Archive of Our Own ^beta

PART ONE

The sun is starting to set along the French Riviera when Oscar sees Max Verstappen for the first time since the 2025 FIA Prize Giving Ceremony, jogging toward him in the distance.

It’s not his first time crossing paths with another driver on this coastal jogging trail; it’s a popular path for a reason. The last few times, he’d just give the other driver a civil wave, a tiny smile, and they’d keep going their separate ways. But right now, Oscar finds himself slowing down to a halt, catching his breath, and calling Max’s name.

Max falters for a moment, then regains his pace, meeting Oscar in the middle, where he’d stopped.

“Hey, mate,” Max says, blinking, eyes wide, looking a little caught. His face is a bit blotchy, a healthy flush to his cheeks, patchy hair lining his jaw.

There’s a brief pause. Oscar places his hand on the back of his neck, slightly damp with sweat. Oscar has never really known how to talk to him outside parc fermé and the cooldown room.

“How’ve you been?” he asks.

“Good,” Max says. “Very relaxed.” Another stilted beat, before he tacks on, “You? Your break?”

“Same,” Oscar blurts out, before realizing that wasn’t at all the case. “Er, well,” he says, deciding to test the waters and tell the truth. “After the holiday, I’ve mostly been in Milton Keynes.”

It’s the day before Oscar is set to fly back home for the season opener—his first grand prix as a Red Bull driver.

Max blinks a couple times. “Of course,” he replies, with a sharp nod. They fall back into silence. Oscar shifts on his feet, wondering if Max is going to ask him about the team, about the car, about everything he’d left behind. He doesn’t, though. He just claps his hand on Oscar’s shoulder, smiles, and asks, “I’ll see you around?”

Oscar sucks in a breath. “Yeah,” he says, doing his best to conceal his disappointment. “I’ll see you,” he says, not even sure if that’ll be true. It doesn’t really matter in the end, because Max is gone, and jogging away.

It’s not like Max has dropped off the face of the earth since retiring, or anything. He’s done interviews, he’s been streaming with RedLine, and he went to the Red Bull end of year party—Oscar has seen the video of him drunkenly being hoisted up by his pit crew up on the stage, as if they were in parc fermé, celebrating a championship.

Three months out, Oscar is struggling to understand how Max let that all go.

Even before the weekend starts proper, Melbourne is difficult.

Not even in Zandvoort last year, after the breaking news was announced, were there this many phones on the table, never this many reporters crowded around him, asking him about how he feels about this season even though it hasn’t even started yet, about his new colors, about his relationship with Lando. Oscar’s getting a bit of a headache, but he responds to everything as best he can. He knows that this’ll be the worst of it—they don’t ask these sorts of questions in the official pressers, the sorts of questions designed to get soundbites that can be clipped out of context and be made into sensational headlines. Besides, with three years behind him, Oscar’s starting to get a handle on what they like to hear, how to cut off a hydra head without two more regenerating in its place.

Just as the time the team allotted for questions starts to come to a close, there’s one pundit from Sky shouting, voice clear over all the others, “Oscar, do you think you can win your first title this year?”

It is, in all honesty, kind of a stupid question, Oscar thinks. He thinks about saying that, laughing and saying, That’s a bit presumptuous, given we haven’t even had a practice session yet. Not to mention, he had a lackluster second half of 2025—he hasn’t felt like a championship contender in a long time.

Instead, his lips move before his brain catches up and he hears himself saying, “Well yeah. I mean, I plan to. Doesn’t everyone?”

The free practices are kind of shit. There’s problems with the brake balance, the car’s too twitchy on the front, and their front tyres are getting killed. By FP3, they’re having to make compromises, and Oscar comforts himself with the knowledge that this is just the first race. His first race with the team, and theirs with his. There’ll be a learning curve, he knows. He can’t expect to come out swinging, no matter how good pre-season testing had been.

He’ll just have to be patient.

It’s hard though, to be patient, when he qualifies P2, behind Lando, and finishes the race in fifth.

There were problems with the PU that had them running on lower than optimal power throughout the race, and Oscar was a sitting duck for the McLarens and the Ferraris. He just barely managed to fend off George to the chequered flag.

He’s sitting in his driver room as the Sky Sports post-race plays on the TV, background noise. He’s trying to absorb as much of this peace as he can before the team debrief, when the stream cuts to the media pen. Oscar’s eyes immediately widen and flit to the screen. It’s a replay, Oscar knows it, because Lando must be in the press conference now.

Lando’s grinning from ear to ear, cheeks still flushed from the race, balaclava lines carved into his skin. The car came alive today, he says, the pitstops were good and the strategy was good. Everything came together. He isn’t quite over the moon—he brings up a few of his mistakes during the race and explains how he could’ve done better, but still thinks it’s a good start to the season, explains that McLaren will need to stay focused throughout the entire season, keep it all going.

And then, Natalie asks about how Lando feels, if he thinks it’s a good sign that Oscar only finished P5.

Oscar can see it on Lando’s face, how his eyes sharpen and his jaw twitches, only for a moment, before his face loses all expression, and he’s replying, “He’s not my teammate anymore. I don’t see why I have to answer questions about him. He didn’t even make it onto the podium.”

The stream cuts. Oscar closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and turns off the TV.

No matter what Sky Sports or The Sun might claim, Oscar doesn’t hate Lando.

Sure, they hadn’t left things on good terms when Oscar left McLaren, but before that, it hadn’t exactly all been bad.

Really, Oscar thinks, looking back. It hadn’t been as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX 2024

Lando Norris’ Radio Transcript — Lap 70

Will JOSEPH: Well done, Lando, well done. Chequered flag. I hope you’re happy.

After ending the season-opening triple header with a win in Japan, Oscar finally is able to fly back to Monaco.

He unpacks his stuff, showers, changes into clean clothes, and watches some Netflix on the couch. His stomach starts growling, so he orders takeout from the Italian place nearby. It’s close enough to walk, so he enjoys the sunset along the riviera and pops into the restaurant. He’s been here enough that the front of house recognizes him, and gets a server to grab his order from the kitchen.

The front door chimes behind him, and Oscar hears his name being called.

At first, Oscar flinches, worrying it’s a fan—he’s too tired to take a photo, after the long red-eye flight from Japan to France—but then, he realizes he recognizes that voice.

He turns around, eyes widening, “Max?”

“Hey,” Max says, wearing pretty much the same thing he was the last time Oscar saw him—a grey Puma tee and workout shorts, without the sweat. He must also be picking up food, Oscar clocks. “It’s nice to see you, of course.”

“Yeah,” Oscar replies, still kind of reeling. Monaco is a small city and an even smaller country, but he’s lived here for two years now, and he’s never run into Max, let alone twice in the same month. “Just got back from Japan.”

The skin around Max’s eyes crinkles with a smile. “I heard you won. Congratulations.”

Oscar lifts a brow. “You weren’t watching?”

Max laughs and shakes his head. “I don’t watch the races.”

Oscar’s eyes flit to the back of the restaurant, doesn’t see his food coming yet, and brings his attention back to Max. “Hurts too much?” he muses.

Max laughs again. “No,” he answers, sounding—almost nostalgic. “Just too tempting.”

Oscar presses his lips together, nods. He doesn’t know what to say to that. Doesn’t know if he should or can say anything. He doesn’t have to, though, because Max is going on, “The food here is very good.”

“Yeah,” Oscar says, biting his lip. He glances around the restaurant, which is sort of empty for it being a Sunday evening, then looks back at Max. “I come here all the time. Well, just takeout, really.”

“Of course,” Max says. “Me too.”

Finally, a waitress returns from the kitchen with Oscar’s food, in a neat, bougie paper bag. Oscar takes it from her, thanks her, then turns back to Max with a limp and awkward gaze. “Well,” he says, not wanting to linger, not wanting to seem overeager. Wanting to seem cool. It’s a little embarrassing, how even after Max has retired and Oscar has fought him, on track, beat him, multiple times, and properly gained his respect, he still feels a bit starstruck, every time he sees him.

“I’ll see you?”

Max nods. “I’ll see you.”

Oscar turns to leave, but as he’s turning the handle of the front door, Max calls, “Hey, Oscar.”

He turns around, lifting a brow. “Yeah?”

Max grins. His eyes are soft. “Enjoy it.”

HUNGARIAN GRAND PRIX 2024

Oscar Piastri’s Radio Transcript: Lap 70

Oscar PIASTRI: Yeah. You don’t need to say anything.

The win in Japan had felt good. Not as good as a win in Australia would’ve been, in front of his family and the grandstands filled with navy blue, but good. His first since Qatar, last year. His first with Red Bull.

Still, though. Lando won in Australia and China, while Oscar had managed a P5 and a P2. Lando won the Shanghai Sprint too, while Oscar had finished a dismal P6.

Oscar’s twenty-one points behind Lando in the championship. Everyone’s already crafting their narratives, about how they’re fighting for the championship, but it’s only been three races. Anything can happen.

Early days, Oscar tells himself. Early days.

Hungary two years ago really hadn’t been as bad as the media made it out to be and everyone wanted it to be. Oscar got it, really. Lando was fighting for a championship, he was in the lead, Oscar couldn’t catch up, and it was seven important points over Max. Oscar had been gutted, obviously, disappointed. It would’ve been his first win, but he got over it.

Lando had apologized to him at length after the race, in private, said he regretted it, knew he was in the wrong, wished he did it differently, but Oscar didn’t see the point. He knew that Lando meant it, that he was sorry, and maybe that he regretted it too, but at the end of the line, Oscar wasn’t sure if there existed a world where Lando gave the place back.

He made his choice, and Oscar had no choice but to live with it. Lando did too.

Neither of them win in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. George does, then Lewis.

Lando gets a podium in Bahrain, Oscar in Saudi Arabia, and they come into Miami twenty-three points apart.

Lando wins the sprint—Oscar manages a P2.

He’s on the backfoot. The McLaren is stronger on the rears, and they have better top speed, but Red Bull seem to have understood the active aero better, and have better tyre wear in general.

Oscar manages a P3 in qualifying. McLaren get a front row lock-out, with Alex in the other car. Liam’s in P6—not bad given that he’d only qualified two-tenths behind, Oscar reckons, for his first year at a top team, but that means he won’t get any help.

If he wants to win this race, he’ll have to do it on his own.

It hadn’t actually changed much, what happened in Hungary, Oscar will defend to the end. It’s not like they stopped getting along. They flew back to the UK together, they went on a Maccas run, and they played Monopoly with Alex on the plane. They could still joke around and film videos for YouTube together, and it wasn’t forced or awkward. It was good.

Really, Oscar thinks fondly, unconsciously smiling to himself in his driver room as he’s getting his head in sorts for the race, it was good.

Oscar doesn’t apologize to Lando after the race. The team tells him he should at least try, at least just for show, but he doesn’t. He’s sure that’s not something that Lando would be amenable to after a DNF when he had a chance at the lead, twenty-five points lost.

They’d been going along the long straight in sector three in Lap 35. Lando was within a second, so he had MOM and made the overtake—but it hadn’t stuck and they were coming into Turn 17. Lando pushed Oscar off the track, ran him wide, but he wasn’t giving the place back even though he should’ve. Into Lap 36, they fought through the first sector, and as they were coming out of Turn 8, then Turn 9, Oscar switched to the outside, gaining and gaining.

Lando had gone to cut him off. It was too late. They bumped wheels. Lando had clipped Oscar’s front wing, but it hadn’t ruined his race, or his pace. Lando, on the other hand, had gotten a puncture and had to retire. Oscar has seen the replay, how Lando was banging his wheel and complaining over the radio.

At the end of the day, Oscar knows Lando better than Red Bull does. Knows that a half-hearted apology wouldn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things.

Oscar got a ten second penalty for the collision, but it hadn’t mattered.

