Race Engineer - Daniel Ricciardo

Prologue

"Good morning, Simon" I say as I walk into the engineerings office. Simon smiles warmly at me, nodding his head at me.

"Good morning, Mackenzie. How are you today?"

"I'm good, dreading to start working on the data from last weekend" I reply, sighing at the thoughts. It's Wednesday now. I had a couple of days off after the Russian Grand Prix, which was exactly 4 days ago.

"Yeah, that's something I can imagine. Who knows, maybe it's not that bad"

"I appreciate you trying to cheer me up, but we both know that I won't be able to finish before lunch" Simon chuckles softly at that. I am the race engineer for Daniil Kvyat, Red Bull's second driver.

He is Russian, so he had his home Grand Prix last weekend. Everyone had high expectations, he had them himself as well. He kind of screwed up, though. He collidated with Sebastian Vettel, causing Vettel to crash, but he kept on going, luckily.

Lots of people started talking about it, though. Everyone is attacking Daniil, which makes it hard to be in my position. Besides, the data of the weekend is horrible now, all the changes that had to be made due to the car damage, strategy's that changed.

"Well, if someone can do it, it's you" Simon says. Simon Rennie is Daniel Ricciardo's race engineer. Daniel is the first driver for Red Bull. I've worked with him ever since becoming Daniil's engineer. Simon is a great guy, really sweet.

"Thanks, Si" I take my seat, turning on my laptop and grabbing all the data sheets I had collected this weekend. I start with the practice data, as those are the most to go through.

Although we've had the engineer meetings during the weekend and discussed the data, I like to go over it again between race weekends. I can check on which parts we have to focus the next weekend.

A knock on the office door pulls me out of my thoughts. Simon and I both look up, as the door opens. Christian Horner walks in, the team principal. He smiles warmly at us.

"Good morning, welcome back" he says, looking at both of us.

"Morning Christian" Simon simply says. Simon and Christian have worked way longer together than I have with Christian.

"Good morning, Christian. How are you?" I ask, smiling back at Christian.

"A bit stressed. Could I speak with you, Mackenzie?" he asks, straight to the point. I nod and stand up, grabbing my phone and putting it in my back pocket. I just wave at Simon, walking after Christian.

Once we've reached his office, he sighs heavily while sitting down.

"Is everything okay, Christian?" I ask him. Christian looks at me for a few seconds, before shaking his head slightly. It worries me a bit, not sure what this is about.

"I'm sure you've read some comments about the race weekend, specifically about Daniil?" I just nod, bouncing my leg slightly.

"We've been talking about it, Helmut, me, Franz Tost as well" Christian starts. I recognize Franz Tost as the team principal of Toro Rosso, the sister team of Red Bull.

"We've all come to the conclussion that Daniil has not been performing as well as last year. We can't take the risk of having him on the team for a full season, not getting the performance out of the car that it can get. What I'm trying to say, Daniil is leaving Red Bull and moving back to Toro Rosso" Christian explains. I don't know how to react and it takes me a while to even understand what is going on.

"Wait, what?" I finally just say. Christian chuckles slightly, but shakes his head as well.

"I know it'll be weird, but we have to take some sort of action. We think this is the best way for Daniil to show us that he atleast got it to race in Formula 1" I slowly nod, sort of understanding it. I can't imagine how Daniil must feel right now. He must be broken about it. It then suddenly hits me that a spot in Red Bull is open.

"Who is taking his seat then?"

"As he's moving to Toro Rosso, one of them has to go to us. We all said the same name, we all agreed only one was correct for Red Bull" I wait patiently for Christian to say the name, although I have a feeling I already know.

"It's Max Verstappen"

------------------

Hello!

So this is my new Race Engineer story! I hope everyone likes it! Let me know what you think so far!

Xxxxx