REMEMBER THE NAME

2019:13

Sophie is woken up to the sound of someone throwing up. Initially she just rolls over, guessing it to be the people in the next room, using a pillow to cover her ears because sick is one of the things she really struggles to deal with. It's only when the toilet flushes and Lando walks out of the bathroom wearing his crumpled clothes from the previous day, looking worse for wear that she remembers last night.

"Rough morning?" She smirks from under the duvet.

"Shh stop shouting." He scrunches his face and places a hand to his head whilst standing at the foot of the bed. "Why are you not as bad as me." He grumbles, picking the pillow up off the ground and placing it on the other side of the bed before lying on top of it.

"Because I knew I would have interviews today so I put a rehydration sachet in my water and drank it alongside a couple of paracetamol. I still don't feel great but I'm a hell of a lot better than you." She explains, getting up to brush her teeth, feeling insecure about her morning breath.

Once she's finished she comes back with a glass of water with a rehydration sachet in it and a pack of paracetamol, handing it over to Lando. "Thanks." He mumbles. "How bad was I last night?" He grimaces.

"Well, you ended up falling and not being to get up twice - both of which affected me thank you." She rolls her eyes. "And then you refused to get off the floor so you ended up sleeping there."

"Did the media get any of it? I don't want to make Charlottes life hard?" He looks sympathetically.

"I don't know." She truthfully answers. "I've not been on my phone yet."

On that note she leans across and picks it up, she had kept her wifi off during the night so her notifications hadn't all came through, but she noticed it was 10 o'clock so she had to get ready for check out.

"I have check out in an hour, so if you want I can check out a bit early and drop you off at your hotel so you can get your stuff?" She offers, looking back at the boy who was almost passed out again.

"That would be great thank you." He starts to dose off, so Sophie walks across and brandishes the curtains open to flood the room with light to which Lando groaned in displeasure.

"What, I thought you didn't like the dark." She laughs evilly.

—

"Hello Sophie, it's nice to meet you." One of the producers who would be hosting the interview said, placing their hand out towards the female F1 driver.

"It's nice to meet you too." She smiles kindly before taking a seat on the chair she was directed to.

"So just to go over with you, because of scheduling issues we weren't able to record your first set of interviews so we're asking you to act as though you were at the start of the season. Is that alright?"

Sophie was unsure about her acting capability but it's what she needed to do. "I'll give it my best shot." She smiles at them.

"Okay so let's take it back then." The camera flashes red to let her know that filming has began. "Will you introduce yourself for the viewers?"

She smiles towards the camera. "My name is Sophie Stoddart, I'm 19 years old and a driver for Williams Rokit in the 2019 season." Sophie smiles proudly, hiding away all the betrayal she has for the team to express what was her excitement at the beginning of the season.

"How does it feel to be racing for Williams, we know that the past couple of seasons haven't been their best?"

Sophie thinks about the question for a moment. "Well I think that it provides an opportunity for me to help them get back up in the standings."

"Are you sure you can do that?"

And before Sophie could snap about the terrible team strategy, she had to take a moment to realise that this was supposed to be before the season started. "I'll do my best." She smiles.

"And your teammate for this season is George Russell, who you had a very close battle with in F2. How would you define that relationship?"

"I would say we have a good relationship. He's very much like an older brother, sometimes we annoy each other, we're very competitive with each other, but ultimately we really care about each other." She smiles glad that they got right to defining it.

"Now Williams car was late for testing In Barcelona, how did that impact you?"

They really were going to start firing the tricky questions at her. "I'm think it more so affects the whole team. We didn't get enough time to get used to the car, didn't get to gain as much data as the other teams did and that all will have a negative impact."

"Why was the car late?"

"Ask Claire." She instantly fired back, it wasn't her place to defend how shit the inner workings of the team was.

"Now we're just going to do a bit of a time jump now if that's okay?" The producer smiles at her so she kindly smiles back and nods her head.

"Throughout the races it has been clear that Williams have asked you not to overtake George, does that annoy you?"

Now they're looking for the gossip.

"I think you can tell my emotions from how I've responded back." She lightly laughs to diffuse the tension.

"And what we want to know is if you've not agreed with these orders, why haven't you just ignored them?"

"I'm a team player." She crosses her arms. "I understand that they pay strategists to look in to it, and I don't always agree with what they've came up with, but that's all I'm willing to say on the matter." She smiles thinly.

"Would you say it's affected your relationship with George?"

"As I've said we've grown up together through the sport and we've both became very good at leaving our issues on the track, so I would like to say it hasn't." She tries to stop any future rumours.

"Do you see yourself staying with Williams next year?"

She takes a moment to think how she should answer this, looking back at Debbie who doesn't know I've been in talks with other teams. "That depends on them since I've not seen a contract yet." She sadly smiles on the outside, but knows on the inside that when this releases it may shift the blame towards Williams.

"I think that does us for now Sophie, thank you." The producer stands up to shake her hand again.

"No bother, just let me know in advance if you're going to make me the new villain okay?" She jokes as the assistant helps me de-mic.

"Everyone loves a villain." The producer jests.