Reflections-C.L

You smell like love

French GP

Sunday 24th July 2022
Race

"Oh and Charles Leclerc is out. He goes off and crushes into the barriers. What an unfortunate turn of events for the Monegasque driver. He gets out of the car and we can see his frustration as he takes his gloves off and throws his head back in defense"

"It's not easy for him getting out at this point of the season considering he started the season fighting for the championship"

End of the race

"...following in third Lydia Hatzi getting another podium."

Lydia gets out of the car throwing her hands up celebrating. She takes of her gloves and helmet before she goes to her team, clapping their hands and hugging them as they congratulate her.

Afterwards she goes towards the reporter for the after race interview.
"Hello Lydia. First of all congrats for the third place." the reporter says.
"Thank you." She replies back, smiling.
"You are currently the 2nd driver in Ferrari and yet you are the one to get another podium." As she hears what he said she couldn't stop but feel awkward and annoyed. Those rumors again.

"When I signed my contract with Ferrari it was clear that I was going to be the 2nd driver so no I don't expect to be treated as the first driver but I'm not here only to support Charles but to also win and I don't win by myself. I have a team, people that help me win and get podiums. " she replies to sound as polite as she could.

"You think you could be able to win this race if you were the no.1 driver in your team?" She squints her eyes at the reporter and puts on a fake smile before she opens her mouth to answer.

"No. It doesn't always have to do about me being the second driver. The team doesn't treat me any less than a driver. I tried to push as much as I could but at the end I couldn't overtake Lewis" she says.

"Thank you Lydia" the reporter says before she leaves, heading towards the cool down room.

When she gets inside she sees Max and Lewis sitting in the chairs and she proceeds to do the same. While the three of them talk they watch the race highlights.

"Yeah in corner 5 it was a little bit-"
"Oh that was bad" Lewis says and Lydia turns her attention from Max to the screen. That's when she sees the red Ferrari getting of track. Charles DNF'd?

"Guys-" she opened her mouth to speak but she was interrupted by someone telling them that it was time to for the podium celebrations.

She closed her eyes taking a deep breath before she got out of the room.

And Charles saw her. He saw her getting into the podium. He saw her getting the trophy in her hand and throwing it in the air and then he saw her spraying the champagne. All from the garage. Then he excused himself and went to his driver room.

He had about an hour before it was time for the press conference. He wanted to scream and cry and lay on his bed under the covers and disappear from the world.

As soon as Lydia got out of the podium she went towards the garage. As she got inside she scanned the crowd trying to find him but he was nowhere to be found.

Shaking some more hands and hearing some more people congratulating her she went to change into clean clothes. Then she took her phone, texting him but he didn't answer so she decided to go and find him.

She got outside his driver room and knocked on the door, but no voice came out. She texted him again and heard the notification noise come from inside the room. She looked around just to make sure that no one was looking and got inside.