Oversteer

When a cautious Formula One engineer crosses paths with a damaged comeback driver, she discovers that the most dangerous variable she should assess in the sport isn't speed-but attachment.
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Adriana Santos has always known her place on a championship-winning Formula One team is contingent. Excellence, she learned early, is not the same as security.

She works in a role the paddock barely understands-simulating failures before they happen, answering 'what ifs' before they become 'what went wrong', and treating the car like a living thing whose future rests in her hands. Her work is quiet, precise, and easily erased the moment she becomes inconvenient.

She is careful because she has to be.

She knows Joshua Thomas long before she meets him: the driver who changed his name to fit in, the anomaly on a rival team forever tipped for titles. To Adriana, he's a reaction curve that never quite returned to baseline after last season's crash. His comeback is framed as resilience. Many are simply waiting to see him fail.

They meet by accident, in a moment stripped of his usual extravagance and pretence. Adriana notices what she always notices-the face behind the mask, the way he laughs through failure like it doesn't frighten him.

Adriana doesn't forget him, though. She keeps her distance but Joshua doesn't, and their reluctant friendship begins to bend into something riskier.

And they both know exactly what it could cost them.

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✦ Open Novella Contest 2026 | Prompts 24, 29, 30, 44

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