𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹 | 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗰

Chapter 6

I stood in the ferrari garage as a man, Charles had told me was called Mattia, approached me and handed me some headphones as he explained to me how I'd be able to hear the radio through them. I knew that that was what they were for but I didn't want to seem impolite and say 'yeah I know', so I smiled and told him thankyou before putting the headphones around my neck as I turned back to where Charles was about to get into his car.

The drivers performed in the formation lap as per usual so that the cars could get into the correct positions for the start of the race. After they did this they then got out their cars and had a few minutes to gather their thoughts or speak to their managers if they needed to.

Just before Charles put his helmet back on , I saw him glance over and give me a small smile. Even though it was only the practice I mouthed good luck to him and I saw him nod his head in my direction, which told me he got what I said. Him and Carlos gave each other a hand shake, which I assumed was their way of telling each other to do well as team mates.

As I made my way onto the sidelines of the grid whilst the drivers got into their cars, I kept getting messages off of Lily as she sent photos showing me what her POV was like. I could see her myself from where I was standing so sent her a photo of herself back. I knew she received the message when she laughed and looked up at me from further down the sidelines of the grid. If her papa saw her he wouldn't be happy that she was stood next to the orange car cheering them on after he brought her up to be a ferrari fan. I laughed at the thought of him seeing her as I could imagine him disowning her.

Before I knew it I was back in the garage watching the screen awaiting the free practice to start. Engineers were still working on the car in the garage as they had 15 seconds left to do anything necessary. You saw all of the drivers give a thumbs up to their engineers as they had to eventually leave the cars and go to their designated places in the garage.

I kept my eyes on Charles' position at all times as he moved up and down positions within the first 10 lap, going from having the lowest lap times to having one of the fastest at one point. I was watching it I could hear him speak to his head engineer every now and then, one of the times complaining about one of the drivers almost pushing him off the circuit, whilst taking a corner. The whole time I was watching the practice I couldn't help but twiddle my fingers as I'd never watched it actually knowing any of the drivers personally. Knowing Charles added some sort of anxiousness to the sport for me as I watched him in all his glory managing to pass cars in front of him that weren't trying for the fastest lap.

The practice lasted for about 90 minutes and finishing with the fastest lap was pierre gasly, followed by charles in p2 and carlos in p3. So far so good as both the ferrari drivers left their cars with wide smiles on their faces as they made their way over into the garage. I was just glad they walked in as I had forgotten how tense it was to watch the sport knowing how dangerous it was for them as drivers.

All drivers spent most of their time after the first practice working alongside their engineers and strategists figuring out how they could do better or what could be added to the cars to add the extra chance of winning. This was their first proper practice so it was the first time that the teams had seen how the car performed under pressure, especially with their being a few knocks here and their with opposing drivers.

Later on in the afternoon, practice 2 was finished with the results being quite similar. This time Max Verstappen finishing in p1 with Charles in p2 and Carlos in p3 again. It was a good day for ferrari as they had both their drivers in the top 3 positions, which showed the drivers skills as their performance didn't differ from first practice earlier on in the day.

There wasn't much to do when it was the day of practice only as there weren't as many people around to talk to. There were plenty of fans and of course all the drivers and their teams but Lily and I couldn't find anything to do as we sat next to a pile of tired watching the drivers as they spoke to some of their fans that had come today. The drivers also had to speak to reporters, who were probably asking the same question as every year, which was 'how do you believe you'll do throughout the season if you based it off the first practices', the drivers always having the same response of 'I couldn't tell you, it's not a proper race and anything can happen in formula 1.'