He won the race, and he comes out of Miami two points ahead. And then he flies to Monaco.

“I’d have half a mind to think you’re stalking me, mate,” Oscar laughs, when he shows up at the padel court with Kim, to find Max and someone Oscar doesn’t recognize queueing up for a singles court.

Max frowns, a crease forming between his brows. “I got here first.”

And, well, that is true. Oscar fiddles with the handle of his racket, still inside the sleeve, and suggests, “Wanna play doubles, since we’re here?”

Max’s eyes widen. He glances behind him, at the man he came with, who shoots Max an noncommittal look and shrugs his shoulders. “Sure,” Max answers, and he tells the front of house that they’ll need a doubles court after all.

They don’t make a bad team.

Which isn’t to say that they’re good. They’re both, actually, pretty shit. They’ve both been playing for something like three years, but Oscar’s made little improvement, and he can tell that Max hasn’t made much more, either. Still, there’s a bit of chemistry, Oscar’s pleased to discover.

They switch partners every few sets, mostly just to level out the playing field and bridge the skill gaps, but in all sets they play together, they lose horrendously, to Kim and, who Oscar finds out, is Max’s new personal trainer. Not one designed for F1, but just one he hired to keep him fit throughout the year.

Still, though, it’s fun playing with Max.

They’re sitting on the sidelines after their last set, wiping away their sweat and catching their breaths on the bench.

“So what’ve you been up to?” Oscar asks, infinitely curious.

Max is panting, leaning against the wall behind him. “Relaxing,” he responds, unsatisfactorily. “Eating good food.”

Oscar rolls his eyes, dabbing at the back of his neck with his towel. “Other than relaxing,” he corrects. “And eating good food.”

Max isn’t even thirty, but he’s a retired five-time world champion. Surely, Oscar thinks, you’re not just satisfied with leaving it all at that.

Max shrugs and looks at Oscar out of the corner of his eye. “Sleeping. Playing video games. Seen my family a lot. Gone on a couple holidays with friends.”

Oscar gives Max a once over. “You’re still quite fit,” he observes, because it’s the truth. Max still kind of looks the same as he did last year—Oscar really can’t tell the difference. They’re only four months out, but still, it takes a certain training to keep at the level of physicality Max seems to have.

He means it objectively, but when he gets the words out and hears himself, he flushes a little, knowing how it sounded.

“Can’t let myself go, of course,” Max says, and Oscar is thankful he didn’t comment on the comment.

“Yeah?” Oscar asks, putting his towel down to the side, between them. “Planning to race again?”

Max scoffs and shakes his head. “Not this year, at least.”

Oscar’s eyes widen. “Next year, then?”

Max laughs. Oscar’s gaze follows the smile lines forming on the sides of his face. “F1 is going well?” he asks, and Oscar goes along with it, knows not to push where he’s not welcome.

“It’s going,” Oscar answers, with a shrug, glancing at Max’s new trainer and Kim chatting on the other bench.

“How’s Lando?” Max asks, and Oscar bristles.

“Think you’d know better than me, mate,” he says. He hasn’t talked to Lando, not really, not in a way that matters, since last year, since Zandvoort 2025.

Max shoots Oscar a look that he can’t quite decipher. “We haven’t been in contact of course,” he says, and Oscar sighs. He supposes, yes, it might be like that. Lando fell out with a lot of the other drivers, last year—Max included, but Oscar had always thought that maybe Max’s retirement would’ve changed things.

Oscar thinks past Miami and Japan, about the first two races, how happy Lando looked on the podium, how he’s been more positive in his interviews, ever since Oscar left.

“He’s doing well, I think.”

“Giving you trouble?” Max asks.

And Oscar laughs, thinking about how Lando had fought him in Saudi Arabia, not conceding the place; how they’d fought in Japan, Lando defending his lead hard in Estoril, but Oscar had taken it a couple corners later, anyway. “Lots of,” he says, and he can’t help but smile.

When he comes back to himself, he finds Max looking at him in his periphery. There’s something in his eyes that Oscar can’t place, mouth pursed, a sort of careful gaze.

“Do you have any plans tonight?” Max asks.

“Not really, no,” he answers honestly. He isn’t leaving for Imola for another few days, and his calendar is pretty free until then. He doesn’t have to be up tomorrow morning until ten.

“Wanna grab a drink later?” Max asks.

Oscar blinks. Once, twice, three times.

If you told him at sixteen that a five-time world champion would invite him out for drinks, he’d laugh in your face. “Sure,” he says, and he bites his lip, suppressing a smile.

Rumor has it that Max is planning to return to racing. WEC seems the most probable, but some more adventurous rumors say he’s planning to have a go at rallying, at the Indy500, at the triple crown. Some say he’s already itching to return to F1 already, have a go with Mercedes or Ferrari, but Oscar knows that he isn’t.

The problem is, Oscar still isn’t really sure what Max wants. Oscar still isn’t really sure why he retired so early in the first place.

Oscar doesn’t have any preferences for drinks—he doesn’t go out in Monaco very much, so he leaves it up to Max. Max picks Sass. It’s more lowkey than Jimmy’z and MK, but comfortably alive. It’s a Tuesday, so it isn’t super busy, and they quickly grab drinks and a table in the corner.

It’s not awkward, is the strange bit. Oscar’s never really gone out with Max—mostly, he’s just seen Max in his periphery in after-race parties, hanging out with Lando, maybe had a short conversation with him at Lando’s behest, back in 2023 and early 2024, when things were still good between them, clean and easy and simple and happy. But right now, right off the bat, tucked into a little booth, Max finally asks him about Red Bull, and things get going quickly.

They talk about GP, about Max’s pit crew that Oscar inherited, about the changes that were made since Max left. The thing is, in all honesty, at a functional, organizational level, he can’t say that Red Bull is very different from McLaren. There’s still that same laser-sharp focus, the deadly competence, and the drive to perform on the limit, to the limit.

It’s not better or worse, but to some extent, it is different, undeniably, in a way he can’t explain. Feels different. It’s nice being in a team that’s not ashamed about winning or embarrassed about having a fast car, but Oscar knows it’s not just that. He tries to explain it to Max over their second round, but he can’t get it across, can’t even figure it out himself. Max has never been with another team, other than his short stint at Toro Rosso, which Oscar supposes doesn’t exactly count.

Trying to explain it feels moot, so Oscar gives up midway.

“It’s because you’re the team leader, of course,” Max says.

Oscar blinks.

“Before now,” Max says, “you had Lando. Now you don’t, so. That’s probably what you’re feeling, of course.”

Oscar swallows. He hadn’t thought about it like that. Liam is nice, and he’s fun, and they get along well—maybe a little too well, the team’s always on them for horsing around too much in media—but he’s no Lando.

“Yeah,” he concedes. “I guess so.”

The red glow of Sass Cafe is a bit alien, makes Oscar feel like he’s on a different planet, the sparkling silver chandeliers, leopard cushioned stools by the bar, and tacky shiny gold throw pillows on burgundy velvet couches. Max looks at home, tucked along the curve of the leather booth they have. He sips on his gin-tonic, and ice clinks against glass as he sets it back down on the table.

“You’re leading the championship, though,” Max says. “How many points is it? Three?”

“Two.”

“Close enough.”

Oscar purses his lips. “Too close, maybe.”

Max laughs softly, but Oscar sees it more than he hears it, the music a little too loud for easy listening. “That’s how it goes,” he says. “The first is never easy. But I think you’re doing pretty well.”

“Yeah?” Oscar asks, cheeks brimming with heat.

“Bold move you made.”

Oscar can’t help but smirk a little, and he glances at Max out of the corner of his eye. His thumb runs along the side of his glass, condensation beading down his wrist. “Won me the race.”

“What was it that Lando said after?” Max asks. “It is not the first time Oscar has been selfish going into the corner?” he mimics.

Oscar sucks in a breath, smirk dropping. He can hear it in his head, the wobble in Lando’s voice; he can see it, the quiver of his mouth. He doesn’t really want to talk about Lando. “Something like that.”

He finishes the rest of his drink, for lack of anything better to do, and he’s hit with a revelation. “But I thought you said you didn’t watch the races.”

Max freezes, a little, his eyes widening, and he presses his lips together. “I see clips online sometimes,” he defends.

Oscar laughs. He doesn’t want to push it. He and Max aren’t close enough for that, anyway. He glances at Max’s finished drink, and makes the call. “I think I should get going,” he says, even though he kinda wants to stay.

“Yeah,” Max says, nodding. “Me too.”

They close their tabs at the bar, then they slip outside, ready part ways. It isn’t until Oscar checks his phone that he realizes that, somehow, two hours had passed. It hadn’t felt like that. It felt like a blip in the night.

“This was nice,” Max says, biting his lip.

“We should—” Oscar starts, cheeks burning in the brisk night air. “Next time I’m in Monaco?”

Max grins, loose and easy, and says. “You have my number.”

McLaren have the advantage into Imola.

High downforce, low grip, low tyre wear, difficult overtaking opportunities.

Oscar didn’t have many expectations going into the weekend, but the upside is that Ferrari seem to have it all figured out. They lock out the front row, Charles on pole then Lewis in P2, with Lando and Oscar just behind.

Lando moves into the defensive inner line. It’s his first mistake.

Oscar comes around the outside, and Lando—pulls out. Concedes the place. It reminds Oscar of 2024. Of Hungary, of Monza.

Oscar makes the overtake. It’s crude, and maybe he comes a bit too close for comfort, but he doesn’t feel sorry. There’s no point in being sorry for things like this.

The 2024 World Drivers’ Championship came down to the last race.

Max and Lando had come into Abu Dhabi just five points apart—Max was holding onto his championship lead by a thread.

To win the championship, Lando had to make six points over Max.

Lando had started the race on pole. Oscar in second. Max in third.

Winning the race would’ve been enough, no matter where Max finished.

Lights out and away we go.

Lando fucked the start. What was Oscar to do, but take the place?

And so, Lando fell back into fourth. Max and Lewis jumped at the opportunity, taking the places he had lost. Oscar had the lead. It would be a one stop race, he knew.

Lap 18: Lando got the undercut, boxed to cover off Lewis, and came out just behind a Mercedes.

Easily, on newer tyres, he overtook on the straight, but there was still Max to go ahead.

Lap 19: Max boxed and came out nearly side-by-side with Lando—but Lando went wide, and Max ended up just ahead.

Lap 20: Oscar pitted, returning to the track six seconds ahead of Lando, who was struggling to get clear of Max, even with DRS and a faster car.

It wasn’t until Lap 25 that Lando made the overtake, barely making it stick. For the first time all race, he was in clean air.

Clean air is king.

Oscar had been managing his tyres and the gap, keeping it at six seconds.

Tom was keeping him updated on Lando’s lap times, where he was gaining, what lines he was taking. Oscar simply couldn’t match his speed. Lando was closing the gap. Six seconds, then five, then four, then Oscar could see Lando in his mirrors.

He saw, also, when Lando had a nasty lockup, flat spotted his tyres, and lost around three seconds in a single lap, and found himself having to fight Max—again.

A part of Oscar almost felt disappointed. There was a race to be had. But Lando just wasn’t giving it to him.

Ted KRAVITZ: Crofty, sorry to interrupt, but I’ve just been hearing from the McLaren pitwall, if Lando can’t pick up the pace, it seems like they might consider the use of team orders.

David CROFT: [laughing] No papaya rules?

KRAVITZ: Doesn’t seem like it.

Nico ROSBERG: They’re lapping about equal times now, it looks like. That lockup Lando had on Lap 39 really set him back.

KRAVITZ: If the race finishes like this, even if Lando gets the fastest lap, he’ll be a point shy of Max. If I were McLaren, I’d be—

CROFT: Two secs, Ted.

