A Dream Coming True

Chapter 18

September 2nd 2022 

I was exhausted. 

Today's free practices were hard but it still felt good to be in the car. Tomorrow qualifying and Sunday the race. I just had one last thing to do today. 

I sat down in the chair in front of Otmar Szafnauer, my hands shaking a bit. I didn't know the exact reason of my presence here, but an idea formed itself. 

Did they want to recruit me ? 

Otmar stood up and shook my hair. 

"How are you Pierre ?" 

"Pretty good and you ?" 

"I feel perfectly fine. We're in front of McLaren for the fourth place in the Constructor Championship and the car is good." 

We both sat down and suddenly his face was a lot more serious. 

"Well Pierre, do you know why we asked you to come here today ?" 

"I might have an idea but I don't want to get false hopes." 

"Then let's make things clearer." 

He put his elbows on the desk and his hands together. 

"We heard that you still don't have an official seat for next year. Are we correct ?" 

"For the moment yes, that's true." 

RedBull hadn't mentioned resigning me for the 2023 season and this was stressing me. A lot. 

"As you know, we got a problem with the signing of Oscar Piastri with Alpine." 

"I don't know the details but I heard about that." 

Everyone heard about that. 

Alpine had announced the prodigious Oscar Piastri, winner in his rookie season of F3 and F2 and an honorable member of the Alpine Academy, as their driver for the 2023 season after Fernando Alonso decided to leave Alpine for Aston Martin because Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement on social media during the summer break. But apparently, Oscar never agreed to this and decided instead to sign with McLaren. 

There was always a lot of drama during the summer break, to the delight of the journalists. 

"I won't talk about this because that's not why we wanted you to come." 

God, he was starting to stress me out. 

"I'm not going to beat around the bush, we want you as a driver for next season." 

Hearing it and thinking it were two different things. 

"You have a good potential Pierre, and we believe you can become a world champion someday." 

"Lying won't help you." I said frustrated. I didn't need a speech full of crap on how good I was and how I deserved to be given a chance. I'd had this speech a thousand times and every time I messed up. 

"We're not lying. Have you seen what you managed to do with your actual car ? Imagine what you would be able to do with a much better one." 

I had to say, they were good negotiators. Who never dreamed of being a world champion ? Surely not me. 

But I couldn't make a decision this important right now. There were a lot of things I had to think about before. 

"Look, this proposition is very interesting. And I have to admit that representing my country seems very good but I can't take this decision right now without having some time to decide. I don't even know if I'm still in a contract with RedBull for the next season. I'll have to talk with my manager about the different possibilities."