Pit Lane Calamity

Chapter 1: Lavender Norris

"Lavender darling, quickly come downstairs, I've booked racing sooner than I thought today!"
'Here we go again,' you thought, walking down the long flight of stairs to the porch where all the shoes and coats are kept 'rushing around to get to racing for Lando'. Racing was getting boring for you, nothing good was happening, there was no new competition on the track so it was always yourself and Lando p1 and p2 (in either order), all the other kids didn't race on a daily basis like you did so you and Lando were always way better than all the other kids but there was no way of putting you up a division to race the older kids as you were both under 18 for another month, when Lando would move up, leaving you to dominate all the other drivers. As you got into your mother's Lamborghini Aventador in dressed in your purple racing suit, you sighed, knowing the inevitable would happen, you'd either beat Lando, or you wouldn't

At the end of the 14-minute journey, you see a car you'd never seen before a rather shiny new car, with an odd licence plate you'd never seen before. Was this new competition for you? Or did one of the parents get a new car? Whatever it was, suddenly you were more excited for the race and you hurriedly jump out the car slamming the door a little too hard after you grab your personalised balaclava, helmet and gloves, all in a gorgeous grape colour. Your metalic grape helmet had LN on one side, and your race number 88 printed onto the other side along with 5 black roses up the back and top. You put it between your legs so you can slip your black balaclava and black gloves on just as Lando did on the other side of the car. Taking your helmet under your arm, you walk hurriedly into the karting centre to see who had the new car. As you enter a gorgeous Australian boy stood at the front desk signing up, a warm sensation floods your body from the chest outwards. However, you turned to see Lando shivering complaining to your mother it was cold. You look back over to the sign in desk, and the Australian boy, number 81, hadn't even noticed you. But still, your heart skips a beat every time you caught a glance of his brilliant brown eyes, a rather deep dark brown, almost black, but when they caught the light just right, you could see the flecks of brown.

"BOO!"
"JESUS LANDO!"
Seeing you in rather a trance like state looking at number 81, he decided to make you jump out of your skin. Lando laughs at you almost hysterically
"Hahaha. I see you're looking at the new formula 4 driver, Oscar Piastri. He's just moved here from Australia. "
"Wait, how'd you know who he is?"
You look at Lando rather confused as you don't really keep up with Formula 1, never mind formula 4.
"It's all over the news, Lavender, "the new 15 year old f4 driver", hes here to practice. How do you not know who it is?"
He rolls his eyes at you, but you don't notice as you're very excited to hear that he's your age. By the time you look back over, Oscar isn't at the desk anymore. It's your mother. You hurriedly look around for him, but he's nowhere to be seen.

On the track you don't see him anywhere as you're too focused on beating your 17 year old brother just to rub it in his face post race again only to realise when you got off the track that you weren't P1 as you had initially thought, Oscar was. You punch a plastic barrier in your temper, "My track time was so good. How on earth can he be P1? I didn't see him anywhere on track! You must surely be joking, mother. He has to be P3, right? He has to have been behind us this entire time! That little-"
Lando stamps on your foot. "OW! HEY! He stole P1 from me. What do you expect?!"

You hear the front door of the karting centre slide open and see Oscar walking out, and a million thoughts run through your head.'Do I run after him?' 'What would I say if I did?' 'Did he even notice me?' 'Even if he did, would he have acknowledged me?' 'What if he thinks I'm a loser because I wad over 30 seconds behind him?' 'But what if he did notice me and he didn't know what to say to me either?' As you walk back out to the car, Oscar and his parents are nowhere to be seen, not even the car pulling out of the front car park. "Lando, how do I get his attention? He makes me so nervous that even if I tried to talk to him, it would just come out as word vomit, not a thought as to what." Lando chuckles at you a little,
"You, talking to a Formula 4 driver, Hahaha, in your dreams. He's never going to notice someone who doesn't even want to go into driving like you."
Thoughts begin to race through your head again like zebras running from lions, 'what if Lando's right? What if he really does think I'm a loser because I'm not as passionate about driving as he and lando are?'
"Lando, don't say that to your sister!"
"I'm just telling the truth, maybe he likes women passionate for the sport, and Lavender, she's just not, is she?"
"Lando!"

When you get home you run up to your room with your ipad not even waiting to take your shoes off and your mother gets annoyed, but you don't care, you're going to search for and watch every single one of Oscars races that you can find so that you can beat him while he's on track. As soon as some videos pop up and his face is everywhere on your screen, your heart begins to beat faster, and it burns your entire chest. Yeah, you've felt love before for some other guys that you've seen on the track at karting, but this was something else. Surely this was true love? You study and write down all of his tactics and techniques just so tomorrow you can get closer to him on track, maybe you could cut that 30 seconds gap between yourself and him maybe just to 5 seconds, or maybe 1 second, maybe you could be good enough to beat him or even just P1 and P2 but without that awful 30 second gap. Just in the middle of thought your mother swings the door open, bashing it off your desk, "Lavender I told you to take your god damn shoes off didn't I, look, now all the gravel from the car park is all over your damn bed" she aggressively sweeps it off your bed onto the floor "go get the hoover! The maid should not have to clean this up because you don't listen to instructions" she swoops out the bedroom before you even got a second to respond "And pick up your jaw" you hear Lando call as he walks past your bedroom to his.

The next day you go to the track excited to race oscar, maybe this was your chance to talk to him. As you get into kart number 88 you see him next to you in 81, you look over but he's not looking at you, he's looking away down the track 'why doesn't he ever notice me' as you all pull away oscar storms off into the lead but you put your foot down and catch back up to him hoping you can get in front of him, but your brother swoops past you on the right rather than hitting the apex of the corner. You can hear him laughing, it being slightly muffled but you can hear it as he has a rather distinct laugh "that little-" another kart overtakes you "what am I doing" you pull away faster than ever down the straight hoping to catch back up to oscar but as you go past Lando, you can't seem to see him anywhere on the track. Racing around the track, braking extremely late around the corners just so you can maybe catch up. 'Ha there he is' you think as you catch a glimpse of him going around the next corner. As you get there you barely take your foot off the throttle hoping you can get around the corner quickly so you can catch him up, but to no avail, you skid slightly almost going into the barriers "damnit!" you shout as you swerve back into the track, Oscar quickly pulling out of your sights 'what am I doing' you think 'why am I trying to do this, he's never going to notice me anyways."