ABU DHABI GRAND PRIX 2024

Oscar Piastri’s Radio Transcript — Lap 48

Tom STALLARD: Oscar, would you consider—

Oscar PIASTRI: Did he ask?

TS: This is for the team.

OP: Already won the constructors’.

TS: We could get them both this year.

OP: Tell him to catch up then.

Silence.

TS: He can’t. Oscar, you know what you have to do.

OP: Is this a team order?

Silence, longer this time.

TS: Yes, it is.

Martin BRUNDLE: [stuttering] Surely he’s going to give the place.

Nico ROSBERG: But Lando didn’t, in Hungary.

BRUNDLE: A championship wasn’t at stake then.

ROSBERG: It’s not Oscar’s championship to worry about.

ABU DHABI GRAND PRIX 2024

Oscar Piastri’s Radio Transcript — Lap 57

TS: Oscar, you’ve made your point.

OP: It’s not about that.

Silence.

TS: Alright. It’s your call.

CROFT: After what has felt like a fairy tale season, with first wins and home race triumphs, at the season closer, Oscar Piastri, only twenty-three years of age, wins the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix ahead of his teammate. Lando Norris loses out and crosses the chequered flag to finish second, taking the fastest lap. And what seemed like a foregone conclusion in Bahrain, and turned out to be anything but—Max Verstappen takes third place and makes it four for four. The Dutchman flies past the finish line to win his fourth drivers’ championship in a row—by a single point.

At Yas Marina, Oscar was the first car in parc fermé. Lando followed, while Max was still on the track, doing donuts and being lifted up by his team, hugging his mechanics and his engineers and his dad and his girlfriend and her daughter.

He needed a miracle to win this title. Oscar gave it to him.

Oscar lifted himself out of his car, jumped out and his feet met the gravel. He felt unweighed down by gravity, like he was floating. He didn’t head out to his crew, standing behind the barrier, merely took his helmet off, looked up at the firework-filled sky, and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. Took it all in. The cheers, the boos, and the roaring silence.

He turned to the side, and he saw Lando, pacing away to the weighing scale, and then storming off to the safety car garage, where his dad, his mum, and Max Fewtrell were waiting.

His helmet was still on. It didn’t look like he was going to take it off.

In Imola, a botched pitstop and contact with George has Oscar finishing seventh to Lando’s second, and he’s ten points behind in the championship, just like that.

Charles and Lewis are gaining momentum too.

Oscar grits his teeth, and starts to put his focus on Monaco.

He finds himself at the padel court a few days later, in a doubles match with Max.

Max and a few of his friends were planning on playing a doubles game, but one of them had pulled out at the last minute, so Max texted Oscar, asking him if he was free that afternoon, and he happened to be. When he arrived, Max introduced him to his friends, the four of them had light conversation about how Oscar’s doing this season, and they quickly got started.

He and Max, once again, get obliterated, but they do manage to win a few sets here and there when they’re playing as teammates. As the time they booked draws to a close, they settle down on the side of the court. It wasn’t as intense as the sets they’d played with their trainers last time out, but Oscar still feels beat, sitting back against the wall, catching his breath.

Max collapses next to him, panting. He hadn’t grabbed his towel, so he uses the end of his shirt to wipe the sweat off his flushed-red face. Oscar’s eyes drift down to Max’s stomach. He swallows, and quickly looks away.

After Max lets go of his shirt, he lolls his head to the side and looks at Oscar.

“Same time next week?”

A surprised laugh escapes Oscar’s mouth.

“Yeah,” he ends up saying. Max’s eyes brighten. “I’d like that.”

Monaco is—it could be better.

Oscar misses out on pole by a tenth. Charles takes it, and Lando takes third. On Sunday, they finish out the race like that too. It cuts Lando’s championship lead by three points, but it still makes Oscar’s feel a bit frustrated, knowing he could’ve had the win.

Before Spain, Oscar does go and play another match with Max and his friends, and he finds that playing padel with Max is one of the few times lately where he’s not actively thinking about the championship, about Red Bull, about Lando.

Lando wins in Spain. Oscar finishes P2, unable to close the gap to Lando the entire race. When he gets back to his hotel room he collapses on the bed, throws his forearm over his eyes, and bites hard on the inside of his cheek.

A part of him wants to scream. He doesn’t.

“You’re doing well,” Mark says after Canada, finding Oscar on his way to the media pen. He squeezes Oscar’s shoulder, and keeps his hand there. “Don’t let it faze you.”

Oscar sighs, and he takes a deep breath, exhales out the frustration. P5 to Lando’s P3. Nineteen points now. “I know.”

“It’s a long season,” Mark reminds. Oscar can barely hear him over the chaos of the paddock. “There’s still fourteen races to go.”

“I know,” Oscar repeats, and it must come out more forceful than he’d intended, because Mark starts looking at him with these soft, careful, caring eyes. Oscar takes another deep breath, telling himself to be grateful that Mark’s even here.

Mark’s been less hands-on these days, not like he used to be in Oscar’s first two years, and hasn’t come to many races—as much as the media has tried to spin Oscar’s move to Red Bull as Mark’s homecoming, Mark’s done just as much to let Oscar fight this battle on his own.

A year and a half ago, in Abu Dhabi, it was so loud in parc fermé that Oscar felt his ears might burst.

Jenson was standing at the interview spot, waiting and ready, but Max hadn’t come back from the track yet. There was too much time to kill and Oscar didn’t know what to do. It was starting to sink in, what he’d done and what he chose. Lewis and Fernando had come to congratulate him first thing, but all the other drivers were crowded around Lando with sympathetic smiles, squeezing him by the shoulder and pulling him into half-hugs, consoling. Lando’s body was limp and despondent, and he was staring at his feet. He had finally taken his helmet off.

If Oscar looked close enough, his eyes were swollen-red and rubbed raw.

He swallowed, and he looked away. His head was reeling.

A moment later, a body suddenly slammed into him, and he was pulled into an embrace. It took him a moment to realize it was Mark, to bring his arms around his sinewy frame. Oscar hadn’t even seen him coming.

“Jesus Christ, kid. I didn’t doubt you for a moment, but Christ,” Mark was saying, and his voice seemed to be shaking with—pride.

The cheers started to ring louder. Oscar reasoned that Max had finally made it to parc fermé, and they were ready to start the interviews.

“Don’t let anyone take this from you,” Mark said. “It’s yours.”

Oscar’s throat felt tight, and it felt like he was only now coming back into his body.

Mark finally let him go with a pat on his shoulder, nudging him toward Jenson. Oscar brought his shaky hands back to his sides and nodded.

It wasn’t until Oscar was walking toward the interview spot, feeling everyone’s eyes on him—Jenson’s, Mark’s, Zak’s, Andrea’s, Max’s—that he realized he wouldn’t have done anything differently.

A lot of people think Oscar acted out of revenge. Lando didn’t give the place back in Hungary, so Oscar wouldn’t help him out in Abu Dhabi.

It wasn’t the same, not really. Abu Dhabi was Lando’s to lose and he lost it off the line. Besides, come December, Oscar hadn’t had any hard feelings about Hungary anymore; there was no use dwelling over the past like that.

Lewis HAMILTON: What do I think about Oscar ignoring team orders? Well, I mean, I haven’t exactly heard the radios myself, and naturally I don’t know the details. They’ll probably be having internal discussions about it, so I don’t think it’s my place to speak about it. But, you know, having that sort of—champion mentality going into the last race, especially when your teammate is the favorite to win—it takes a certain mental strength to overcome that pressure, and do what you think is best. Was it selfish? Sure. But that’s racing. You don’t get very far if you’re not selfish. A night like this, a race like that, defines a career. I don’t think many of us could’ve done what he did tonight.

Before Austria, he and Max share another drink. It’s a hotel bar this time, less glamorous than Sass, but still classy, upscale. They sit in the outdoor area in wide couch-seats under beige canopies. Oscar feels underdressed in his workout tee and loose shorts, but he‘s been putting off his laundry, so. Max is more dressed up, to Oscar’s surprise, in a slightly-wrinkled white button-down. He looks nice.

Max is, Oscar is quickly realizing, is becoming a friend, one of his only friends in Monaco. Even though Oscar’s lived here for more than two years, most of his friends are still in the UK or Australia, and Jack just bought a flat near the Alpine factory, and Liam lives in MK. Last year, at least before the mess of Zandvoort, he’d been so caught up with Lando and breaking up with Lily, and then the secret contract negotiations with Red Bull and the media fallout that ensued, that he hadn’t had the space or time to be making friends in Monaco.

They’re talking about Canada, and Max has finally given up the pretense of not watching the races. From his incredibly detailed commentary on Oscar’s racing lines and braking points—it seems like he’s been watching each race, in depth.

“Would you ever come and watch a race?” Oscar asks, drumming his fingers on the table. They’re ten rounds in, going into the eleventh, and from what Max has told him, he hasn’t been doing much other than working out, sleeping, eating, playing video games on Twitch, and handling his Verstappen.com activities.

“Too soon,” Max says, a healthy flush on his cheeks, “I think.”

“But you would?”

Max laughs and shakes his head. “Not this year.”

But that leaves it open, Oscar thinks. “Red Bull would love to have you,” he points out.

Something in Max’s gaze falters, and he says, “They have you now.”

Oscar sighs, doesn’t argue the point, and looks out at the sunset.

Max’s early retirement wasn’t exactly a surprise to anyone. The timing of the announcement, yes, on a random Tuesday in the middle of the 2025 summer break, but everyone knew it was coming. 2024 had been harder for Red Bull than anyone had expected, and while 2025 had been far, far better, you could see it in his eyes, that he was ready to let up the mantle, and start a new stage of his life. There were rumors about him and Kelly, how they were getting married, or having a kid, but later into the season, just before Las Vegas, they broke up, which was more surprising than the retirement to Oscar and most of the paddock.

“Spielberg will be nice, I think,” Max says, sipping on his gin-tonic. “I think that’s when you’ll really start to feel it.”

Oscar lifts a brow. “Feel what?”

“Like a Red Bull driver.”

Oscar snorts. “Already feel like one, mate.”

Max hums, narrowing his eyes. “Really? No more love for McLaren?”

Oscar chews on the inside of his cheek. “Honestly, I feel like there hasn’t been love for a while.”

Zak and Andrea hadn’t reprimanded him for Abu Dhabi. There had been a lot of talk about how they’d be dropping him into 2025, how they’d demote him to second driver status going into the new season, but Oscar’s contract was air tight.

He was still in mathematical contention for the championship going into Abu Dhabi, albeit twenty-four points behind Max. However, if Max and Lando had fought and crashed and Oscar had won the race, he could’ve won the championship too.

McLaren knew that, and while they weren’t happy with him, legally, he just hadn’t been in the wrong for ignoring the team orders—they had, for giving them. It was a breach of contract, one they’d come to regret.

If Oscar’s being honest, looking back, it seemed like Zak and Andrea respected him more for it, like he was Senna and Lando was Prost and they were in Japan. He might not have given them a championship but he gave them a story—he gave them proof he was the future world champion they hoped he’d be when they signed him back in 2022. Showed them they’d bet on the right horse after all.

In the end, though, they were the ones who saw a future for him at McLaren. It was never about that, for Oscar. It was only ever about racing. It was never about McLaren. It didn’t have to be McLaren.

“What’s it they call you?” Max asks, over their fourth round. Oscar doesn’t usually drink this much, but there’s something that has him wanting to keep up with Max.

Oscar grumbles, embarrassed. Since Abu Dhabi, he’s been called a lot of things, Brutus, Oscar Iscariot, Webber’s Revenge, but he knows which one Max is talking about. It was freezing cold in Montreal, and as he crossed the line, Crofty called him, “The Ice Prince.”

“Hah!” Max throws his head back with laughter. Oscar flushes. “That’s a good one.”

It sounds like it comes from the YA novels his younger sisters used to read, but it’s one of the few that doesn’t call him a traitor, so.

