Fake It - OP

Chapter 21

It's qualifying day for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and I am standing in the back of Oscar's garage with the other people who have garage passes. Though there were only a few of us, I still had to scramble to get a spot near the front earlier when I arrived. Thankfully I've managed to push my way to the front to have the best view of the car, the screens showing lap times, and a few token camera angles around the track. The garage smells like exhaust, and rubber and the air is tense with apprehension for the upcoming day's events. Thankfully I'm pretty good at masking my excitement. I'm not hovering a foot off the ground in excitement so I'm taking that as a win.

Oscar and I made it into the paddock without issue this morning thankfully. I'd opted to walk a few steps behind him coming into the paddock since he spent the length of the paddock talking with his engineer. They talked about a lot and I caught half of the conversation, mostly about areas of improvement and some of the meetings they had that morning. While Oscar was in those meetings I opted instead of exploring the paddock some more, to just relax away from the cameras in Oscar's driver room. There was also air conditioning in the hospitality building, which was the main contributor to why I spent my afternoon there, being that the temperature outside was over thirty-five degrees. The garage is warmer than the air-conditioned room, but thankfully it's still cooler than the track and I watch in apprehension as the last two minutes of Q1 tick down.

Oscar barely manages to get around the track in time to start his last flying lap. He needs to improve on this lap because the banker lap he did already has him currently sitting in the dropout zone.

"Come on," I whisper to myself under my breath.

Lando is into Q2 by a mile having set his lap in the first five minutes of the first round of qualifying. He doesn't need to do a second lap, but Oscar got caught in traffic. I doubt the team blames him for needing to do a second lap.

I let out a deep breath when I saw Oscar's name slide up the order into P8 when he came over the start-finish line—one spot behind Lando. The garage gets warmer as both cars get wheeled into their respective sides of the garage and there is a frenzy of mechanics running in every direction to reset the cars for the second round of qualifying. Neither driver gets out of their car during the short break, which I don't complain about. Nonetheless, I watch the top of Oscar's helmet, being as it was all I could see of him and silently wish him good luck.

The cars both roll out of the garage in sync and the roar of the engines accelerating away is muffled by the thick earmuffs around my ears. If I weren't wearing them I might be deaf.

The track temperature starts to go down with the fading light as the cars set their banker laps. Everyone seems shocked when the Mercedes cars start to lose some serious pace. It wasn't a secret both cars struggled with tire temperature, but it was still warm out. The Mercedes cars, especially George's start to lose a lot of traction in the high-speed corners. Since I am in the garage I'm listening to Oscar's team radio through my earmuffs. There is a chaotic exchange between Oscar and his engineer where his engineer tells Oscar that it's now or never. He needs to set a good lap in case one of the Mercedes crashes out.

I look up at one of the screens in time to see Lewis drift around a slow-speed corner on the track. A crash looks pretty realistic at the moment.

I start biting on the inside of my cheek. Lando has a decent lap, it's by no means amazing, but it's enough to get into Q3. Oscar's though? Not so much. Oscar doesn't say anything over the radio other than a short acknowledgement to his engineer, then he takes off around the track. He thankfully had time for a proper warm-up lap during the panicked messages from the garage and doesn't seem to have any issues with tire temperature.

He starts his lap and I watch as the clock ticks up. He matches his best time in the first sector, then beats his time in the second sector. The third sector is the one that the McLaren car struggles with the most and I hold my breath for the couple of seconds it takes for his final time to show up on the screen.