In the Spotlight (Max Verstappen - Book Two)

Chapter Eight

Thirty-five minutes later and engineers begin to trickle in, ready to begin the debrief when Max and Yuki arrive after doing media from their sessions in the car. I grab my headset and begin chatting with the engineers there, both mine and Max's as we wait, exchanging a lot of relaxed jokes. "What are you working on?" Samuel, one of my mechanics asks me, peering over my shoulder as he looks at my screen.

"Er...nothing," I say nervously as I struggle to close the tab that had my code written on it.

"What language is that?" Another mechanic Josh asks and I groan as they hit my hands away from the keyboard, stopping me from minimising it as more people gather around me, looking at the laptop screen in front of me.

"R," I respond in a whisper and I'm met with impressed whistles from those around me. My cheeks flush as almost everyone in the room is now peering over my shoulder at the complex lines of code.

"You did this?" Samuel asks in surprise and I nod silently and awkwardly. "This is so impressive, I didn't know you could code."

"Er, no one does and I'd rather keep it that way," I say nervously as I save the file before closing it to the disappointment of those around me who quickly disperse to their seats, Samuel is sat two down from me, an empty chair being left for Dani in-between us.

"When did you learn that?" He asks, leaning over that chair. I look at him, noticing that Olivia and Nick have vacated their seats and are sitting behind us, interested in the conversation I'm having.

"Er, F2?" I say but it's more of a question. "I apologise in advance if I'm annoying and send some stuff now that you know, I find it easiest to communicate something by showing it," I tell the room and I'm met with impressed sounds.

"Well now we know, what were you working on?" Josh asks again, sitting across from me as we all begin logging into the monitors in front of us, me passing my laptop back to Nick for safekeeping.

"I was beginning to build a code that I could feed some of the comparative data between Max and I through, it'll take me a while to finish and I know you guys have your own programmes that do it similarly, I just find it therapeutic and a helpful way to understand it all. Like translating it into my own language." I say nervously stumbling over my words as I explain it to the room, Dani enters the room and sits down next to me shooting a curious look around the room.

"Coding?" She asks and I nod. "Ah, yeah to be honest the stuff you sent me is usually better than the other stuff. I understand it more easily anyways."

"You knew?" Samuel asks in surprise and she gives him a duh look. "Well, I'm sure we'll all look forward to seeing the end results." He says to me kindly and I nod at him as I look around the room noticing it's only my engineers that are here.

"Can we keep this to ourselves for now? I really don't like people knowing this sort of stuff." I tell them and I hear a murmur of agreement in response. "I do mean from, er, the rest of the team as well if possible. It's not a huge secret but yeah..." I trail off guiltily but continue to get affirmations from the team and suddenly feel lighter, as we go back to joking around.

The whole situation while slightly awkward, really served to make me feel like I had the backing of the team. While obviously some of them might find themselves rooting for Max, at least the ones in the room right now were focused on making it so the car they were working on was the one that finished the championship at the top of the table. All these people wanted to see me win. And knowing that was an instant ease to my mind, twenty minutes later Max and Yuki walked into the room followed by Max's side of the garage and the strategy team resulting in a very cramped room. Olivia squeezed my shoulder before leaving to make space for others while Nick stayed behind me, a notepad on his knee for taking notes from the meeting. I turned and shot him a quick thumbs up to check that he was okay and he responded as I turned around and looked as a lot of people began playing musical chairs.