Deals with Daisy // LN4

14 ~ Surrender

Lando's POV

"Well shit," I mutter as soon as she is out of earshot, all of us staring after her for several moments longer, entirely flabbergasted.

"Boyfriend? Was she not in bed with someone the other day?" Max asks confused and I wave it off as my food is placed down in front of me before I can think of anything else to say. There's nothing that will help explain that and I still don't even have a full answer.

"Did she just tell you to get fucked?" Jon asks and I pull my eyes away from where she just exited and back to the table where the other two were looking at me like I would have an answer. Did she? Sort of sounded like it but also not really.

"I think so... but not so much that she is saying no?" I say, looking to Max as though he might be able to act as translator for my insane ex-best friend. He sits and thinks it over while we all start eating.

"She's played you mate," Max responds after five minutes and I frown at him as I eat through my plate, the table in silence following her exit. "She's said yes but that you can't have it your way. When was the last time you were told no by somebody? It would all be kind of funny if it weren't so... no actually, now the shock has worn off... it's pretty funny! You did push her pretty far..."

"You're useless to me," I tell him and he shrugs off the accusation as we finally drift off the topic and onto others, primarily that I have to get back in the car and hope to make something better from this weekend than I did from the others. I don't really manage it.

The car is almost entirely unchanged from the weekend before and as a result is still one of the slowest in the field by a considerable margin. No matter how many changes I make to the set up, there's a total inability to actually extract any performance, almost exactly how Danny described it being last year. Just a brick wall with no possibility or opportunity to compromise.

The weekend continues with similar frustrations, every turn was a struggle as I once more fucked up in qualifying, damaging my steering as I was busy trying to get the car past what it was capable of and into Q2.

I think qualifying was the most painful part of the weekend... especially when Oscar put the other McLaren into Q3 and was starting almost ten places ahead. It really felt like the warnings of last year were hitting me hard and as much as I wanted to blame it on Daisy's dramatics for distracting me... the issue was the car and not her.

I was so out of control for how I performed... that much was clear from every time the press asked me a question and I just couldn't find an answer. What can we do to speed the car up? What can you improve on for the next race? What are the issues? The answer for all of them was either I don't know or nothing... there was no solution that I could be a part of. I could do work on the sim, try to keep the fans positive and engaged and offer notes to the team but that was it.

It's difficult to lift other people's spirits when mine was so far down the toilet it made my head spin. I'd ended up being drawn into more calls with Fraser over the weekend during my free time until the contract with them was something closer to reasonable. However, even once that was done, I still couldn't quite put pen to paper. That's why I was sat with one contract in front of me and a list of agents... neither appealing me in the slightest.

"Fucks sake..." I groan as I push both piles of paper away from myself, attracting the attention of some of the others at the back of the plane with me. Both Max's sat on either side immediately picking up on the motion.

"Ignore him... he's being a baby," Fewtrell warns Verstappen who was about to say something. "He just needs to call Astera... give into what she wants, if he wants to sign with her," I grimace at the reference to her name, still not fitting the fiery redhead in my mind.