Deals with Daisy // LN4

2 ~ An Unfamiliar Face

Lando's POV

What a crap start to an already bad weekend, I think as I walk to the strategy meeting I had managed to drag myself out of bed for. I was only here early for my mum, a message from her that woke me up this morning urging for me to be a bit more positive than I had been on the phone last night. So I'd gotten here early to say hi to people, smile, be a positive influence - this season I was the official leader, the oldest and most experienced on the team which was dumb but here I was.

Who did that girl think she was? Why didn't I ask? Not that it mattered I guess but she was very annoying and if she's working with Oscar then presumably she's going to be around a decent amount. Damn... definitely one way to make a day more frustrating.

I don't even know why I talked to her in the first place but I couldn't stop myself from intervening when I heard her on the phone. Let's just say that if she wasn't exaggerating then I could see why she was so angry... sounded like she'd been cheated on and given her rather graphic description - she found out in a mentally scaring way.

Then I thought hitting on her might give her a little boost... being cheated on sucks but it seems as though I was very wrong on that one. I only seemed to make it worse but she was very quick witted, her comeback was good and if it hadn't been aimed at me I probably would have laughed, even I could admit that.

I grab breakfast before walking to the meeting room to be early, scrolling through my phone with only one eye actually on the phone as my mind wandered back to the girl from the hall. There was something familiar about her but for the life of me I didn't have a clue what it was. All I did know was that she was British and she had really nice red hair. I'd only known one other person to have ginger hair but hers was much brighter and curly - this girls was very muted and pin straight.

Anyways... she was annoying. Was the interaction fun though? Yes... honestly the sparring match was probably the most fun I'd had since testing started and we realised that fuck our car was slow. I wouldn't deny that I'd been in a bit of a mood, especially as I saw yet another video stat cross my screen comparing the top speeds of the cars from testing.

I definitely wasn't going to like that post because fuck the facts.

"Hey Oscar - who's the new girl in your team?" I ask as he and some of the engineers file in through the door, fist bumping Will as he sits next to me and Oscar pauses as he looks at me confused. "The new girl? Ginger hair?"

"I don't have anyone like that in my team..." Oscar says awkwardly, his Australian accent drawing out the words as he takes his seat across from me and I frown at the screen in front of me, waving away the words as I try to mime as though it was me that was confused. To be fair, I definitely was confused. The girl had definitely said she worked for one of the driver's... and it was definitely a McLaren lanyard she had around her neck. Did she work for Daniel? Nah, that didn't make sense...

One of the reserves? Mick, Stoffel, Felipe, Palau?... that must be the answer.

Although if she was with Mick surely she'd be at Mercedes... with Stoffel or Felipe she should be at Aston - especially Felipe. Alex was in the US and not here so that also didn't really make sense. Fuck I am confused. I don't really hear any of the strategy session as I message Palau to see if there was someone from his team at the track. 

It was halfway through the meeting when he sent me back a quick message saying 'yes', relieving me of that distraction so that I could focus back in on the set-up options that weren't going to make a huge difference to how slow our car was. Then as if sent from an angel, a message from my mum follows it.

Be positive.

It's cheesy, I know but she was genuinely my best motivator and the sweetest person I'd ever known. The reminder was what I needed as I switched the phone off and fully refocused on what was being discussed, trying to feed in on the feelings of different sim set-ups because maybe other people were slower than we thought and I could still get a good session in if I pushed hard enough. I just needed to work hard to get things to align better and so that was the plan, do my best... that's all I could do.