“It’s no Mad Max,” Oscar points out.

Max’s eyes soften. For a split second, it’s like something cracks. “Yeah, well,” he says, voice taking on an odd tone. “I haven’t been Mad Max in a while.”

As they’re finishing off the fourth round, they notice a few tourist-types at the other end of the patio taking photos of them, so they close their tabs and go back to Max’s flat for more privacy, more drinks, and more conversation. Oscar hasn’t felt this loose-lipped in ages. In the kitchen, Max is pouring him a gin-tonic that’s more gin than it is tonic, and Oscar’s spinning around on the little swivel-stool, and he starts telling a story about how, the first month he was living in Monaco, Lando invited him over to his place, and mixed him an awful whiskey-tequila concoction.

“Mate,” Oscar is saying, “it was rank, and it was like—he was so proud of himself for making it, and I thought he was taking the piss, but apparently he’d made it for Max—Fewtrell, and Max told him it was good, but I honestly think Max just said that to make him feel better, and he actually, like, believed it. And when I spit it out, he was so offended. He like—you know that face he makes when he’s hurt? Like he couldn’t believe it. Then I forced him to try it on his own, and—”

It’s only now that Oscar realizes that Max has finished making their drinks, and he’s bent over the other side of the counter, looking at him, amused.

“What?” Oscar asks, suddenly self-conscious.

“Your face—” Max says, cradling the side of his cheek in his palm, elbow propping up his head, “it does this thing when you talk about Lando.”

Oscar’s heart is beating in his throat. “Does what?”

Max smiles, and his eyes are kind when he says, “You just look very happy.”

Oscar avoids eye contact. Grabs the gin-tonic Max has slid halfway across the counter and brings it to his own space, cups it in his palms. “Do I?” he asks, biting his lip.

“For someone who’s supposed to hate him,” Max says, “yeah.”

Defensively, Oscar blurts out, “I don’t hate him.”

Max laughs, and Oscar’s cheeks go hot. “I know that,” he says.

Oscar bites his lip, running his thumb along the lip of the glass, staring at how the condensation drips down and pools along the marble.

“Do you miss him?” Max asks, after a beat.

Oscar’s eyes flit back up. He feels like a deer caught in headlights. His chest feels tight all of a sudden. “I don’t—” he starts, pursing his lips. “I’m not sure,” he finishes, in a small, uncertain voice.

More than anything, he kind of just misses the way they used to be.

Time snails by, and Max is quiet for a long moment, before he says, with a firm gentleness, “It’s okay to miss an old teammate, you know. I of course missed Daniel a lot, in 2019.”

“Yeah,” Oscar says, biting his tongue. He doesn’t think it’s worth it, to explain to Max how it’s not the same. Not even close.

Lando hadn’t attended the 2024 FIA Prize Giving Gala. He caught a fever that was worsened by jet lag and stress, flying back from Abu Dhabi, and could barely make it out of bed. Oscar could tell that Zak didn’t actually believe him, rolled his eyes when he said Lando was bedridden, but Oscar knew it was the truth. Lando tended to get sick more easily than the average person, and it was worse in the winter.

Oscar had been in the limo with Zak, Andrea, and Lily, and he’d been bouncing his knee, staring at the quadruple texts he’d sent Lando, asking him if he was okay, to radio silence.

It was only when they made it to the venue and were sitting at their seats, that Oscar’s phone buzzed with a text. But it wasn’t Lando, it was Max Fewtrell.

LN says to stop texting

Oscar had his phone under the table. Lily was looking at him curiously, but Oscar shot off a quick text, Is he okay?

Max’s response came only moments later.

he’s at mine
i’m taking care of him

Oscar swallowed. Max hadn’t actually answered his question. It was infuriating. He started typing off a million different texts, deleting each halfway. He couldn’t find the right words.

Okay, he decided to go with, and hated himself for it, so he quickly typed out and sent, Tell him I hope he feels better soon.

Max was typing for a long time, and Oscar hadn’t taken his eyes off his phone. Three different awards had been handed out by the time Max finally replied:

do you actually
lol

Lily put a hand on his knee. It wasn’t until then that Oscar realized he’d been bouncing it anxiously. He tried to calm himself down, reread Max’s texts.

He pulled the inside of his cheek between his teeth. He supposed maybe he deserved that.

Yeah
I do

Max replied with a 👍, and Oscar turned his phone off, put it face down on the table, leaned back into his chair so that his head was angled up to the ceiling, and closed his eyes. Like a finger trap, the more he pulled, the more he felt stuck.

After that, every message he sent to Lando went undelivered. Oscar realized his number was blocked, so he just stopped trying.

After the new year, Lando and Max had gone to Tibet together, Oscar found out from Max’s Instagram. Visited a million different temples and monasteries together, backpacked and hiked small mountains.

In some of the photos, Lando almost looked happy.

Max—Verstappen—was right about Spielberg. It’s different, being a Red Bull driver here. It’s something about the big fucking bull in the middle of the track, maybe, the grandstands and posters in his name.

When he wins, when he’s standing on the top of the podium, it doesn’t feel quite like a rebirth. It kind of just feels like a going towards.

During the Australian anthem, he closes his eyes, tilts his head up at the sky, and takes a deep breath. He thinks to himself, maybe, he could keep doing this for a long time. Ten, twenty years.

Oscar and Lando didn’t talk during the winter break, following Abu Dhabi. Oscar had to do post-season testing, but Lando hadn’t. The first time they saw each other again was during pre-season, when they were testing the MCL39.

Oscar knew how to take a message—his number was blocked from Lando’s end, so he knew that there was no point trying to talk it out in person. It turned out he had the right idea, because all throughout testing Lando avoided him. They were only in each other’s spaces when absolutely necessary, and even then, there was a distance, emptiness or other bodies. There wasn’t a difference. It was still negative space.

But then they were in Australia for the 2025 season opener, and it was—

Fine.

They were doing their post-free practices, and Oscar had been waiting to do his interview, listening to Lando explain how the car felt, how they feel they’ll do in qualifying, the tyres, and Lando was asked about Abu Dhabi, about the state of the team, and Oscar felt his breath catch in the back of his throat. He had no idea what Lando would say.

Lando’s eyes went cold, and his face took on a terrifying sort of sereneness to it, but there was still a sharpness to his words.

“Look,” he said, tiredly. “I’ve already said this a million times, but it’s a new season. What happened in Abu Dhabi—it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“So you’ve cleared it up in the team? Internally? Come up with solutions to make sure it won’t happen again?”

Lando responded instantly, impulsively, maybe. He said, with certainty, “No, it won’t happen again. But that doesn’t have to do with the team, or Oscar. It’s not something we need to talk about. I know what I need to do. I’m just not gonna let it get that close ever again.”

But it turned out, in 2025, Red Bull were back on track. Development had gone better over the winter, and while they weren’t as fast as they were in 2023, they were competitive. Red Bull got off to a slow start, and they traded off wins with McLaren, and the championship battle was tight—but then Red Bull brought their upgrades in Miami. After that, Max seemed indomitable. McLaren won the constructors’, but for the drivers’, Lando and Oscar trailed behind in points, and though they got a couple wins here and there, the gap only grew wider and wider.

It felt almost like they’d stepped back in time.

Except—

The start of 2025 wasn’t bad between Oscar and Lando, not like everyone was expecting it to be. Not like Oscar expected it to be.

It was awkward, but it wasn’t bad, exactly. Lando didn’t want to talk to him, and the more time that passed the less that Oscar had to say.

They started filming media again, not the silly challenges they used to, but promotional materials and pre- and post-race updates. Lando was cold and distant, bristly and awkward. Oscar can’t say he was much different.

A part of him wondered if an apology would make things better between them, would make things go back to normal. If that’s what Lando wanted, was waiting for.

The problem was, at the end of the day, he didn’t particularly feel sorry, and he’s never been the type to say things he doesn’t mean.

Two days after winning Austria 2026, Oscar has a foot into the Red Bull Austria HQ, when he stops in his tracks and nearly gets knocked over by the shutting door behind him. He trips inside, blinks rapidly, and recovers his stance. Mark looks at him weirdly from ahead.

Oscar doesn’t pay Mark any attention, and instead calls Max’s name in shock.

Max, who had been speaking to GP in the lobby, turns his head and spots Oscar. He grins and finishes his conversation with GP, then walks toward Oscar. Mark leaves them to it and heads with GP to the venue.

“Thought you said—”

Max shrugs. “It’s not a race.”

They’re having a big event with Red Bull athletes and streamers and their sponsors. It’s a bit schmoozy, and Oscar’s rewearing the suit he wore at last year’s FIA Prize Giving Ceremony. It kinda looks like Max is too, but at least without the gigantic bow tie—he’s gone for a smaller one, this time.

“You flew all the way from Monaco for this?”

“I’m of course a lifetime Red Bull brand ambassador, or whatever it is,” Max says.

They’d seen each other just before Austria. Oscar got proper drunk that night, and Max had to call him a taxi home. Oscar can’t believe that Max didn’t tell him he’d be coming. “Were you always—?”

Max shakes his head.

“Christian invited me,” he explains, grinning. “Liam couldn’t come, right? I’m the backup.”

And Oscar laughs. As if Max could ever be a second choice.

Max is sitting next to Oscar at a circular table close to the stage. A placard reading Liam Lawson sits in front of him, and he’s animatedly talking to Oscar about the move that Oscar made against Lando on Lap 17, taking a wide line through the corner, on the inside, effectively forcing Lando off to drive over the curb. But before that, Lando had turned into him, and the stewards deemed it legal.

It won Oscar the race, as Charles had slipped through and fought Lando off, and McLaren’s slow pitstop didn’t help.

Max is waving his hands around, talking about his heart was in his mouth as he was watching on the TV, and Oscar is so caught up in Max’s bright gaze, the way his cheeks are so flushed from the two glasses of wine he’d downed, that he can’t get a single word in—not like he has anything to say.

Racing lines and overtakes. Max calls the move brilliant, calls him brilliant, then in the same breath moves on to talk about the mistake Lewis made in Turn 54 that lost him a podium, and all Oscar can think is how Max’s eyes come alive when he talks about racing. He loves it still, and Oscar is thinking, realizing, it was only ever about the racing for Max, wasn’t it?

It didn’t have to be Red Bull, but it was, and he loved them, and they loved him back.

“What?” Max is asking, and Oscar comes back to himself, realizes he’d been staring, silently. They’re supposed to be socializing, right now. Supposed to be getting to know the other Red Bull athletes and streamers. They’re the only two at this table; the venue is buzzing around them, but the room feels small and narrow.

Oscar thinks about Max telling him to enjoy it. He thinks about what it means.

“Nothing,” Oscar says, remembering what it was like on Sunday, being in the car, the thrill in his chest when the lights went out, then again, crossing the chequered flag first.

“Keep going,” he says, and Max grins.

Last April, Oscar turned twenty-four the day of the Japanese Grand Prix.

Oscar had qualified in third, next to Charles. Lando had pole. Max was in second.

They were in Oscar’s garage. The team had put together a happy birthday party for him, in the small sliver of time before Sunday started proper, with cakes the mechanics hand-decorated for him. Oscar hadn’t been able to eat any of it, none of them were, but they’d smashed it into his face anyway, and Oscar was wiping his cheeks dry with a towel, grimacing at how he didn’t have time to actually head to a bathroom to clean himself up, and he knew he’d probably get frosting on his balaclava, and have to sit through it during the race, but the thought of it made him happy. Truth is, a part of him always felt like a bit of a stranger with McLaren. They wanted him so badly they helped him get out of his Alpine contract, but at the same time, it was Lando’s team, and a part of Oscar always felt bad for intruding.

Lando had awkwardly and quietly been standing next to Jon the entire celebration, arms crossed over his chest and looking down at his feet between the moments he was stealing glances at Oscar.

