Different Lanes

9.

Lando let out a deep breath as he rounded turn 1, still in second place, the rear of Max's Red Bull on his left. He'd managed to hold on to the inside line to maintain his position from those attacking from behind and now was focused on maintaining a close distance behind Max while still pulling away from the rest of the field. This was going to be a marathon, not a sprint, and he knew his best chance to overtake Max was to be at the later points of the race. The game plan was to go pit stop for pit stop, keeping enough distance behind him not to spook him, but then go for broke for the last 15 laps of the race.

"Good pace Lando, we're 1.9 behind Verstappen and Russell is 2.1 behind us with a growing gap" the voice of Will Joseph, his race engineer, filled the headset at the start of Lap 6. "Lets keep pushing at this pace, being mindful of tyre management".

"Yep, thanks Will"

"I'll check in again when its time to box. Keep at it champ!"

"Rodger"

Lando settled down in the silence, the hum of the car droning out all of the sounds of the crowd and the circus that engulfed the circuit. He took the chance on the straight to glance up at the leaderboard, noting himself as second and seeing that Charlie had dropped to P8 behind the other Red Bull. He shook his head, qualifying was one thing, but to race was another. There was a point that academics could get you, at time it just came down to intuition and feel and that could only be tuned through experience.

She may have been good in F3, but it had been a while since she'd been in such an environment and that had to show at some point. But enough about her, he needed to focus on maintaining a winnable distance to the Red Bull.

The chance to pit came at lap 23 as Will shouted over the radio, "Box Box. Verstappen is boxing. Box Box".

Lando expertly turned into the pit lane, reducing his speed to within the limit. He was still sitting 2 seconds behind Max, who was currently in the pit. Feeling the car jack up he watched the red light, his foot on the accelerator, waiting for it to turn green and release him. He waited.... Waited.

"Will? Whats happening?" He felt like he had been there for hours.

"Hold on Lando, the gun got.... Go go go!"

Lando saw the light turn green and sped off. "How much time did we loose?"

"9 seconds, which places us back in P5 when you exit, noting that everyone ahead has already completed their first pit stop"

"Shit SHIT! What happened Will?"

"One of the guns malfunctioned. Back left, they had to switch it out"

Lando couldn't respond. He watched the back of the two Ferraris in front of him. This was not going to plan and to add insult to injury these new hard tyres were really struggling with the slow corners.

"We're 2.1 away from Saniz and LeClerc is 1.5 ahead of him. They're both on 5 lap old mediums"

Lando couldn't help but feel defeated as he drove lap after lap, unable to gain on either Ferrari. This was going to be a long disappointing race.

Shit Shit Shit!

Soon he found himself on lap 40/66 and craving a pit stop. These tyres had become borderline unbearable. "Will, we're going to need to pit soon"

"Rodger Lando, lets stay out for a few more laps to save the softs for the last stint"

"Okay", even he could admit, he was defeated.

* * * * * *

Two positions back Charlie had finally managed to gain her position back on Perez. It had initially taken her a little bit to get used to the size of the car for overtaking, misjudging a couple of attempts which had ended up with her hitting the grass. This wasn't going to be easy. Formula 1 was definitely not the same as anything she'd done before.