Cigarette Daydreams

2022 part 4

When Bonno's voice sounds in his ears telling him that he has to let Max pass, he almost cries with rage. Lewis is one lap behind Max, who is the race leader, while he's fighting at the end of the grid, he hates how inferior he feels about it, he hates feeling like he's still fighting but still losing, he just wants the good times back, all the shit he's going through now makes him even miss 2021, when he was fighting for wins, even if everything else was dark.

It's inevitable that the regret of having continued in F1 will arise, he would certainly rather be at home, retired and possibly bitter about it, than finishing the race at Imola in just p13 and certainly bitter and angry, and it's all made worse when his teammate, in his first year at Mercedes, is doing better.

George is always among the top finishers, he's a regular, the only race that Lewis was ahead of the other man was in Bahrain, and even then George was just behind, it's unfair, at least that's how Lewis thinks, he should be leading the team as he always has, he should be the mentor, or whatever Mercedes wants, for George, but instead he's succumbing, being left behind, and that's the worst thing he could feel about his career.

Maybe he's becoming obsolete, and this makes him want to throw up, but maybe he's just not as good as he thought he was, and this thought makes him panic, but it's too easy to let destructive thoughts take over his mind now, he hears and reads people talking about his poor performance, years of being perfect and giving his all, only for a few bad races to throw his entire legacy in the garbage can. He doesn't even know if he has a legacy, he can't even think if it's that important anymore.

It's as if the part of him that's confident and proud of all the work he's done has fallen asleep with the shock of "losing" the title, the control that he valued so much is long gone, even before Abu Dhabi, but losing the rest has been so painful, because he always knew that one day or another his time in Formula 1 would come to an end, but doubting the things he has already achieved and fought hard for is not something he expected, ever, but now it all seems too grey.

"I bet I know what you're thinking."

Lewis listens and automatically bites his tongue to keep from saying something rude, all he wanted to do was mope alone in an empty grandstand after the race, he didn't expect Sebastian Vettel to bother him.

"Are you going to tell me what it's or are we going to play a guessing game?" He tried, but perhaps the sarcastic streak was stronger than him.

"You're always so prickly when you're angry, you remind me of someone." Sebastian says as if it were something funny.

"No." He cuts off this topic before Seb talks about Max.

"All right, I won't talk about that other person you don't want to talk about-"

Lewis snorts and interrupts, unable to handle this conversation. "God, you're so annoying."

It doesn't cause the reaction he was expecting, instead Vettel just gives him a smile. "That was the intention, better to be annoyed with me than to think that you're not good enough or that your career is over."

Son of a bitch.

"Okay, fine, how do you know?" Lewis gives up on the riddles and asks.

"Have you forgotten that I was teammates with the prodigy Charles Leclerc?" Sebastian says, but Lewis realizes it's not a grudge, it's just a reality.

"So what? Should I give up and go to a mid-grid team?" He asks, a little too acidly, with an arched eyebrow.

"You're difficult." Vettel sighs. "I'm just saying that I know you're probably questioning yourself about your whole career, about your talent, about your legacy."