Mirrorball - maxverstappen

2 - stay out of grown folks business

The prolonged fight over the window seat with Elvan became a tradition over the last few years, he pulls my hair, I slap him and he ultimately wins. „C'mon be happy that your favorite brother is traveling with you to your race." I look over at Elvan, pissed because of the fact I loose hair every time we get on a plane, and roll my eyes. „Lie, Kaan is my favorite, he has a private jet and more money than you." „Well neither of us are his favorite." he says raising an eyebrow and putting his headphones back into his ears. Rude.

I gotta cut him some slack, Elvan surprised me with a trip to Bali for my Birthday last week while Kaan put us on babysitting duty the day before we left. Two days before we had to be in Austria for the GP, we visited our hometown in Turkey. Here I was gifted a Key to the City for being the first Turkish person to win an F1 race. The picture of me holding a huge Key in my hand while Elvan and I were being forced to fed food by Turkish aunties made its rounds on social media.

El is only three years older than me, while the skip between our other siblings and us is bigger. Kaan is 34 and Yaren is 30 which are a couple of years between Elvans 20 and my 17 years of age.
This just enabled Elvan and I to get treated like their children instead of their siblings.

I remember when I was 15, Mick and I stayed at Kaan's home in Madrid because I was racing in Spain that week and Mick wanted to support me. Kaan had newly bought a LaFerrari and we were bored while he was out running groceries, his wife was visiting her family with their newly born twins. Meaning: no-ones home, the car is in the garage and mick and I are both capable of driving cars.  We drove it out and the boy that's been my bestfriend since birth was navigating me through this rich neighborhood.

Just as we passed through a street of Mansions my brother and I came face to face. Out of shock I stopped the car. „Omg he's gonna kill us" „We're done, this is the end." I said looking at Mick, a second before my huge brother pulled me out of the car by my hair. As you can tell, I keep my hair tied around my brothers by now. Let me tell you something: Mick and I got the beat down of the century. We would have not made it out alive if our savior Carlos Sainz, wasn't the owner of the mansion my brother was standing in-front of and at the same time my brother's bestfriend.
Never was I THAT sore driving a race and the two of us had to clean the house with a pair of toothbrushes.

The plane lands as Elvan wakes up from his beauty sleep. „Good morning pisslord" „don't push it" he looks over and glares at me, reminding me that he is in-fact my older brother. We walk out of the plane as our luggage was handled by the airplane staff. They upgraded our tickets when the lady at the front desk recognized my brother and started flirting with him. Toto as of now still pays me a reserve driver salary and Elvan is stingy so his charm saved us again.

It's only Tuesday morning, so we had enough time to spend a few hours in Graz, one of my favorite cities in the world. Esteban and Mick invited themselves to spend the day together, which was no problem to either of us. Esteban and Elvan get along quite well, Esteban is older than me and when Elvan used to come to my karting races the two of them would hang out. Mick is almost our brother at this point, when my father was younger he was appointed to oversee the teams powered by my grandfather's engines in F1, he spent most of his time on track alongside the drivers and befriended probably the best driver ever: Michael Schumacher. Through him Papa also met Jos, Michael's old teammate and Max's father. Family vacations on the Maldives, same boarding schools as children, shared properties, investing into the same scams... you get it.

While the Schumacher and Altins stayed close knit, the Verstappens didn't, well Max and Jos didn't. Our Moms are still inseparable and I have my contact with Vicky, Max's sister, here and there. After Sophie and Jos divorced in '08, my father distanced himself from Jos, we would only see Max from race to race in karting which was also barely as he would mostly race in the leagues above us.