Team orders- autistic Oscar Piastri, ADHD Lando Norris

6: post-race meeting

Oscar's POV:

We started the meeting with the issue which I thought might be a good thing but soon felt was just a thing. Lando was calm but said what he needed to in a passionate way. It made everyone listen to him, it made him sound like he cared about his job and his career. Everyone was engaged, we talk through it bit by bit, the team explained their actions, their choices. We decided there had been errors across the team. I didn't speak. When I was asked what I thought I filled the silence with a boring, emotionless, political answer.

I wondered why I couldn't do what Lando did. Why I couldn't speak with my real thoughts and feelings intertwined. Why I hid everything and pushed it down into the box that I thought it needed to sound like. It sounded like I didn't care, like I didn't want to be there. But I did care and I did want to be there but I also wanted to stay there and if they knew the real me, I'd be out.

I knew I was strange and weird and abnormal, deep down all inside of me and I let it out sometimes. When I was alone at home, sat in my bedroom, watching old races or shows I liked. My hands would slip and flip and run through the air. I would feel free. But if I felt too visible, my hands would return to my lap, fingers tapping gently on each other if I could hide it well enough.

We moved on in the meeting, referring to car pace, moments of under and over steer. Things didn't feel done between me and Lando, but I felt okay again. The floating and tingling feelings had gone. There was a bit of peace inside of me. When the meeting finished I was told I was free to go but Lando was held back. My stomach flipped again and everything went a bit wrong.

"Everything okay?" Tom asked. As my race engineer he'd been the one to hear my very calm reaction to the issue over the radio. But as someone who knew me outside of that race car, he also knew that sometimes my face betrayed me in a little way that only those closest could see.

"Ummm yea, just like is Lando in trouble? Well not trouble but you know?"

"They're just going to talk about what they can do better in future communication wise. We figured it was best to leave them to it."

"Mhm," I mumbled, walking down a corridor with him.

"I mean we all know that you're communication on radio is like listening to someone reading a shopping list so it's pretty easy for us."

"I guess so."

"You feeling alright, Kim mentioned you were kind of feeling ill last night?"

"Yea, just tired from the race and travelling."

"Ah no worries, it gets to all of us sometimes." Nope, things didn't get to me, they sat beneath me and they never had an impact. I ended the conversation as soon as I could and rushed home. I was glad I'd got the flat in England, staying in hotels all the time was killing my nervous system slowly and I wouldn't have been able to deal with it today.

Lando's POV:

I'd been asked to stay behind which worried me. I only got more worried when Zak and Andrea joined the meeting that had just been engineers. Jon also entered the room which made me feel slightly calmer as no matter what, it felt like he was always on the same page as me. "It's clear on the radio that you let your emotions take over. It's not a good look for us."

"I let my emotions take over? I was trying to make it clear that it mattered to me, that it was having an impact! I'm racing for a driver's championship too."

Zak sighed and looked at me, Andrea and him shared the same look. "What?" I asked, sensing something was up.

"We want you to see a sports psychologist again."

My whole body went cold. Those sessions had been hell before. I didn't stay on topic (sometimes purposefully) and I could feel her getting sick of me the whole time. We talked about stuff I didn't want to talk about. She made me think about things I didn't want to think about. Nothing she said was actually helpful and had mostly made things worse. When I told her that, she accused me of lying and just not bothering to do it.

"Is there anything else we can try first?"

"That's our first option. We want you to see if there are some other ways to communicate more effectively."

"I already communicate well."

"Yes, but look at Oscar for example. His team radio was calm and simple, it allowed us to keep him updated without making an issue."

"But I'm not Oscar."

"We know, and we don't want you to be," my race engineer Will said, a pained look on his face, "but we have to be able to communicate effectively when you're racing and right now it's not working." I'd already apologised for the way I'd spoken to him on radio but it still felt like he wasn't back on my side.

"Is it the same lady?" I asked, sounded defeated and feeling it too.

"No, she moved on. It's a guy named uh," Zak checked his paperwork, "well, we'll send you the details."

"Online?" I asked, internally groaning.

"We thought about doing it in person?" Will said, tapping his pen. In person was better. It was so difficult to read people online and not having them in the room made it all too easy to get distracted and not really listen.

"Where?"

"Here." Andrea said.

"On Tuesdays. You'd come in, do the hour session with him in the morning and then your training with Jon." Jon smiled at me but it didn't feel real. So much for that same page bullshit.

"And if I improve my communication, if I'm more like Oscar I mean, it stops?"

"We're going to do a review after summer break."

That was only a couple weeks, surely I could manage a couple weeks. I agreed to it. Walking out of there I realised that it was something to dread every week, but if it kept me my job and got everyone off my back, then I'd put up with it.

A/n Yes 2 chapters in one night! I just realised how far ahead I was getting with pre-written chapters and am keen to give some more of this story to you all. It's heating up.