COLLISION COURSE - Lando Norris [ff]

Seven

“Can you pass me the salt, dear?” His mother asked him and held her hand out open for him to put the shaker in her palm.

“Sure.” He handed it over and went back to stabbing his fork into the roasted green beans he loved. His mother was amazing at cooking those and he loved the smell the house would be filled with. Despite his rather picky eating habits, his mother's dishes held a special place in his heart. And coming home after race weekends would always provide him some freshly cooked food that he enjoyed so much. Since his childhood, his mother had been the person to take care of him mostly, but not exclusively, behind the scenes. Managing the family at home and organizing the drives to the circuits, the travels, school and everything else was usually her domain.
Only now, that he was much older, he realized how important her contribution to his success has been. His parents' constant backing was one of the main reasons for him to ever get this far.

“So you came eighth?” His sister asked and he nodded. “Yeah, I did. The race was pretty harsh on the nerves though. There was a lot going on.”

“I love how you defended against Gasly within the last few laps!” His father praised him and shoved a bit of meat into his mouth.

However, coming back home after a race did not feel like it did when he was a child. His parents took him to nearly every venue, travelling the country by car every other week or even by plane.
Nowadays, he came back home and everything should feel the way it used to years ago, but it somehow did not in the slightest. He had matured throughout the years and started to appreciate having his own place with his own rules- at first, not too far away from home and now in Monaco. After all, he was just an average young adult who tried to figure out where to go with his life from here.

“Yes, it was hard keeping the Alpine behind to be honest. I am not really satisfied with the results this year. The car is nowhere near to where they had promised me for it to be,” he complained in a resigned manner. The team had analyzed the lacking performance several times already– more or less without any success. Only a few upgrades and different setups had offered little compensation for the overall disappointing car.

“I am sorry, my love. Maybe the last update after the summer break will change things up for you.” Lando’s mother tried to stay positive and not to give up on her hopes in order to keep her son from sinking his thoughts too deep into it. Whenever he had messed up a race as a child, he would lock himself up in his room for a couple of hours before half-heartedly trying to gulp a few bits of food down. She had eventually figured out a handful of ways to cheer him up after a mishap. Green beans was usually one of them.

“So what’s on for tomorrow?” Adam Norris asked his son who was still busy with his food.

“I have a week off before going to Hungary in two weeks. I will probably work at the MTC for a bit. They asked me to attend a meeting by the end of the week,” he answered and stuffed more beans into his mouth.
The conversations by the dinner table still felt timeless and weightless even after his groundbreaking success in one of the highest paid sports in the world. For his family he was still the small, curly haired boy Lando who rode horses as a child.

“A meeting? What is that going to be about?” His mother seemed confused by why her son’s bosses wanted him to make the way to Woking before a race. It was nothing unusual for a racing team to put in some extra work whenever there were weekends off in order to maximize the overall performance especially that of the car and actually, meetings were nothing surprising either. Nevertheless, the tone in Lando's voice sounded worried even if it was just subconciously.

“I am not sure to be honest. They told me they wanted to evaluate Silverstone,” he explained what the e-mail he had received just an hour after arriving back in Bristol had included.