Once the cameras were off, he quietly shuffled over to Oscar, a small purse to his mouth. He’d shaved that morning. He looked very pretty.

“Happy birthday,” he said, chewing on his bottom lip.

Oscar’s eyes widened. These were maybe the first words Lando had spoken to him all year, words that weren’t for the cameras.

“Thanks,” he said, heart beating loudly in his chest.

Lando was still avoiding his eyes. He kicked lightly at a small piece of debris that made it into Oscar’s garage. “Didn’t get you anything.”

Oscar hadn’t seen why that mattered.

“You didn’t need to,” he said, because Lando didn’t. The past two years, Lando hadn’t given him gifts anyway, and Oscar hadn’t for him.

Still, he felt kind of breathless. His mechanics were all dicking around, chasing each other with pieces of cake, and his garage was a mess, but in this moment, it kind of felt like it was just him and Lando, the world small and narrow, hidden in plain sight.

“Mint,” Lando said, with a wobbling smile. “Twenty-four, yeah?”

Oscar nodded. “Getting old.”

And Lando laughed. “Still young, in the books.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said, thinking about how, in their first year as teammates, Lando turned twenty-four. “I suppose.”

Lando pulled his bottom lip between his teeth again, anxiously, like he was wishing for a hoodie string to chew on. He shuffled on his feet, like he was making to leave, and Oscar said his name.

Lando’s eyes flicked up to meet Oscar’s. “Yeah?” he asked, and his cheeks were slightly flushed.

“Thank you,” Oscar said, and Lando frowned.

“You already said that.”

“I know,” Oscar said, and he felt his eyes softening. “I just wanted to say it.”

On the podium, even though Oscar finished ahead of Lando because Lando had gone wide into the first corner and lost the place to Max, and Oscar had gone through; even though Max ended up winning the race, and Lando only finished third to Oscar’s second; despite it all, Lando did his champagne pop and sprayed Oscar with champagne. Oscar closed his eyes, basked in it, the smell, the feeling, the sound of the crowd, and when he finally opened his eyes they were stinging, so he wiped them dry with his sleeve. When his sight finally cleared, he found Lando grinning at him, wide and unabashed, almost unweighted. Lando was looking at him, happy, and Oscar felt, just for a moment, like things were going to be okay between them. That things were going to be better. That this would be a turning point. That things, finally, would go back to the way they were.

By about three hours in, most of the F1 personnel and sponsors have left, and it’s just the athletes and E-Sports streamers bothering the servers for drinks. Ludwig ends up bankrupting himself, buying drinks for the entire floor, and Oscar finds himself sticking next to Max, who’s currently crushing some Twitch streamer at Mario Kart in the little corner they set up for Red Bull LFG.

Someone had made a big deal about whoever beats Max gets a hundred subs, or whatever, but no one’s been able to. So it becomes a challenge: who can beat the five-time F1 world champion at Mario Kart? Oscar hadn’t planned on playing in the first place—really, there’s no incentive for him to win—but he gets egged on, people chanting his name, and he eventually takes the controller, and sits next to Max, grimacing.

There’s a lot of cheers, and a lot of boos. A lot of drunk Twitch streamers shouting incoherently. Max picks Bowser and Oscar picks Yoshi.

Oscar hasn’t really played Mario Kart since Haileybury, hasn’t exactly played this new edition, but Max seems to be relying solely on his, like, actual racing knowledge, Oscar figures out during the first lap, when he’s still dicking around, getting comfortable with the controls and his set-up. By the end of the first lap, he’s in P3 to Max’s P1.

This isn’t actually like iRacing, Oscar reckons, but Max is treating it like that, taking the optimal lines along Rainbow Road, without any fear of falling off.

Thing is, though, Mario Kart is Mario Kart. It’s not actually really about racing.

In the middle of his second lap, he starts to get serious.

Last year, McLaren fucked Oscar over in Bahrain, and then again in Saudi Arabia. Bad pitstops and bad strategy, and they hadn’t even fought too hard when Oscar supposedly impeded Kimi in Jeddah quali, dropping him back three places.

Lando won both races. Oscar hadn’t finished on the podium.

Lando was five points behind Max going into Miami, but then Max won both the race and the sprint, and the gap widened to twenty-one.

Oscar and Lando arrived in Imola, slightly dejected for different reasons, but determined to turn things around.

And then came the flood.

It wasn’t as bad as it was in 2023, not enough to cancel the race or quali or free practices, but enough that media day was canceled, and the drivers were all stuck at their hotels as volunteers cleared up the track, and Oscar was lazing about on his bed texting Lily about something that didn’t matter when he heard a knock, put his phone down, got up, and shuffled over to the door, and there Lando was.

Oscar’s eyes went wide open.

Lando’s mouth was pulled into his cheek, and he was looking off to the side when he muttered, “You busy?”

“Not particularly,” Oscar said, still shell-shocked that Lando was here, even though their suites were across the hall from one another.

Lando was still looking away, peering into Oscar’s suite, surely just as ritzy as his, when he mumbled, “Wanna play some Halo?” Oscar’s eyes widened more, and Lando went on, “Max is busy, so.”

Oscar didn’t know which Max he was talking about, but it didn’t really matter. He sucked his lower lip between his teeth and said, honestly, “Don’t really know how to play.”

Frustrated, Lando huffed out, “FIFA then?”

Oscar’s cheeks went hot, and he admitted, “I’m shit at that too.”

Frowning, Lando scoffed, “What do you know how to play, then?”

Oscar tried to meet Lando in the middle. “Smash?” he suggested, because he was always pretty good at that, won a few casual tournaments with his friends back in secondary, but then Lando grimaced, gave him a what the fuck? look, so then Oscar tried again, “Mario Kart?”

Lando finally lifted his eyes, met Oscar’s gaze. He pursed his lips, like he was considering it, then he sighed, swiveling on his heel, and Oscar had been sure he’d fucked it all up, before Lando was saying, turned away, “Let’s do Mario Kart. I’ll set it up.”

Oscar’s hand twitched. It was still clutching the door handle. He watched as Lando unlocked his own room, then turned around, glared at Oscar, and asked, “Are you coming, or what?”

Lando wasn’t half-bad at Mario Kart, but he wasn’t good. Oscar went easy on him, because it was fun, to be on level playing field, to have Lando loosen up, gawking whenever Oscar threw a red shell at him, causing him to fall off the edge of the track, falling back places and having to pray for a bullet to carry him back to the top ten.

They were sitting on opposite ends of the couch. Lando’s shorts were riding high up his thighs, a foot propped up on the sofa. He was sticking his tongue out the corner of his mouth, concentrated. There wasn’t nearly enough space for Oscar to knock his knee into Lando’s, shove him to the side, distract him, like he and his mates would always do back in school whenever they played Mario Kart or Smash, party games. Oscar knew that Lando never really had that, a group of mates to mess around with late on a school night, knew that Lando all his life was just trying to make up for everything he had missed out on, having thrown his entire life into a dream that eventually came true, at a cost.

Always on the outside, looking in.

Still, every time Oscar glanced over at Lando, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Melbourne 2024, how his grandma had baked the whole team rumbles and Lando had secretly stuffed, like, five in his mouth, obsessed with it, hiding from Jon. China 2024, Lando’s thigh pressed to his during the drivers’ briefing. Miami 2024, his cheek pressed against Lando’s neck. Spain 2024, playing footsie under the table in the MTC canteen. 2020, the height of quarantine, being bored out of his mind and watching Lando’s Twitch streams on a burner account jumping every time he got the notif that Lando was live, gifting him ten subs trying to get his attention. Lando had missed it, hadn’t even given him a shout out.

Oscar pushed it out of his mind. That had no place here. The past, it had no place here.

That night was all banter, it was jokes they could never say in front of the cameras, shit that Oscar had felt uncomfortable about saying, but knew was the right thing to say, what Lando wanted, what Lando was expecting. He didn’t really want to be mean, didn’t want to be crude, but he knew he had to. The banter and the lingo, it was a way they could reach each other. Maybe the only way.

At the end of the day, Oscar knew how to fit in—he learned that, a long time ago.

At twenty-four, it was up to him whether he wanted to, or not.

They were both trying. Maybe a little too hard, but they were trying.

“Lando,” Oscar called, at the end of the night, once they got an update on Friday’s schedule, and they were turning the console off, aware they needed to get up early to do interviews before free practices. Oscar was getting up from the couch, biting his bottom lip. Lando was throwing their controllers to the side of the sofa.

“Yeah?”

And Oscar was frozen in thought. He was looking at Lando, with his open, easy eyes, head tilted to the side. He recognized tonight for what it was—an olive branch.

He wanted to say it, say the words Lando wanted to hear, but he just couldn’t. He didn’t mean it. He wasn’t sorry, really, for what happened in Abu Dhabi, and the last thing he wanted was to lie about it.

Oscar wanted to be sorry. But he wasn’t.

He couldn’t give the apology Lando wanted.

“Thank you,” he said instead. It was as close as he could get. “For… this.”

Lando blushed, pouted, then mumbled, “S’just freaking Mario Kart. Dunno know what the fuck you’re on.”

Oscar barked out a laugh, and it really felt, it really did, like things were going to be okay again.

However, there was still that space. Still that gap. They were standing on two cliff edges, and Oscar was too afraid to take the leap. He just didn’t have the faith.

In Imola, Lando outqualified Oscar by three positions.

By the end of the race, Oscar finished three places ahead. It wasn’t because he was faster—he wasn’t. In 2025, Lando was still beating him fairly on pace, in the same car, with the same set-ups. Things had just gone wrong during the race—a perfect storm of errors and bad luck, a safety car just after Lando had pitted for the undercut, to cut Max off.

Oscar capitalized.

He got lucky in Monaco, with a late red flag, finishing in second to Lando’s third, but he capitalized in Spain, when Lando had lost places at start, got into messy incidents with other drivers, divebombing Max down the straight; in Canada, letting Lewis brake test him near the Wall of Champions; in Austria, sliding off into the gravel due to contact with Fernando into Turn 1.

Lando, desperately, had been fighting for the race win and ended up losing podiums in each.

Oscar hadn’t really felt like he was fighting for anything. So he just kept on driving.

“Hey Max,” Oscar says, once the party’s dying down, and they’re one of the only people still left in the venue.

Max is leaning back, chair tipping over on its back legs, and he looks at Oscar curiously.

“Why’d you come?”

Max scrunches his nose and shrugs. “I’m retired. I have a lot of free time.”

Oscar doesn’t buy it. Sure, it was a short flight, but it’s still out of Max’s way. It’s a low-stakes event for Red Bull too, less about Red Bull Racing and more about Red Bull’s other ventures—Oscar and Liam and the team were invited more as a formality. GP and Christian and everyone Max had been close to had dipped before the two-hour mark.

“Max,” Oscar says, tiredly. He doesn’t want to play games. Not with Max.

Max is quiet for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table. Some stupid TikTok song is playing over the speakers, quietly, the inconsequential chitter of stragglers around them ready to leave.

“Of course, I came here for you.”

Oscar freezes. “What?”

Max shrugs again. “Thought it’d be fun.”

Oscar bristles. His suit jacket is laid out across the back of his chair, and his dress shirt is rolled up to his elbows, but he still feels warm from all the wine, from the proximity, from the adrenaline. “Don’t think I’m very fun.”

Max is smiling, and his knee knocks into Oscar’s when he says, “You kept me entertained. And you beat me.”

The heat of Max’s thigh, thick and kind of stretching his pant legs, pressed up against Oscar’s, makes a tingling heat rise to his cheeks. He tries not to think about it too hard. He’s drunker than he intended to get, and he hasn’t been touched by another person in months.

“Just played a lot when I was a kid,” he says, trying to shrug the feeling away.

