Don't you dare - Lando Norris

10

Sunday

"Natalia, dónde estás? ¡Estamos conduciendo en dos horas!" I heard Carlos stressed voice on the phone as I tried to wake up. I had a hard time getting out of bed at the same time as answering him. I decided to one at a time.

"Espero un momento, estaré allí pronto." He didn't say much more before hanging up. He, as everyone else, was in full belief I was fine to race. Something I still tried to convince myself of. I qualified fourteenth yesterday, not my proudest moment.

Ten minutes later I had my Mercedes merch on and my bag in my hand and I was out of the hotel. My head was slightly pounding which I choose to ignore. I did take an aspirin when I woke up so now I didn't have any other choice than to carry on and hope it would cease.

"Natalia, where have you been?!" I sighed and gave Dani a tired look.

"I'm so sorry, I overslept." She shook her head at me. "Don't tell Toto please," I asked and she let out a laugh. She pushed me lightly to my drivers room.

"Go change, sleepyhead."

I did, and soon enough I was supposed to be warming up. I went out to the paddock to walk for a while. We had an hour til the race now. I didn't have much time on my walk before someone intruded. Guess who?

"Is this really your warm up? Walking around the paddock," he had a smug look on his face. "That must be why you qualified ten full places behind me yesterday." I rolled my eyes, I literally didn't have the energy to respond. When I didn't, Lando kept talking. "Or maybe you're just stubborn and stupid, racing even though you're still hurt." Now I turned to look at him fully, I even stopped in my steps.

"Could you not? I'm very well suited to be racing but it's not like you care anyway so please take care of your own business, Lando." He looked at me for a few seconds. It looked like he was pending between saying something concerning or something really nasty. Like I could've guessed, he chose the second one.

"Don't get me wrong, I just wanted to know how it felt to place behind me?" His smirk only grew by the second.

"Lando, it's not the time." I started to walk again but had to slow down majorly, I couldn't keep the pace up.

"Don't race, are you an idiot for real?" I rolled my eyes.

"Let it go," I told him.

"I don't understand you, this is gonna cost you a lot more than one race."

"You know what, thank you. Because you believing in my capacity this little is gonna make it even more satisfying to beat you today." Then I left him standing. I forced myself to keep walking even though my body was screaming at me to lie down on the ground to just get some rest. I was already exhausted.

I already punched myself mentally for talking back to Lando this way. I was certain already I wasn't gonna finish even close to over him.

"Okay, we're counting down the minutes now. Azerbaijan, Baku, get ready everyone. We're back racing." I heard the commentary echo as I sat in my car, waiting for the formation lap. Beside me on the grid was Yuki. My goal was to at least score some points today. Maybe it was a reach, but I felt like I needed to keep up my results.

I was the only woman, I couldn't let every woman watching down.

The formation lap started, Max was ahead, leading the rest of us trough the track. Even now I struggled, but I tried to keep cool now to save some energy for the race. I had two hours of racing ahead of me after all.