Thorns

01

February 21st, 2025
Preseason Testing

Lelia Amani

I never wanted to get used to sitting in the backseat of a car.

Feeling car sick was a feeling I have never been able to get over ever since I was a little girl. Riding in the backseat of my mother's deep orange '74 Ford Bronco around Sicily's dirt roads triggered that negative sensation for the first time and I was never able to shake it until I moved to the States. Somehow, my seventeen-hour flight moving to Miami was the last time I felt nauseous in a moving vehicle. Even being a passenger in Tessa's Mercedes never had me sick the way I used to be.

Ever since moving back to Europe, that car sickness returned like a bad memory returning to haunt someone for a while before training to forget that thought again.

I had been living in Milton Keynes for barely two weeks. It was not nearly enough time for me to finish getting settled in before getting on the road and traveling to the edge of Asia. The job description clearly stated a lot of traveling, which I wanted, but I was barely lucky to even have a full week getting my life together in my small studio apartment. Although, it wasn't a place I would be at very often, given that I am traveling for a good seventy percent of my calendar year. So it was not my biggest concern at the moment.

It was just slightly unsettling to still be in shambles before traveling.

My stomach churned the closer my driver got to the circuit, my eyes focused on every possible landmark and detail outside the window. My car sickness was getting worse by the minute, quite literally at the same rate that my nerves were increasing.

Just a mere nine months ago, I had no idea what to do with my degree. I regretted ever going into medical school with the thought of wishing I had completed a degree in anything else. Tessa got a degree in finance with a future at her dad's company waiting for her and her brother the days they were both born.

I had nothing waiting for me. The uncertainty in what I wanted to use my degree for was thick for over eight months after graduation. I lived in Miami with Tessa in our apartment, jobless and regretting ever completing my doctorate.

The next thing I knew, I was back overseas and starting a job with that very degree I earned, despite never wanting to use it a few months ago. Granted, it was one of the best job offers I think I could have received, no thanks to my degree.

"The circuit is just ahead, ma'am," the driver mentioned, drawing my focused eyes away from my window and out the front windshield. The Bahrain International Circuit was right in front of us. The paddock was busy, but not nearly as busy as I was expecting them to be. It was only, what I was told, preseason testing. Next weekend was the actual Grand Prix, but until then, the teams were all figuring out the cars and deciding what changes and upgrades were to be made, if needed.

Over the last six weeks, I have done more research about Formula One than I think I ever have for a class. I went into my interview with as much knowledge about the sport as my brain could retain at the moment. When I got the callback, I was surprised. It was definitely because I had an impressive resume, and not because I had an "excessive amount" of knowledge for the sport.

For whatever reason, Christian Horner seemed more than delighted to have had me as a part of the team.

For how unqualified I felt to have the position, I was still honored and thankful to have been blessed with an opportunity like this. I would be working closely with two drivers, who, with extensive amounts of research and knee-deep Wikipedia pages, were both insanely talented drivers. I was unsure how I had gone this long in my life without realizing how popular this sport was. It was as if I was choosing to live under a rock and be so oblivious to something that I picked up on pretty quickly.