Champagne Supernova | Lando Norris

3. Friends

As night fell over Woking, the shimmering daylight that would flood in through the windows had been slowly replaced by the slight buzz of the overhead fluorescent lamps. Most workers had called it a day already, happy to warm up at home after a long, drizzly shift at the McLaren Technology Centre.

It was late February, a time in Formula 1 which was often associated with pre-season havoc; every team rushing to tie up their loose ends before everyone else could see what they would be bringing to the table. Nearly all deadlines were closing in, and there didn't seem to be a single moment of stillness at the factory all throughout the month.

That Friday, however, the cars had been neatly disassembled and packed in their travel containers, perfectly untouchable. Their garage equipment, motorhome and fanzone – every structure imaginable had already departed, either by plane or ship, and a good chunk of it had already arrived in Bahrain. When it came to engineering, every part that would be used in testing was finalised – the fuel was formulated, the tyres out of their reach as Pirelli handled everything. Their strategies had been extensively discussed, as had the setups that would be tested. Still, few aspects of racing were quite as dynamic as strategy and performance, as every engineer knew that weeks of planning could go down the drain as quickly as the first lap of testing was completed, and it was as simple as the car deciding to not respond as they'd anticipated. For now, though, there was little that could be done before pre-season testing actually began but to sit, wait and obsess over what they simply couldn't fiddle with anymore.

The exception for that, it seemed, was Nora.

After the fateful meeting that'd gotten her a shiny new position as a performance engineer, she was whisked to the HR department to have her contract finalised that very same day. When she was told she was expected to start her new position on the following day, with barely any time to clear her T&D desk or at least leave her mailbox somewhat clean, she realised the team's situation was less than ideal.

The other trackside engineers had been as welcoming as they could amidst pre-season stress, to Nora's relief; they were clearly excited to have someone else to bounce ideas off of, but probably most importantly another pair of hands to share the workload. Even though it seemed like everyone was in a never-ending rush, her new team made sure to spare some time for her whenever she had questions or needed some context. They had also started saving her a seat at the lunch hall, and added her to both official and non-official team group chats. She was especially glad to get some time with Peter, who up to that point had been the only performance engineer in the group. He was in his mid-forties, with grey hair only starting to speckle from his temples, and a calm demeanour that generally lacked in the engineering department. He had been Daniel's performance engineer, and with Lando's performance engineer, José, departing for Mercedes he had reluctantly ended up in charge of both drivers.

With Nora's arrival, he was much happier to be able to focus on Oscar meanwhile passing on his knowledge to her. He'd been doing the job for a couple of years now, and Nora wanted to absorb as much secondhand experience as she could. It somewhat surprised her to find that no one seemed to bat an eye to her lack of experience, meaning they either trusted her more than they probably should or, perhaps more tragically, everyone else had too much on their hands to focus on anyone else. But then again, even Nora had trouble finding the time to be anxious about her new responsibilities – it was just her luck, or maybe not, that the new setups and the upgrading project she'd proposed herself were in full swing, meaning she and Paul were absolutely working overtime.

The sheer volume of work was enough to make the days fly by, and before she knew it it was the last Friday before pre-season testing in Bahrain. Nora found herself once more in the simulator room, which had become her best friend and worst enemy over the last few weeks, with some last-minute scenarios to test on new developments. It was nearly 10 pm, which meant that 2 hours had passed since Paul went home and it probably had been 4 hours since Nora's last break. She didn't want to think much about her current state, as she could physically feel how swollen her under eyes were. Two hours prior she'd stupidly rubbed her eyes, so it was likely that her mascara wasn't exactly in good shape either