

"Funny" He said back as he left me to go in to his driver room.

I walked back to my car and there was some press there taking photos of the drivers leaving the circuit for the night, with my car standing out slightly from these super cars there was quite a bit of attention on my car and who was driving it. The cameras were flashing and people were waving at me, I politely waved back and drove out, I then turned my music up really loud and just sang and drove for a while, I didn't get back to the hotel till 10pm and even then I just got in my room, had a shower and got in to bed and watched some tiktoks for a while. I eventually fell asleep and was woken up by my alarm at 9am on race day.