Battle Scars // Esteban Ocon

7

Two weeks later it was the weekend of the Hungarian Grand Prix and also the last race before the summer break for three weeks which Abi was very much looking forward to after a busy first half of the season.

The weekend had gone relatively normal through all three free practices with the usual top three of Max, Lewis and Valtteri topping the time charts throughout the course of the weekend.

Qualifying had just ended and the two Alpines both made it through to Q3 with Esteban finishing P8 and Abigail finished P9.

They both returned to the garage before being wheeled inside and getting out of their respective cars on their respective sides of the garage.

"I almost had you." Abigail spoke as she walked towards her teammate in the middle of the garage.

"Yeh, yeh." Esteban said waving her off in a joking way.

"We'll see who's laughing tomorrow then." Abigail told him before walking towards her race engineer while taking off her helmet.

She spoke with Andrew and Louis for a few minutes about the qualifying session that had just ended and strategies for tomorrow's race.

Once they finished up, Abigail headed back to hospitality building to get changed out of her racing stuff and headed back to her hotel room to relax until tomorrow's race.

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In turn it was in fact Abi who was mentally laughing as the race approached its latter laps.

A wild and wet start to the race managed to eliminate 6 drivers as Valtteri locked up and wiped out Lando, Sergio and Max. Lance also locked up taking himself and Charles out all on the first lap.

The race was red flagged and while the rest of the remaining grid opted to box for mediums, Lewis stayed out on the intermediates and therefore was the only driver on the grid when the lights went out for the second time.

After spending several laps defending Lewis off to let Esteban keep his lead of the race, Abi was forced to yield her P4 on Lap 65 to the 7 time world champion.

As the last lap approached, Abi had her eyes firmly fixed on the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz in front of her and the P4 position which he held after losing his podium place to Lewis.

Approaching the last few corners, Abi managed to sneak around the inside of the Spaniard and finish the race in P4.

But it wasn't her result she was concerned about but rather Esteban's. He had crossed the line in first, taking his maiden win in Formula One at the Hungaroring.

Both Lewis and Sebastian had overtaken the winner, giving him a wave before driving off. Abi made her way next her teammate, waving her fist in the air in celebration.

Abi drove in and arrived back in the pit lane with her team. She walked back to parc ferme in search of her teammate but found the space behind the number one sign empty.

"Where is he?" She wondered turning to look at the team behind her.

"There." Dan replied pointing up to the screen where the whole world could see the race winner running down the track and coming into the pit lane.