A Dream Coming True

Chapter 1

July 3rd, 2022

The music in the car stopped as we parked with all the other cars. The smell of the circuit felt good in my nose and I couldn't help but smile. Finally, I was back on track. Well, not exactly because I'm not a driver, but because I could finally hear the sound of the cars driving around. I've lived with sports car my entire life and not being able to go to races since the pandemic felt horrible.

"You seem excited." said someone next to me.

I turned and smiled even bigger at my dad.

"You can't imagine."

He was a famous driver, an old world champion. He was the one who brought me into motor sports. I used to watch replays of his old races because I wasn't born yet. My parents had me 6 years after my father retired. My mom loved to say that I was her miracle baby. He was phenomenal, like the God of racing. Do you know what it's like to get attracted to something within a minute ? I felt that the second I started to watch Formula 1.

But every beautiful thing has a dark side. There was always pictures of a man in our house, next to my dad. I didn't know who he was until I found a helmet in my father's office when I was 15. I had seen it on some pictures and learnt soon after that the man was Ayrton Senna, my father's teammate. I thought it was weird because I never met him. But I found out my parents were only protecting me because after I made some researches, I saw his accident. It was terrifying. His car crashed into that wall and broke into a thousands pieces. I didn't realize what had really happened until I saw it for the fourth time. I understood why my dad never talked about him, why photos of them were in the house or why we'd still have that helmet.

I never had a conversation about him with my father because I didn't want him to think about it again. He had mourned, I don't know how long, and had succeeded to get through this tragedy. I couldn't be the one to put him in this part of his life again just because I was curious. So I never talked about him with him, but I had searched every type of information I could find. I even remember having nightmares weeks after seeing it.

My dad eventually found out I knew and tried to talk about it with me but I couldn't. Ayrton was like a brother to him. Losing a brother might be one of the hardest thing to experience and having to talk or think about him is horrible. I never went through something like that and I didn't want to put someone I loved in this position.

And one day, just like that, I thought about his family. I learnt that he had a wife, Lilian, but they got divorced ten years before his accident. I wondered if she missed him, if she still loved him and how she felt now. He didn't have children, only a nephew, Bruno. I refused to talk about Ayrton with my dad but I asked him how Bruno was. He said that he was a beautiful and kind kid, a driver, just like his uncle. I wondered if my father had seen him and he told me he visited him once a year to catch up with him. I asked if I could come the next years and my father didn't argue. I think he saw how impacted I was with this story but he always made sure I felt comfortable and tried not to talk about it when I was around.

But there is this thing that affected me the most. The day of his accident, on the 25th anniversary of his death, I was visiting my parents at their home and my mom told me my father was in his office so I went there and I saw him holding a picture, crying. I watched him, my eyes full of tears, until it was too much and I left. I pretended to have something important to do so I went home and just cried. My father had always been strong in front of me because he knew how much it traumatized me and I felt guilty because he couldn't count on me. So since that day, I asked him to go every year on Ayrton's death anniversary to Sao Paulo, where he was buried.

~~~

We walked through the paddock, my father being interrupted every five seconds by journalists, and then Esteban Ocon, one of my closest friends and an Alpine driver arrived, along with Mick Schumacher, another driver. I left my dad and ran to him until I hugged him very tightly, because I was so happy to see him after such a long time.