𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘯 𝘬𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴 || 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘰

twelve

Carlos was confused.

He was genuinely perplexed. They were well into the season and the car had been working but this weekend it was almost as if he couldn't control it. It was taking everything, every ounce of control he possessed to refrain from sending the car into a barrier or even worse, into another driver. He wasn't intimidated, this was far from the first time he had dealt with a faulty car in his years of experience with Formula One. 

Akin to every other field of his life, he planned on facing this problem maturely and methodically. He wouldn't jump to conclusions, certainly would blame himself before the team in any case. But this wasn't a failure on his part, he couldn't detect any errors on his side and neither could his engineers. This was a mechanical failure, not a driver problem.

In any case, between him and Lando, at least one was flying around the circuit. For the first time all season, the Spanish driver began to regret his decision to leave the team. Ferrari was not what he expected it to be, yes he knew it would be extremely businesslike but he hadn't anticipated the brewing tensions between him and his teammate. He'd look over at the McLaren garage and see his boyfriend and Daniel Ricciardo laughing, possibly at one of their inside jokes that Carlos could never quite understand and though he wasn't the jealous type, there was a part of him that wished he was still a part of that racing family.

It had been entirely his decision to leave, in truth. Ferrari had offered him the contract, but McLaren had not done a single thing to suggest that they wanted his departure. In fact, Lando knew they had been planning to offer him another multi year deal before they found out he would be making a team switch. Though the irrational side of Carlos' brain tried to convince his logical side that McLaren was happy about his leaving, he knew they weren't. Daniel wasn't performing at a high level in the car, and it had broken him a couple of times seeing Lando watching him from down the paddock. It was a harsh reminder of what could have been, being able to kiss his boyfriend in his driver's room without running the risks of what had happened in Bahrain.

A Q1 exit was not what Carlos needed. It was his first of the season, one of the only times that his teammate would go on to out qualify him. Frustrated, he took off his helmet rather aggressively, brushing his hair out of his eyes. It was almost worse that it wasn't his own fault, as least if he knew where he had gone wrong he could audit for the race the following morning. But in this case he was merely a bystander, a potential scapegoat for the people that wouldn't blame the car. 

But this way, the team was dumbfounded as to where it had gone wrong. In simulations around the circuit, the car had been up to par and performed as expected if not slightly better. But it was almost a different car, what Carlos was dealing with.

There was also visible difficulty for the car with the number 16 emblazoned on it. Charles had barely managed to slip through the first qualifying in fourteenth. It was somewhat of a relief for Carlos to know he really wasn't the issue in that case, that his teammate was also adversely affected by something about the beast in their control in combination with the track. 

And then, just when the Spanish driver thought the day couldn't get any worse, it did.

Charles had, in fact, been knocked out in the second qualifying, in the exact same position of fourteenth. It was a disappointing day for the team in red, they could only hope for, quite literally, a better tomorrow in the race itself. Both drivers were capable of defending and overtaking, they would both embark on recovery drives in hopes of points that could be critical to the championship. 

But that was not the worse part, the Spanish driver really didn't care about the performance of his teammate, at least not internally. It was only useful to him as far as learning from where Charles might have failed went. The worse part, was that Carlos' heart stopped while watching the third qualifying from the Ferrari garage.