The Racing Line | M.V.

12. Australian Grand Prix

Liv came to a stop behind Lewis and next to Valtteri, waiting for the rest of the cars to line up on the starting grid, she focused on the track and the cars ahead of her, tuning everything else out. It was just her and the car... and another 19 cars but that was okay.

The lights went off one by one.

And it's lights out and away we go!

Olivia had a good reaction start, accelerating and sticking to Lewis' outside as Bottas tried to do the same thing to Max. However Max had a better start and was able to get slightly ahead, closing Valtteri's gap on the first corner. As they entered the straight in Sector 1 the order was still Max, Lewis, Valtteri and Liv.

By the 10th lap Liv tried to get that inside line on the third corner to overtake Valtteri, when suddenly there was a collision. It all happened so quickly Olivia only saw cars in front of her spinning, debris flying and a cloud of dirt right in front of her as she heard the sound of a crash.

She steered right to avoid the collision and barely made it, but not without some damage, as the yellow flag was shown she started to slow down.

"Is everyone okay? Who was that?" asked Liv on the radio right away.

"That was Verstappen, Hamilton and Valtteri" said Leo over the radio.

"Is Max okay?" she asked with a slight tone of urgency in her voice. She knew it couldn't have been that bad, they all recognized a bad crash whenever it happened.

"He's okay, he's out of the car" said Leo "Safety car is out".

"I think I've got a puncture" said Liv "I drove over some debris".

"Come into the pits Liv" he said. After a few seconds Leo came back on the radio "Red flag. Red flag".

"And everyone is okay right? Everyone is out?" she repeated.

"Yes Liv, Max is out of the car and everybody else too" repeated Leo, knowing Liv very damn well after many years working together. Max also tended to get in quite a few accidents the past few years, so her worry was always the same.

Liv came back into the pits. She got out of the car as the team started checking that everything was in order with her car. Meanwhile, she walked over to Leo and the rest of the team.

"What do you think of hard tyres?" she asked "Let's take it till the end" she said covering her mouth so no cameras could read her lips.

"Do you really think you could make it? It's 48 laps" said Leo

Liv nodded "I think I can" she said "leave the tyres right now, so nobody gets any ideas. Let's play it like we are doing a two stop but once we need to get back onto the grid we change to hards before they get a chance to react".

"You're gonna lose a lot of pace by the end" said Leo.

"I'll be so far ahead it won't matter, once they start catching up to me I'll be crossing that finish line" she said confidently.

Leo smiled "Okay Liv, I trust you" then he turned to speak over the radio with the mechanics, asking them to change Liv's tyres to softs, not disclosing the plan to change the tyres to hards right before leaving the pitlane.

Liv saw the mechanics bringing out the soft tyres to her car and tried to play if off like it was no surprise, like it was all part of the plan. Now that her strategy was in motion she turned to the screen to see the replay of what had happened.

Lewis was getting ahead of Max on the corner, he got the apex and tried to close Max's line around the outside, blocking him. Lewis probably thought Max would yield and brake, but that wasn't in Max's DNA. There was nowhere else for Max to go. He could either brake or drive off into the gravel, Lewis had blocked him completely. When neither of the cars yielded, they collided. Sending the Mercedes spinning and causing Bottas to crash into them as collateral damage. Liv was barely able to escape since she was trying to overtake Bottas on the inside of the curve.