Don't you dare - Lando Norris

01

I felt the nerves as I, alone, walked trough the entry to the Bahrain paddock. I swiped my paddock pass and saw my profile show on the little screen beside me. I smiled at the multiple cameras that were pointed at me.

I was officially a formula one driver.

"Natalia, how are you feeling about your first formula one weekend?" I looked right into the camera and smiled.

"I've never felt more at home."

"Are you nervous? You must feel a lot of pressure racing against your brother, how will the sibling rivalry turn out?" I tried not to roll my eyes already and just smiled and gave the man walking next to me a laugh.

"We try to be nice to each other. Hopefully we'll be able to keep that up on the track as well." I used my sarcastic voice, making the man laugh before he dropped the camera.

"Aww, Natalia you're here!" I gave Lewis a hug as I walked into the Mercedes hospitality. I'd only met him once before and to say the least, he was the sweetest person I'd met. Like a big brother he guided me trough the Mercedes head quarter and spoke to me about his long and successful experience in formula one. Not that I really needed another brother on the grid. One was definitely enough.

"Hi Lewis! How are you?" He nodded as we walked together towards the garage and said hi to the team members we met on the way.

"I'm good, I'm good. How are you feeling? Nervous?" I shrugged.

"Not too bad. I'm just really excited." We found our driver rooms next to each other and separated as it was now time to get changed into the race suit.

"Today we're not keeping our eyes off our 2023 rookies. One of them holding a familiar name, Natalia Sainz. We recognize her after winning last years formula 2 championship. That's a great talent walking over to the Mercedes garage. The fact that Mercedes quickly jumped to sign her shows you her talent itself."

"And there she is. Out on track. The first ever female formula one driver. Mercedes have given Natalia the morning to test out the car, giving Lewis the afternoon. This is truly a spectacularly historical day." 

"And that's it for this mornings session. I have to say, I don't think I've looked forward to a season this much in a long time. We've got a few exciting rookies we get to follow this year."

"Oh yes, both Oscar Piastri and Natalia Sainz look very promising. We're gonna have to keep a close eye on them this weekend. I'm really looking forward to see wether they'll help bring Mercedes or McLaren back to the top."

"I think actually Laura has Natalia with her right now down in the pit lane."

"Natalia, how did the car feel? This is such an incredible day, the statistics you've just made." I smiled at Laura who stood in front of me. I had tied my race suit by my hips, wearing my fireproof shirt on my upper body.

"It felt amazing, I feel so blessed to be here. I don't even know what to say." I was at a loss for words. I had just started my lifelong dream. And this was only the beginning.

"That's great, and how do you feel in comparison to the other drivers. I saw you were even faster than both George Russel and Lando Norris." Her words made me smile. That was something to be proud of for today, I knew that. I nodded to her with a smile. "And here he is now, Lando a quick word." I had my back turned to him, therefore I hadn't seen him. When she called on his I turned my head to see him. I hadn't seen that face in a long time.

He walked over to us without saying a word to me. He raised his eyebrows at Laura, urging her to continue. That was kinda rude. "How do you feel about the car, it doesn't seem like the car you were hoping for, am I right?" He sighed before he nodded.

"Yeah, not a great day. Though considering it's first day of testing we still have lots of time to improve. I'm confident we will." He didn't send me a look. From what I could tell he was pissed off by his results.

"And what do you have to say about Natalias performance? You do know each other trough your brother, right?" She turned to me when asking the second question. I half nodded, half shook my head. "Kinda," I answered.

"Not really. And I think she got lucky. She's a rookie and she can't forget that just because she was two tenths of a second faster than me and some of the other drivers. She needs to learn for real what driving is like." His rude tone made my stomach turn around. It wasn't like we'd ever been really close, but this was really out of character.

I rolled my eyes and stepped closer to them both. "And I think it's important that the drivers work on themselves if they can't handle a woman beating them on their first day of the job." Then I smiled at Laura and walked back to the Mercedes garage and up to my drivers room.

A few minutes later a knock came on my door. I opened it to find Anastasia, my PR manager, and not with a happy face on. "What was that?" I assumed she was referring to the interview. I shrugged to her and walked back into the room. She followed me and closed the door.

"This is not good. We don't want people to see you as a bratty girl. They're already gonna throw hate on you, we don't need to increase it ourselves." I sighed but nodded to her words.

"I'm sorry, I know. It's just... he was acting like a jerk, and I just had to at least try and put him in place. He used to be kinda sweet, I don't know who that was."