Pretending | Max Verstappen

- 17 -

Zoe

The next two days I manged to stay away from Max. A factor therefore was also his father who kept him busy so he wasn't really looking for me. Okay wrong, he was looking for me and tried to speak to me but his father always needed something from him or wanted to do something with his son.

After yesterdays qualifying where Max reached P3 I heard the two Verstappens in his drivers room as Jos was shouting at him for being so slow. I really wanted to go over and tell Max how proud I was of him and that P3 was still a great result but I was scared.

Scared of Jos Verstappen who could destroy my whole career. Scared that Max was also angry and would maybe shout at me or even worse. Jos' words were still in my head even though I couldn't believe that Max really had hurt his ex.

"Oh Zoe here you are. I thought for a minute you were back in your office because you didn't like it here last time." Christian said as I walked into the garage for today's race.

It was hard avoiding Max when I now worked next to his car in the garage but I manged it to only come here when he was out already and before he came back so we didn't see each other.

"No, I love it here, but I had some things to do in my office."

He slightly nodded before turning towards me and lowering his voice. 

"Is everything okay between you and Max?"

His question got me off guard and at the same moment I saw Jos walking into the garage. Christian followed my look and sighed as he saw the older Verstappen.

"What did he say?"

I couldn't move and when Jos tuned his head and looked me into the eyes with all this hate, a shiver ran down my back. Christian could save my job but i wasn't sure if Jos didn't find another way to get rid of me so I decided to keep my mouth shut.

"Let's focus on the race." I quickly said and stepped over to my screens.

The start was really chaotic. There were a few incidents and unfortunately Max lost several places because he had contact with one of the Mercedes. In the back of the garage I could hear Jos shouting angrily and smashing against the wall.

Max was now on P11 but there was still a half race to drive, but unluckily he got a bit of damage which made the car much slower than usually. I saw it on the data and it was not looking good so I prayed for him to manage it to the end.

I hoped on a good result not only for himself but I knew that Jos would be extremely angry if his son didn't finish on a podium. I was scared that he would actually hit him or something and I really wanted to stand by him but I knew I couldn't.

On the data I saw that the tires weren't the best anymore and I told the engineers who started to consider what to do. I quickly looked over at the rain map and saw big clouds coming faster and faster towards the track.

Suddenly there was a safety car and I suggested to pit for inters which was seen with different opinions. But as Max was still on P10 there wasn't much to lose and they therefore did what I said.

After a half round and the end of the safety car it started massively to rain and I just grinned at the screens in front of me. I was happy for Max that he now had the advantage as every other driver needed to box for inters.

With all the stops and Max's great driving he manged to gain six positions and was now in P4. There were still a couple of laps to go so I crossed my fingers for him and looked at the big screens.

I was more than happy when he reached the finish line as third and Christian came over to me to congratulate me for the boxing stuff with the inters. He hugged me in joy and said what a great job I had done.