Max laughs, and loosens his bow tie. Oscar’s surprised he’s kept it on all night. His neck is still thick, flushed pink. “With your sisters?”

Oscar blinks in surprise. “Yeah, them and my mates from secondary,” he explains.

Max exhales and rocks in his chair a little bit. It’s a bit barren in the venue now. Oscar notices a few servers anxiously glancing at them, some of the last few attendees still here. “I never really played much, of course.”

“You missed out,” Oscar says.

Max hums, musingly. “I did,” he agrees, after a long moment. But then he looks at Oscar out of the corner of his eye. His smile, Oscar thinks, for the first time, is quite charming.

“But I think it was worth it, in the end.”

Rumors started circulating around Monaco, last year, that Max was planning to retire.

Monaco’s different from the other races—one of the few historical races left on the calendar, yes, but the fact is, Monaco is home to a large portion of the paddock. New travels. Gossip proliferates.

DC had apparently given Mark the heads-up. Max had been floating the idea around since pre-season testing, about 2025 being his last year. It was good timing, before the new regulations. He’d already matched Seb’s record at Red Bull and he’d been open about how every championship after his first was only a bonus, DLC content, nothing he’d ever expected, nothing he’d ever been hungry for, no number he’d ever been dying to reach, nothing he never needed to make happen. And yet—it happened.

Of course, Oscar heard the rumors even before Mark told him. Still, he had trouble believing it. Up on the podium, him, Lando, and Max, as the Dutch anthem played, he looked up at Max, and he thought about it. Max loved Red Bull, yes, but he loved racing more. Oscar couldn’t see him leaving the sport. He couldn’t understand why anyone would leave so early, with so much unfinished.

In any case, Mark was still pissed about how Lando had ignored team orders in Hungary, how McLaren had the nerve to try to make Oscar second driver post-Monza, how the pit wall had given Oscar team orders during Abu Dhabi—and told him to consider it, on the off chance that Max actually retired, and his seat actually opened up. He’d heard the Ford project was promising—not outstanding, but enough, and Red Bull were just as, if not more capable, than McLaren at developing a proper car.

Oscar told Mark, again and again, that he didn’t want to leave.

He didn’t see the point.

PART TWO

Silverstone is uncomfortable. Oscar’s on edge pretty much the entire flight over. Even Mark comments on the bouncing of his knee. Liam tries to make a joke about Oscar trying to propel the plane himself, but Oscar’s not in the mood to bite like usual. He hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. He tries to nap, but can’t, and he arrives in the UK restless and feeling even worse than he did on the plane ride over. He manages to get to his hotel without any fans catching him.

He’s only six points behind Lando now.

Lando, who’s been consistently faster than Oscar, who’s gotten a podium at nearly every race, who’s made it clear he isn’t going to make the same mistakes he’d made in 2024 and 2025.

Oscar needs to focus. Every point counts.

Red Bull are staying at the Hilton over the Silverstone weekend. It’s unfortunate, since McLaren have been partnered with them for over twenty years, but it was the only option that worked. He’s relieved when he makes it up to his hotel room without any awkward encounters with his old team, just sharing a lift with some businessman who either doesn’t know who he is, or just doesn’t care. He unpacks his things, scrolls through Instagram and Twitter for about an hour and almost chucks his phone across the room when he sees that Autosport released another fucking edition of him on the cover, the headline reading Webber’s Revenge Strikes Back in Austria!

He puts his phone down and gets changed into his Red Bull kit.

It’s media day for the last race of the triple header. Oscar honestly wants this weekend over and done with. He doesn’t want to linger in the UK. It might be his old pseudo-home, but they don’t really like him here. Oscar can’t even really blame them.

Last year, he and Lando had a racing incident in Silverstone.

Going into the weekend, Oscar had finished ahead of Lando six races in a row. He was aiming to make it a seventh. He wanted to make it a win.

Red Bull had an awful weekend, couldn’t figure out their set-up; Max and Checo had qualified P6 and P10, and barely made up places during the race.

For most of the race, Oscar had been running in second, three seconds behind Lando, and he couldn’t catch up in pace. But five laps to the end, Lando had made a mistake and dipped a tyre in the gravel, and the race was back on.

They’d gone racing. No team orders—McLaren weren’t going to make the same mistake twice, not when Mark reminded Zak and Andrea of the clause in Oscar’s contract, after Abu Dhabi.

They’d gone racing, for three, four laps. Lando was defending and moving under braking, and maybe, Oscar was divebombing. He could taste the victory in his throat. He wanted it. So badly, he wanted it. He hadn’t won a race since Abu Dhabi. Lando had won three.

Into Copse, they’d touched wheels.

Oscar went spinning into the gravel, Lando into the barriers.

Really, it was that simple.

Oscar was meant to meet his performance engineer down in the lobby at 11 AM, but he dicked around on his phone a bit too much, and is running late. He shoots off a text and brisk-walks down the corridor and to the lift, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He’s trying to remember what PR told him to say, if he’s asked about last year’s crash, but all he can think about is—

His head’s a mess, and it doesn’t get any better when the lift doors slide open. It’s the worst case scenario. One he wasn’t even mentally prepared for, and Oscar’s pretty much spent the entire lead-up to this weekend going in circles, worrying about what might happen. He’s not usually like this. But it’s—Silverstone.

“Fucking hell,” Max Fewtrell mutters. “Just my fucking luck.”

Oscar’s jaw goes tight, face Stoic. Max is probably the one person he doesn’t want to share a lift with, probably ever. Even Lando would’ve been better.

He steps into the lift. The doors slide to a close, and they start to make their descent. Oscar keeps his eyes fixed on the screen, watching as the floor numbers tick down into the teens, the shitty lift music making Oscar want to blow his brains out. He tries to keep his cool, but it’s a little hard, with Fewtrell glaring daggers at him.

The small, rarely active, petty part of Oscar has him saying, “You haven’t been to a race in a while.”

He stares at the screen still. Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen.

“I’ve been busy,” Max retorts. “Haven’t had the time.”

Oscar purses his lips. With what? Making fucking hoodies?

“You did, last year.”

After Zandvoort, Max had been at every single race of 2025. By Lando’s side. Acting like he was Lando’s fucking—bodyguard. Wouldn’t let Oscar go near him.

Max laughs crudely, shaking his head with a sneer and a scoff. “Yeah, why’d you think I needed to be?” he spits. “Whose fault do you think that was?”

Oscar falls silent.

Eight, seven, six.

Just as they’re reaching the lobby, four, three, two, Max mutters, with disappointment and something like bitterness. “I didn’t want to be right about you, you know. I really didn’t.”

The doors come open. Max steps out. Oscar stays rooted to the spot.

That might be the worst part of it—even though Max had been a dick last year, he wasn’t exactly in the wrong.

While Silverstone 2026 isn’t an easy win, it’s straightforward. Lando gets caught out by a late red flag during qualifying, and has to start the race in P7. Oscar has pole. While Lando makes it to the podium places by his last stint, all Oscar has to do is manage his tyres. While Lando has pace, he’s in dirty air; there are backmarkers to clear, far too much traffic. There just aren’t enough laps left for him to catch up.

The tension leaves his shoulders as soon as he’s standing on the top step of the podium, all drenched in champagne, his national anthem ringing in his ears, two weekends in a row, back-to-fucking-back wins in the midst of a championship battle. He’s starting to get it, why Fernando and Lewis still haven’t left. It’s addicting. It’s euphoric.

The booing kind of makes it better.

He’s two points ahead again, leading the championship for the first time since Miami.

They’re halfway into the season now, and there’s only Budapest and Istanbul before the summer break left, and Oscar is feeling good.

The Friday after the race, he and Max are at Jimmy’z—Oscar still isn’t much of a clubber, still doesn’t exactly enjoy it much—if the music was better, he reckons, maybe he’d change his mind—but Max had canceled on the padel match they were supposed to play a few days ago, as he’d accidentally double booked himself. He and some of his friends, however, had been planning on going out and celebrating one of their birthdays over the weekend, and Max invited Oscar.

Oscar was uncertain about intruding, but Max had insisted. Besides, he said over texts, he wanted his friends to meet Oscar.

He’d been on the fence for a while, but he decided that maybe it would be good. A part of him needed it, maybe, after Silverstone. Silverstone was good—the race itself—but everything else was difficult. He floundered in his interviews, got caught on the spot in the post-race when Nico Rosberg brought up his and Lando’s 2025 crash, and forgot everything he was meant to say. Moreover, Max Fewtrell’s presence in the paddock had him agitated the entire weekend.

They’re sitting side-by-side in a little half-circle booth, Max’s friends surrounding them on either side. They’re both three gin-tonics and maybe three tequila shots in. Oscar has lost count. He’s kind of just in for the ride, at this point.

Max’s friends seem to be an entirely new crowd than the friends he had back when he was racing—he doesn’t recognize any of them from social media, and chalks that bit up to his and Kelly’s breakup. In any case, they’re fun, interested in racing, but not freaks about it, and kinda treat him like a normal person, which isn’t exactly a surprise—they’re friends with Max Verstappen, after all. Oscar is, like, a C-tier athlete in comparison.

“You did well,” Max says, only to Oscar, his entire body turned into him. It takes Oscar a long moment to realize he’s talking about the race.

Max’s friend—Colin, who was sitting on Oscar’s other side, scoots out to head to the loo.

“Yeah?” Oscar asks. They’d all been talking about Silverstone, Sky Sports, the British media, how Oscar had been dealing with it, what dicks they were to Max and now to Oscar, but then the rest of the table moved onto a different topic. But Max lingers.

“Yeah,” Max says, softly, cheeks so flushed he looks alien. “Quite impressive. The McLaren was faster, but you still won. It was incredible.”

Oscar swallows. Max is looking at him a certain way, eyes all bright and open, almost sweet. And Oscar shudders. He can feel Max’s thigh pressed up against his, and the sweet fake smoke and strobing lights of the club make him dizzy. It’s entirely possible, he’s aware, that he’s imagining it—still, his mouth is dry, and his heart is palpitating in his chest. He shudders, and with horror, he registers the blood-hot feeling pooling in his stomach.

“I’ll get the next round,” he blurts out, sliding out of the booth and scrambling to his feet, hoping that it’s dark enough in the club that no one can see he’s half-chubbed up in his jeans.

He heads outside to get some fresh air, and collect himself. It reeks of cigarettes, but it’s better than the artificial sweet smoke and sweat from inside. He finds a bench and tries to will his boner away; it takes a few minutes and many deep breaths, but he quickly sorts himself out. It’s not even like—Max was doing anything or being particularly flirty, wasn’t even touching him, just gave him a compliment, a pretty normal one, but it still felt like Oscar was burning.

It’s kind of just embarrassing.

He lingers outside, tries to get his head in order too. He rests his face in his palms, head held up by his forearms, elbows propped up on his knees, and takes another deep breath.

The smell of tobacco intensifies, and over the muffled music from inside, he can hear heels clicking against the gravel, coming toward him.

He lifts his head up and sees a girl—a very pretty one—hovering over him. She tips her head to the side, giving him a once-over, and asks, “Want a drag?”

Oscar’s eyes flick toward her cigarette, smoke twirling up into the air, and he tries not to instinctively scrunch his nose. “No thank you,” he says, shaking his head.

It’s hard to tell whether she recognizes him or not. Her accent is some sort of European, but Oscar’s too drunk to tell which type.

“Tough day?” she asks.

Oscar leans against the wall, skull pressed against the cold surface, and stares at the starless sky and white moon. “Kinda having a tough year,” he admits.

She pulls a smooth drag from her cig, arms crossed loosely over her chest, the fingers holding the cig limp, and asks, “Wanna talk about it?”

Oscar thinks about it, considers it, then shakes his head. He doesn’t exactly think there’s anything to talk about. “Not really,” he says.

