When the first female F1 driver is announced, no one expects her to get on so badly with Ferrari golden boy Charles Leclerc, but do they really hate each other as much as it seems?
After a long round of interviews and team discussions, I finally got back to my hotel room.
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My phone had about a million notifications, most of which were congratulations. In the million, I looked for the one I wanted to see most of all, but it wasn't there. I supposed he was probably still sorting things out in Ferrari as the teammates had taken each other out. I decided to text him myself.
Edom
Excited for first place celebrations tonight 😉
Read
He opened the text almost immediately but left it on opened. I tried again.
Edom
Are you going to Prince Alberts' dinner? x
Charles 💞
I didn't win...
I'm not invited.
Ok, so he had replied... but it hadn't been what I was expecting. I had still been hoping for a congratulations or something positive but not that. So blunt...
Edom
You're Monaco's starboy, I was expecting your invite to be inevitable. Sorry, that's my bad x
Charles 💞
Yeah, it is your bad.
Now I was more confused than ever. Was it obvious he wouldn't have an invite? Was he expecting me to invite him as like a plus one? Or was he seriously blaming me for his poor race? I wasn't sure what was going on. I started getting ready for the dinner tonight early - I had something I now needed to do on the way there.
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°°
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Edom Hakimi: Gold dress for first place 🥇 100.5k likes 5k comments
-McLaren: 🏅👊
-Ruebman: my golden girl 🧡💛
I took some photos for Instagram then left my hotel. It took a 10 minute drive to get to the venue which I was expected to be at in 50 minutes, but there was somewhere I wanted to stop of en route.
"Hey, Paul, could we pull up on the left quickly, I need to see someone." I pointed out Charles' house to my driver. He kindly obeyed. I opened the door of the car with shakey hands and walked up to his door. This wasn't the family home I'd visted a few evenings prior, but rather Charles' own residence where he stayed in the rare moments he wasn't travelling with the circus known as F1.
I knocked on the door and waited a minute, until the door finally opened. Charles stood in joggers and a tight top on the other side of the door frame. His inital expression at seeing me was shock, which quickly turned dark.
"What are you doing here?" He looked at me with disgust.
"No 'Hello'? No 'congratulations'?" I tried to laugh away the sinking feeling in my chest.
"Why would I do that?"
I hesitated. "Because I won?" I said unsurely. "Aren't you happy for me?"
"Oh, I'm sure you feel happy with yourself. Taking me out so you could have your first win."
"You crashed with Carlos not me?"
"If you hadn't driven so awfully I wouldn't of had to be in a position where that could happen." It suddenly all clicked for me. He blamed me for his crash. "This was my home race Edom! You knew how much it meant to me."
"Oh come on Charles," I went defencive. "My driving was perfectly legal and if anything my start was perfect. I got the better launch and was ahead into turn 1... winning is in our blood Charles - we're F1 drivers."
"I thought you cared about me. Now all I see is you care about yourself - sacrificing me for a win and then turning up in your party outfit to rub it in that you won and got to go this year instead of me."
"I came here because I care about you Charles. I came here after your weird blunt messages to make sure everything was ok. I'm sorry about your race, but overall today was my race. I won! This is my first win and quite frankly has been one of the best days of my life and I wanted to spend it with you and share those emotions with you. I looked for you after the race, you were nowhere, I searched the whole crowd on the podium and you weren't there. So I think it's more like you only care about your self." I turned around full of anger and upset.
I stormed back to my car and as I got to it I turned around to find Charles still standing in the door way. "I'm not to blame for your crash." I screamed and got into the car.
"Take us to the dinner please." I said as calmly as I could to the driver. As the car pulled away, I stared straight ahead, breathing heavily.
Just a short chapter today but I hope you enjoyed x
Please don't be silent readers - make sure to comment and vote <3
Super exciting season on atm - if you had told me when I started writing this story we'd have 7 different race winners before summer break I'd have laughed in your face haha.
Love y'all and as usual sorry for the slow uploads xoxo
