Lando's Love (2021)

Chapter 46

The race in Brazil did not go well. I found myself touching Carlos at the start. But I managed to come back and crossed the finish line in 10th position, which brought me back one point. Again it wasn't much and it was far from the result I was capable of but considering the incident on the first lap it was better than nothing.

I was coming into Qatar, the time difference took its toll on every driver at the start of the week but we all had to work hard to be ready for the race on Sunday. I thought it was very badly organised to have 3 consecutive race weekends with 2 races in America and therefore with a time difference of only 1 hour, but to put the 3rd race in Qatar and therefore put a time difference of 6 hours in our faces... It is difficult to get used to a 6 hour time difference in 3 days.

Anyway, the circuit was interesting, even if it was a kind of Bahrain bis. The problem that all the drivers recognised was the most important problem of the circuit: the kerbs. They were going to be too aggressive for our cars. So I don't mind our engineers telling us to avoid them, but if you don't get on them, sometimes you'd have to take the corners even slower and then the race loses all its interest. These kerbs proved to be too aggressive for the cars already in the first free practice session: 8 drivers had to stop for more than a few minutes because of electronic problems due to the vibrators. Mazepin was not even able to participate in sessions 2 and 3. Qualifying, on the other hand, went rather well. No big problems were apparent, only a few surprises: Sergio, Charles and Daniel were out in Q2. Q3 was pretty quiet until Pierre broke his wing on a kerb and caused a yellow flag, preventing everyone from improving after him, that is all the drivers except Hamilton.

Before the race we were still waiting for the FIA decisions for Carlos, Valtteri and Max for not respecting the yellow flag in Q3. When we were at the drivers' parade, we were just discussing together when the decisions came down: 5 places for Max, 3 for Valtteri and nothing for Carlos. The race itself was also quite calm until 10 or 15 laps from the end when Bottas was the first to have a puncture but, despite the tyre change, his car had suffered too much damage and they had to retire, then there was a slow puncture for me and then a puncture for Latifi who couldn't get his car into the pits and had to retire. I finished the race in 9th place behind the two Ferraris who had no problems at all during the race.

In the evening I tried to call Tris but she didn't answer. I went on my social media waiting for her to call me back. I saw an Instagram story from her neighbour. It was true that she had told me that they were having dinner together tonight because it had been a long time since they had taken the time to talk together. The story was a picture of Tris sitting on a bench in the park next to her house, looking at the moon and stars. He had put a caption 'Moon is her home when she is alone🌙⭐ '. She looked happy in the photo but I knew that deep down she was remembering all the hard times she'd had this year. 2021 has not been kind to her and I sincerely hoped that the end of the year would be better for her. I was looking forward to proposing to her.

An hour later, I was at the airport waiting for my flight back to England for a week when Tris called me.

Hello?

Hi sweetie, sorry I was with Valentin earlier and I didn't see my phone ring. I've been watching the race, I'm sorry about your puncture. You'll do better in Jeddah.

There's nothing to worry about, you told me so. Yes, we knew that the vibrators were aggressive but I also think that Pirelli has a problem with their tyres this year: Baku and now Qatar, they must not know how to calculate anymore for there to be so many punctures this year. As for Jeddah, we'll see, the circuit isn't even completely finished yet...

The Jeddah circuit scares me. Everyone describes it as a Monza in Monaco. There is almost no clearance. I'm really afraid there will be a big accident. It will be dangerous.