She hums, undeterred. She’s kinda, like, disinterested and interested at the same time, a casual and sort of attractive no-care. Confident and self-assured. The sort of girl who’ll make you want her. Her cigarette burns. “Can I buy you a drink, at least?”

“Um,” Oscar stalls, eyes widening, and he reflexively panics and finishes, “sure?”

He feels kind of bad about it, the way he slips back into the crowd without even a goodbye after they get their drinks. He at least convinced her to let the bartender put them both on his tab, and he knows he must look flush-faced and frenzied once he gets back to the booth that Max and his friends are still at.

They’ve left a space open for him next to Max, and Colin slides out of the booth to let Oscar back into his spot.

Once Oscar is sitting, Colin glances at Oscar’s drink and laughs. “Didn’t peg you as selfish, Piastri,” he says, jokingly and good-naturedly.

And, well, it’s probably the first time Oscar’s heard that one in years.

It takes him a moment to realize, however, what Colin is talking about. Right, he thinks, I said I would get everyone another round.

“Oh,” he splutters, “I, uh—”

“Was chatting up that girl?”

Oscar blushes, and the table erupts with laughter, but they don’t linger to make fun of him, which he’s thankful for. It wasn’t even really like that—he barely thinks he spoke more than twenty words to her, that whole time.

The rest of the table is talking about an incident that happened at a wedding they were all at the other weekend, but then Max turns to him and asks, “Not your type?”

And Oscar knows what Max is getting at. That girl—small, skinny, and blonde—she looked a lot like Lily. Acted a little like her too, minus the smoking. He’s surprised that Max remembers her. He flushes, and grimaces.

The morning after Silverstone 2025, he broke up with Lily over text. It was shitty, but he couldn’t wait until they’d see each other next. He couldn’t do it. He explained why, told her only half of the truth; it was all he could manage, and Oscar owed her at least that. Of course, they fought—she was furious and humiliated, but it wasn’t a surprise, not really. He’d wanted to break up with her for a while. He just couldn’t find the right timing. Since the new season began, it’s not like he was a good boyfriend. He’d been a bit of a twat, ignoring all her messages, canceling on all their dates last minute, barely keeping her updated on his days.

Long distance takes effort, and Oscar just wasn’t putting in the effort.

“Not really looking for anyone,” Oscar said honestly. He doesn’t really think he could do a relationship, not when he’s fighting for a championship, and one-off sorts of nights have never really been his thing.

“Yeah?” Max asks, lifting a brow. The hairs on his forearm brush against Oscar’s. “It of course might do you some good.”

Oscar knits his brows together, confused. “What would?”

When Max grins, his teeth are moon-white. “Getting your dick sucked, or something,” he replies, then shoots a quick glance at Oscar’s crotch.

Heat floods Oscar’s cheeks, and he feels his lips part, just slightly.

Max is laughing now, and his eyes are bright. “It was cute,” he says, and Oscar swallows. “Don’t worry. No one else saw.”

He turns to the rest of the table, at that point, and announces, “I’ll get those drinks.”

The others on his side scoot out of the plush velvet booth to make way, and before Max himself leaves, he gives Oscar’s shoulder a tight, lingering squeeze.

Oscar stares at his hands, balled up into fists on his knees, and thinks about what he wants.

Max and Kelly broke up in the second half of 2025. The reason quoted behind the breakup was a lack of long-term compatibility. During winter testing, Oscar heard from a Red Bull mechanic that Kelly wanted to get married, and Max didn’t. That was that, apparently.

He’s thought it over more than he’d like to admit. The thing is, it probably was that simple.

Oscar’s quiet and playing with the condensation on the table when Max comes back with the new round of drinks, which Max comments on immediately.

“I wasn’t making fun of you, of course,” he says, shrugging.

Oscar levels him with a glare, and Max cringes, laughing. “Okay, maybe I was a bit, but, like, of course it happens.”

Releasing a heavy sigh, Oscar drawls lazily, “Thanks.”

It’s not like Oscar’s upset, or anything. He’s just—been thinking.

Against his hopes, Max doesn’t let it go. “When was the last time?” he asks, eyes curious.

That last drink must’ve done a number on Oscar, because he’s turning to Max and lifting up a brow and asking, “Are you asking me when was the last time I wanked?”

It actually, Oscar realizes, has been kind of a long time. He’d been so on-edge all throughout the race weekend that he just hadn’t felt like getting himself off, and then once he got back to Monaco, he was so mentally and physically drained from the triple-header that it just somehow never crossed his mind. He’s pent-up.

Max barks out a laugh, and it isn’t until then that Oscar flushes at what he said. “Slept with someone,” he clarifies.

Oscar doesn’t see a point in lying or trying to skirt away from the topic. They’re both reasonably drunk, and they’re friends, anyhow. In a strange turn of events, Max might be his closest in-real-life friend. He leans into the cushion and answers, “Last December.”

Kind of. He isn’t really sure if that one counts.

Max whistles. “Long time then.”

“Yeah,” Oscar says, glancing away with a sigh. “Long time.”

“An ex-girlfriend?” Max asks.

Oscar shakes his head, then chews on the inside of his cheek. “But someone important, I think.”

Max hums thoughtfully, and asks. “You miss her?”

For a long moment, Oscar considers how to respond. He surveys the table. The others are all engaged in small conversations or on their phones. No one’s paying attention to them; the music is loud enough that they can’t be overheard either. The music is pulsing like a heartbeat, thrumming through Oscar’s entire body. He feels it, everywhere.

Oscar lolls his head to the side, planning on saying, Not really, no, even if it’s not exactly the truth. But then he meets Max’s eyes, sees the way Max is looking at him, with curiosity and hot intensity, like he’s looking for something, like he’s trying to figure Oscar out.

Oscar, before he knows it, reacts.

Sometimes, when you’re in the car and you’re chasing and you see the car in front make a mistake, go a little too wide, drive over a curb, you only have a split-second to make the decision, make the move. Sometimes, you don’t have enough time to weigh the risks. Sometimes, it just comes down to your gut. Sometimes, you find yourself acting before your brain’s even caught up. Sometimes, it’ll have you in the barriers. Other times—it’ll win you the race.

“Not a her.”

The restrooms at Jimmy’z are absurdly nice. The stalls are quite large. Quite clean, too, Oscar thinks, where he’s sitting butt-naked on the small counter, bottoms shoved halfway down his thighs, and trying not to jerk up into Max’s hand or make any embarrassing noises. There’s other people in the loo, and while the music is still loud enough from the outside that sounds inside are muffled, every time Oscar hears footsteps, or chatter, or like, a stream of piss, he feels like he’s been shocked. It makes his dick jump too, humiliatingly.

He’s biting hard on his lower lip, and he can feel his dick weeping into Max’s palm. He’s always been a bit of a leaker. He throws a hand up to cover his eyes, and reels at the heat in his cheeks.

“This okay?” Max asks quietly, his thumb gliding over his slit, as if Oscar hasn’t been, like, two strokes away from bursting ever since Max got his hands on him, and has been desperately trying to hold back ever since.

“Uh-huh,” he sounds, a little too turned on to be embarrassed about how dumb he sounds, nodding his head for good measure.

If Max hadn’t been touchy or flirty with him earlier in the night, he was as soon as Oscar revealed that he was sleeping with a not-her last year. It was like a switch was flipped. Sirens going off in Max’s head. Oscar watched as Max’s eyes widened, and how he was so distracted, for a moment, that it took him a long time to realize that one of his mates from the other side of the table was calling his name, trying to ask him a question.

Max joined their conversation, ending their own abruptly, but Oscar sucked in a sharp, shocked breath when Max’s hand found his knee under the table and slid upwards, firm and warm.

It was pretty much just a waiting game from there, until Max’s friends either left to head home or got so drunk they wouldn’t notice them heading off to the loo together, and slipping into the same stall.

A part of Oscar was psyching himself out, convincing himself that he’d somehow read the signs wrong, and that Max was simply being friendly. It wasn’t until Max was unzipping his jeans and shoving a hand down his pants and Oscar was gasping and trying to find something to hold onto, and Max was grabbing his waist, grinding a warm thigh into the cradle of his hips, and setting him on the counter, that Oscar realized—yeah, he read this right.

It takes Oscar a second to hear over his own labored breaths, to realize that Max is, sort of, laughing at him. Not in a crude way, but in a sort of amused way. Oscar pulls his hand from his face, glares at Max, and mutters, “What?”

“Nothing,” Max answers, sliding a hand beneath Oscar’s shirt, settling on his abs, keeping him in place, while his other hand steadily works Oscar’s dick. “You’re just—really into this, aren’t you?”

And there’s something about the timbre of Max’s voice, because Oscar sucks in a gasp and groans, “Oh, fuck,” and he’s spilling all over Max’s hand and spurting up onto his shirt and he squeezes his eyes shut so hard he sees stars.

At least a minute passes before Oscar comes back to life, neurons starting to fire again, heart beating at a somewhat normal pace again, and he whimpers a bit when Max removes his hand and wipes it dry on Oscar’s already ruined shirt.

“Mate,” Max says, laughing again, and patting Oscar on the hip. “You needed that.”

Oscar nods, still feeling a bit hazy. When his vision comes back into focus, his eyes drift down to Max’s crotch. Max is hard in his jeans.

He manages to lift himself off the counter, legs wobbling below him as he gets onto his feet. His dick’s still hanging out and his trousers are slipping down. He can’t find it in himself to care.

“Now let me get you,” he says, voice hoarse, fiddling with Max’s button and zipper, tugging them down his thighs, and Max’s eyes bulge open.

“You don’t—” he starts, but Oscar is already sinking down onto his knees. “Oh,” Max says, tipping back until he’s leaned back against the wall, eyes fluttering shut. “Oh.”

They clean themselves up with toilet paper, still inside the stall. Oscar’s shirt is definitely going in the bin as soon as he gets back to his flat, and there’s probably cum in his hair. Max, on the other hand, is so flushed he looks sunburned—but maybe that’s the light. Still, he looks only slightly disheveled.

Once they’re both reasonably sorted out, as much as they can manage with toilet paper, Max observes, “You’re good at that.”

Oscar blushes and clears his throat. “Thanks,” he says, biting his lower lip, and praying that he doesn’t pop another stiffy all over again. There’s an awkward beat before he adds, “Er, I’ve had practice.”

Max laughs over the muffled music. He sounds both entertained and delighted. He’s leaning against the counter—they somehow switched places, and he says, “Didn’t know you liked guys.”

“I fancy whoever, I guess,” Oscar says with a shrug. It really isn’t that deep.

Knackered, they end up ditching the rest of the group and walk out together. Oscar’s flat is on the way to Max’s so they head in the same direction. They chat a bit about the back-to-back upcoming races, Oscar’s plans for the summer break, if Oscar liked Max’s friends, about having to reschedule their next padel game for after Istanbul because Oscar probably won’t be coming back to Monaco after Spa.

They say good night outside Oscar’s building, and it’s only a little awkward when Oscar fumbles with the password to his building and avoids eye contact with the doorman.

Once he’s in his flat, Oscar strips off his shirt, tosses it in the bin, and somehow manages to get in the shower, but is too tired to do anything but weakly rub soap all over his body and stand under the spray until all the soap is probably gone. Then, he halfarsedly dries himself off with a towel, slips on a fresh shirt and boxers, and collapses over his covers.

He passes out before he’s able to think a single thought.

Oscar and Lando’s 2025 Silverstone crash hadn’t been nearly as bad as Max and Lewis’ back in 2021, but Lando, since he’d hit the wall and triggered the high G-force sensors, was still airlifted to the hospital as a precaution, even though he was actively fighting the marshals who had tried to help him get out of the car.

Oscar had gone skidding into the gravel, but his car had slowed to a stop, so he’d gone to the regular medical tent, ignoring the jeers and boos he got along the way, still shaking from the collision, asking everyone he could, over and over, if Lando was okay, even though he had seen him get out of the car unscathed.

