Horner's daughter

Jealousy.

The Hungarian Grand Prix, held at the Hungaroring near Budapest, always had a high attendance. The fans were passionate and loud and it was always a great race. Well, ‘always’ was subjective on this occasion.

The weekend had started quite well for him. He’d been in the podium positions across all three practice sessions and had qualified third overall, which he didn’t mind too much. Qualifying third could be beneficial on a race start anyway. He knew that.

Going into the race, he’d tried to banish all thought of Silverstone from his mind. His bruises had healed and he’d had two weeks to train and return to his strong mentality. It wasn’t only physical bruises he’d had from the crash. His pride had also suffered but he’d patched it up. This could be his race.

The optimism he’d had wilted on the first lap. It was chaos. Their previous tyre strategy all went out of the window as the rain forced them to use intermediate tyres rather than the preplanned softs.

Hamilton had got away well from the beginning but Bottas hadn’t and had dropped back to allow Max to come up alongside him. The Finn then dropped places and had contact with Lando Norris which created a chain reaction of crashes like a line of dominos falling. Both Max and Sergio were caught up in the crash alongside some of their fellow drivers. Then Lance Stroll arrived quickly onto the scene and crashed into a Ferrari and a McLaren, causing the stewards to red flag the race.

Max was furious, he’d fallen down the order and his car had a lot of damage. His race had become tougher now and he was without Sergio following his retirement from the race.

Everyone pitted for the standing start besides Hamilton, which Max had never seen before. The track had dried so most people had decided to change their tyres. Following his pit, Max came out 13th and managed to quickly climb to 12th.

Hamilton pitted allowing Max and the rest of the field through and then Max rose to 11th after Mazepin’s retirement.

Max was fighting hard with Mick Schumacher to get 10th position. Mick wasn’t giving up and Max went off the track in the process, with the Haas driver staying ahead. The Dutchman went for the overtake, going round the outside of the German and banging wheels with him, finally getting ahead at turn 3 and into the points positions. Max had always liked and respected Mick. They’d been friends since they were children when their fathers were racing and he remembered himself and Mick creating their own Dutch-German hybrid language to communicate and how kind ‘Uncle Michael’ had been. They were fond memories but at the moment Max had no time for sentimentality.

He rose to 9th. Hamilton was setting the fastest laps in the race but was currently behind him in P11 and pitting. Max pitted a lap lately to try and hinder the Brit’s advantage but Hamilton managed to undercut him as Max was coming out of the pits, which only added to the frustration Max was feeling.

The chequered flag arrived and the emotions still bubbled within Max. Hamilton had come 3rd following the race and later on it was revealed that he would be boosted to second as Sebastian Vettel, who’d taken second in the race, had been disqualified because they couldn’t complete the fuel check.

Esteban Ocon had won his first Grand Prix in Formula 1. He wasn’t the closest with Esteban, they’d been rivals in karting and the lower Formulas and they’d had a very public disagreement in 2018 at Brazil when the Frenchman had hit him trying to unlap himself but Max was happy for him. He knew that Ocon was a talented driver and that it meant a lot to win your first race and so he briefly congratulated him.

Now he was sitting in his hotel room, the race result still swimming in his thoughts. He’d finished 9th and taken two points from the race whereas Hamilton now had 18 points.