BACK TO DECEMBER ━ oscar piastri.

[ 005 ] Meddle About

( ACT I. ── Fading Imprints )
chapter five / Meddle About

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"How did this happen?" Bram Rynsburger tossed a duffel bag across the room, and it landed in a messy heap atop a pile of other bags. More luggage and supplies were scattered around the room, and the Maserati headquarters in Sakhir was a wreck.

Gisela was sitting on the floor, trying to sort through miscellaneous bags. They all looked the same. Paul Aron was in the same position as Rynsburger as he unzipped a backpack and then zipped it back up and tossed it away. More members of the team were all around. No one was exempt from this scavenger hunt.

Bram pointed his finger at the doorway, where Gabriele Ruggiero was standing, spectacles on his nose, clipboard in hand. "Hey, seriously. How?"

"I suppose I should have reviewed the staff more... scrutinizingly when I took up this mantle. Uhm... there was many things happening... I don't like to fire people, you know? The misplacement of the, uh, finer details is unfortunate." their team principal said in his thick Italian accent.

"The finer details?" Gisela repeated in disbelief. "Someone lost Paul's entire race suit and we don't have a spare."

"You want me to race naked?" Paul demanded of him.

Gabriele peered at them from beyond his glasses. "You are all looking at me as if I'm stupid."

"You are stupid," Rynsburger scowled. "You kept someone else's staff because you didn't want them to be sad?"

There was no room for sugar-coating. As optimistic as Gisela tried to be, the fact remained that Maserati's debut was a disaster, and the race weekend hadn't even started yet. It was becoming clearer and clearer that they weren't ready. The car wasn't ready. The team wasn't ready. The budget was stretched thin. Gabriele had been crude with them, and they had been harsh with him. All of them had suffered mistakes.

"Let's just work," said one of the engineers, who was also elbow deep in a suitcase. "At the end of the day, this is a sport of dignity and respect."

"That was before Rynsburger got here," said Gisela.

Rynsburger pulled his leg up for a baseball pitch and chucked a bag of rubber straws at Gisela's head.

"Oh my god, I found something," Paul said suddenly.

"What?"

He pulled up a poster diagram of the human muscular system. "Your mum."

"I can't do this any more." Gisela stood up and brushed off her pants while Rynsburger laughed so hard that he might have peed himself.