THE ROOKIE driver ✔

CHAPTER 10: RED BULL RING

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The rolling hills of Spielberg, Austria, stretched out under a brilliant summer sky, the towering mountains a breathtaking backdrop to the Red Bull Ring. But the beauty of the place was lost on Matteo as he walked through the paddock, head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone who might cross his path. The buzz of the Austrian Grand Prix was in full swing, but Matteo did everything he could to not be a part of it.

In the days leading up to the race, Adam had been watching Matteo closely, more worried than he'd ever let on. Matteo had been pulling away from everyone for a while now, but after the Canadian Grand Prix, things got worse—different, even. The incident had been caught on camera, of course, and it didn't take long for the footage to spread like wildfire. Photos and videos made their way online, and once they were out there, there was no way to pull them back. They had tried—God, they had tried—but once the internet had its claws in something, it was pretty much impossible to stop it.

Adam had seen how Matteo tried to brush it off at first, like it didn't bother him. But that didn't last long. After a couple of days, Matteo could hardly walk through the paddock without feeling the weight of everyone's stares. It wasn't always direct, but it was there—side glances, hushed conversations that stopped the moment he walked by, the sympathetic nods from people who didn't know what to say. It was the kind of attention that made your skin crawl. Adam knew that look on Matteo's face all too well—he hated being pitied.

The whispers followed Matteo wherever he went. Fans, media, even people on the team—everyone had seen the footage, and now it was all anyone wanted to talk about. There was no escaping it. Matteo tried to focus on racing, but the pressure was getting to him. He barely spoke at team meetings anymore, his usual fire and energy replaced with silence.

Adam noticed other changes too. Matteo had stopped eating properly. His meals had become smaller and smaller, and sometimes he just pushed food around his plate without actually touching it. Adam had caught him skipping dinner more than once, and that was a huge red flag. Matteo used to have a healthy appetite, always making jokes about how he could out-eat half the grid, but now he could barely stomach anything. Even when they all went out to dinner as a team, Matteo would sit there, smiling politely but not really being present, pretending everything was fine when it was clearly far from it.

It wasn't just his eating habits either. Matteo's whole vibe had shifted. He used to be the kind of guy who lit up a room the second he walked in—laughing, joking, always ready with some cheeky comment or a playful dig. Now? He seemed like a ghost of himself. His usual sparkle was gone, replaced by this vacant, almost numb expression. He would zone out for long stretches of time, staring at nothing in particular, clearly lost in his thoughts. Even during practice runs, where he normally thrived, his performance seemed shaky. Adam could see it in his lap times, in the way Matteo held the steering wheel a little too tight, like he was forcing himself to focus.

Adam had tried talking to him a couple of times, but Matteo would always brush it off. "I'm fine," he'd say with a weak smile. "Just tired, you know?" But Adam wasn't buying it. It was more than just being tired. Matteo was shutting down, and Adam didn't know how to reach him.

To make matters worse, the media hadn't let up either. Reporters kept bringing up the incident every chance they got, throwing thinly veiled questions about how he was handling "the pressure" or how he felt about "what happened in Canada." Matteo would dodge the questions, but Adam could see how much it rattled him. Every interview felt like an ambush, and no matter how hard Matteo tried to steer the conversation back to racing, someone always found a way to slip in a mention of the footage, the headlines, the public fallout.

Adam knew Matteo had tried to get the footage taken down, tried to find some way to make it all disappear, but it was like fighting a losing battle. Once something's on the internet, it's there forever, and no amount of damage control could erase what people had already seen. Matteo had hired lawyers, PR teams, everything he could think of, but every time they thought they were making progress, the story would resurface in some new way. A gossip site would pick it up, or fans would start talking about it again on social media. It was like whack-a-mole—every time they knocked one story down, another one popped up somewhere else.