GREENE | CS55

22 - But You Have To

Pierce was doing everything that she could to get herself in the zone.

She'd spent an hour before getting in the car with one AirPod in, listening to Daniels pre-race playlist and resisting the urge to press skip whenever anything slightly too obscure came on. 'You've got to listen to it through and through!' Daniel swore to Pierce like his life depended on it. Which, Pierce had come to learn with Daniel and his music, it actually might.

However, her twitchy, impatient temperament took over, resulting in the playlist being paused and the remaining AirPod retired to its case, clicked shut, and shoved into Holden's pocket as she huffed and paced the length of her drivers room.

Romain always spent his time training his reflexes in whatever space the drivers had available. Pierce called on her trainer, thinking she could work out some of her nerves by tossing a tennis ball back and forth. It seemed simple enough, in theory.

"You're clearly not concentrating," Kris set his hands on his hips, leveling with Pierce after a valiant twenty-minute attempt.

She bit her tongue, and rather than responding 'Well then, you're not doing your job very well,' Pierce sighed to herself, chucking the tennis ball against the wall beside her as she released a huff of air. She wasn't concentrating. She knew she wasn't concentrating. They moved on to the lights, where Pierce had to attempt a timed trial of what she closely compared to arcade whack-a-mole (minus the mole). She knew there had to be a better way, but she was willing to give anything a shot.

Sitting in the cockpit of her number fifteen car, all strapped up and fully prepared to go racing, Pierce saw the formation of buttons from earlier on the imaginary board behind her lowered visor. The light on her steering wheel's screen as it booted up, the buttons around it coming to life. Burning alight, sending a twitch through Pierce's nerves, the same twitch she felt earlier.

The 23 corner city-circuit track in Hanoi was new to all teams in attendance, meaning that no one had an accurate expectation of what the capabilities of their cars were prior to free practice and a vague idea based on other city circuits. It was set to be 55 counter-clockwise laps in the beaming Vietnamese sun, that much was certain.

Teams were already left in the dark about what to expect, which made the performance of the two Haas cars that much more of a shock to everyone. Haas included.

The measly eighth and ninth positions earned a deafening string of cheers from the garage on Saturday afternoon. Gunther grasped onto the closest engineer, wrapping his arms around them and jumping up and down as more engineers piled on. Anyone would think that the team had scored a podium, from the commotion caused.

Pierce could swear that she could still hear it now, ringing through her eardrums like the purr of the engine behind her. Gunther called Jim, his eyes close to tears as he served the CEO the good news. Pierce watched the call out of the corner of her eye, a proud feeling lingering on. She wouldn't hear from Jim. She was clear for another day.

She snapped back as Grosjeans' brake lights and the exhaust emitting from the cold engine danced in front of her. Romain; her teammate, and her most important target.

"Radio check," Ashley's voice sounded bright, like it existed in a whole different world from the buzz of machinery echoing around her.

Pierce's thumb held the radio button down, "Clear."

The slight quake in her voice was hardly audible to her engineer, but Pierce could hear it. She could feel it. She feared it. Now wasn't the time to mess up. A good streak and a generous start in the points was just what Pierce needed to prove to Jim, and anyone else watching, that she was still as hungry as ever to race. To be in a Formula One seat.