And he was still shaking by the time he was cleared, and couldn’t get himself in order when he was changing out of his race suit and Nomex in his driver room, or when he was being driven back to his hotel room, ordered to rest. They’d debrief in the morning, back in Woking, once Lando had gotten cleared from the hospital, and gotten a full night’s sleep.

Kimi had won his first race because of the collision—a selfish part of Oscar was glad for it, that maybe this wouldn’t be the biggest headline of the day.

It was just before midnight, and Oscar couldn’t sleep. Lily and his mum and his dad and his sisters were blowing up his phone, but Oscar couldn’t manage to read or open up any of the texts. He’d never been in a crash this bad. He was worried about Lando, even though Andrea had personally texted him, saying that Lando was okay, had been easily cleared, and was heading back to the hotel to sleep it off.

Oscar was sitting on the sofa, some stupid Netflix show he wasn’t watching on the telly, trying to tire himself out, but it wasn’t working. It was midnight, and he heard some noise from the hall, and perked up to life. Lando had the suite next to his. He could hear the door handle, the slam of the door and the clattering rumbles next door. If he turned the volume down, held his breath, he could hear the shower running, maybe. He couldn’t be sure. It was hard to tell whether it was something real or something he was imagining.

He glanced at his phone again; there were more texts from Lily. Oscar felt sick. They were supposed to fly to Monaco together tonight, but because he and Lando had to head to Woking in the morning, those plans were canceled, and he wasn’t even sure if Lily knew. He’d been distant recently, with her, and he couldn’t wrap his head around why. They’d been together five years, and his mum and dad had started joking about when he was going to put a ring on it; every time, Oscar just laughed and said he was still young, they were still young, but someday, probably? However, the more that time passed, the more that “someday” felt further out of reach. Something that didn’t belong to him anymore, some part of his past that was getting harder and harder to hold onto. Sometimes, he didn’t know if he even wanted to hold onto it anymore. It was getting harder and harder to separate his life on track with his life outside of it. He felt fragmented, in pieces. The more he wanted to win, the less he felt inclined to go on sunset dates and cuddle after races and talk about things that didn’t matter. He threw his phone to the side.

It was just past midnight. Oscar couldn’t do it anymore. Everything felt wrong. He felt all out of sorts, like everything was in all the wrong places, puzzle pieces jammed together where they didn’t belong.

Oscar got up to his feet, had gone on automatic, and had only realized once he was in the hall and the door slammed behind him that he hadn’t snagged his keycard. There was no going back now, he knew. He crossed his Rubicon and now he had to march on Rome.

He knocked on Lando’s door, and he knew that Lando was in there—he could hear the rustling. Still, it took a couple minutes, a couple tries, of Oscar standing stupidly at Lando’s door, knocking and waiting and just—just fucking—

The door swung open, and Lando was glaring at him.

Oscar felt his heart root in his chest, vines wrapping around his lungs. He could breathe and he couldn’t breathe. His fingers twitched at his sides.

Lando was here, he was close, and he was okay. It was ridiculous, Oscar was aware, that he was feeling this way for someone he hasn’t talked to, not really, in months.

“You’re okay,” Oscar said, with relief. He was so relieved he hadn’t even had the wherewithal to be embarrassed about the way his voice cracked. A part of him—despite the reassurances, despite Oscar knowing and trusting the team when they said that Lando was okay—had worried that Lando wasn’t actually okay. That the entire world had been conspiring and lying and that Lando was hooked up to breathing and eating tubes and it all would’ve been Oscar’s fault, that Oscar would have ruined yet another thing for Lando. He’d already fucked up so much.

Even now, there was still that space. Still that distance. Oscar couldn’t cross it, couldn’t make a dent in it, the horrible little thing that’s kept them apart all these months—but he had to. He couldn’t go back.

“Yeah,” Lando mumbled, a stubbornness to it, mouth pursed. “I’m fine. No broken bones. Nothing’s bruised. Not even a concussion, so.” He shrugged again. He was avoiding eye contact. “Thought you were told already.”

“I was, but—” Oscar said. “I wanted to see.”

“Yeah, well,” Lando said under his breath, still holding the door handle, staring at his feet. “You’ve seen.”

Oscar had seen. Lando was wearing an oversized light blue Quadrant shirt, one of the newer drops, and his hair was damp. A bead of water was running down his temple. Oscar was right, Lando had just been in the shower. His neck was dewey, a glowing sheen to his skin, but there were bags under his eyes. He looked exhausted, shoulders heavy, lips bitten red-raw. Oscar had been looking all this time at Lando, all these months, but he had never been this close. Lando had never let him that close, not since Abu Dhabi.

But Lando was looking at him too. It was hard not to miss the little looks Lando would shoot toward him when they were in the fanzone, when they were in debriefs, when they were in the drivers’ parade. All the time, when Lando thought Oscar couldn’t see.

“For fuck’s sake. Spit it out then,” Lando hissed after an indiscernibly long moment. “You clearly have something to say, so.”

It wasn’t until then that Oscar realized he’d been staring. Stupidly, standing at Lando’s half-open door with a miserable, and maybe longing, gaze.

Oscar filled his lungs with air. Maybe he did have something to say, because when he exhaled, he heard himself say, “I’m sorry.”

Guarded and wary, Lando’s eyes narrowed. He pulled his lips to the side. “You’re sorry,” he repeated. Oscar thought of a little turtle peeking out of its shell.

“Yeah,” Oscar said, because he was sorry. “It was my fault. It was stupid. I ruined both our races today. I’ll take full responsibility with the team tomorrow.”

The stewards, after a thorough investigation, did decide it was Oscar’s fault, and he gained two points to his superlicense. Looking back at the replays, Oscar couldn’t help but agree. The problem was, it hadn’t felt like it was stupid in the car—he just felt desperate for it. He wondered if that’s how Lando felt all year.

Lando was silent for a moment. His eyes, though, hadn’t left Oscar’s face for even a moment. Quietly, he asked, “Is that all you’re sorry for?”

Oscar wasn’t daft. He knew this was coming—the bigger surprise is that it took this long. But he didn’t want to deal with it. He knew why it mattered. He just didn’t see why it had to.

“Do I have more to be sorry for?”

Lando scoffed, exhaling big and dramatic. His eyes went wide. He looked livid. “Right,” he said, then gritted his teeth, clenched his jaw, and Oscar saw the way the veins in his forearm started protruding, how he was making to slam the door shut in his face.

Oscar stuck out his foot, winced at the impact, but held his ground.

“Lando, I—”

“Yeah?” Lando snapped, looking more closed off than he’d been the whole night.

Oscar didn’t want to have this conversation, didn’t see why it was necessary, but he knew that Lando wanted it, no matter how hard he was fighting it.

“Can we talk?”

Lando scoffed again. “Don’t reckon there’s much talking to be done.”

Oscar wanted to scream. A part of him wanted to punch the wall. He didn’t. He knew it wasn’t fair of him to be angry, but he was. He couldn’t help it. But he also couldn’t do this anymore—the not talking, the ignoring, the sneaking glances thinking the other couldn’t see. If Oscar had to make the first move, he would. If he had to jump over the cliff’s edge, he would. So he sucked in a breath through clenched teeth and said, “Please.”

Lando pursed his lips, shot Oscar a tight, frustrated look, then stepped back, and let Oscar inside.

Oscar stepped in, and Lando closed the door behind him. He stopped and leaned against the door. They stayed there, in the hall.

“You wanted to talk,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, huffing out a breath. “Let’s have it out then.”

Oscar furrowed his brows. “I don’t wanna have it out—”

It was unnerving, how Lando’s voice rose and strained, “Then what the fuck do you want?”

The only thing he knew for sure is that he wanted to win races and he wanted to win a championship; everything else felt nebulous. At the end of the day he was just like all other race car drivers: selfish and ephemerally obsessive. His other wants and desires were too fleeting for him to get a grasp on, hold in his palm, crush between his fingers.

But he was trying. He was trying so hard to put into words, that feeling in his chest, the frustration; even if he wouldn’t feel it again tomorrow, he was feeling it now, and he was feeling it all these long months, and that had to count for something. He thought about how they used to be, singing stupid Taylor Swift lyrics on a couch in Austin, Texas. Sure, it was for the cameras, but a small part of Oscar thought it was also for them too, a little bit.

“I want…” he started, swallowing over the feeling of his heart crawling up his throat. “I want us to be okay again.”

Lando scoffed again. “You want us to be okay,” he repeated, sounding offended. He cocked a hip and raised a brow. “Are we not okay?”

“Lando,” Oscar breathed out, a sharp hiss. He felt like he was hitting a breaking point. He had never liked it, being the one who had to push, had to chase.

“What?” Lando asked, feigning ignorance.

“Can you not—” Oscar got out, jaw tight. “Be so—difficult?”

“Difficult,” Lando mocked, jaw hanging. He stood up straight, no longer leaning against the door.

Oscar spluttered. “I’m trying here.”

“You’re trying,” Lando parroted, and the vitriol in his voice caught Oscar off-guard.

Flustered and feeling like he was losing grip, Oscar pulled his mouth into a tight line and he shouted, his voice cracking on the last syllable, “Yeah, I’m fucking trying.”

I’m here, he thought, aren’t I?

Lando’s eyes shook violently. There was this sort of frenetic, frenzied, vulgar, visible energy thrumming through his small body, when he shouted back, “Like I’ve not been fucking trying. Don’t you know how fucking hard it’s been? How hard it is to fucking—” He was stumbling over his words. Oscar wasn’t much better, breathing out hard exhales through his nose, trying to keep his emotions inside his body. “To try not to—”

He closed his eyes, sucked in a breath. “Every time I look at your face,” he went on, quieter, and there was a terrifying vulnerability in his voice, hands balled up into tight fists by his sides. “I wanna rip your goddamn head off. All fucking year, I’ve been so fucking angry with you, and you’ve not shown a single sign you’re even sorry.”

It was so unfair, Oscar thought, selfishly, that Lando was mad at him. All of this was so unfair.

“And you fucking ruin my race, send me to the fucking hospital—” Oscar flinched, but Lando continued, “and you come to me, saying you want things to be okay. Like it’s that easy—”

“I didn’t say it would be easy.”

Lando fell silent. He dropped his head and stared at his feet. Oscar stared at the bridge of his nose; the keloid scar there, from King’s Day 2024, still hadn’t faded. It probably never would. They were both silent for a long time, unmoving; just the sounds of their heavy breathing all out of sync, and the quiet thrum of the air conditioning.

Time snailed by. Oscar felt at a loss. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know what to say that he could mean, that would reach Lando. Minutes passed, and Oscar was starting to lose hope and purpose. Then, Lando said, quietly, so quietly Oscar strained to hear him:

“You lost me a championship.”

There was some relief to it, Oscar hated to admit, that Lando finally said the words out loud.

It was the first time Oscar’d heard it from Lando’s mouth, but it wasn’t like it was the first time he’d heard it at all. It was all anyone could talk about after Abu Dhabi, maybe even more than Max winning his fourth championship. They called him Brutus and Oscar Iscariot, a traitor, a backstabber, a liability. Selfish, and overly cutthroat. But he won. It was in the books. No one could take that away from him.

It didn’t have to be that way, Oscar knew. He’d wondered if he would’ve done that night differently, if Hungary hadn’t happened. If Lando had just given the place back, like he was supposed to. He didn’t win the race out of revenge, but it was an eye for an eye, and he didn’t see anything wrong with that. Both races, they were both his. Hungary was Oscar’s and so was Abu Dhabi. There just wasn’t a safety car, the other time around.

Oscar took a step forward. He knew this was coming. One day or someday. “You stole my first win,” he replied, just as quietly, even though he knew it wasn’t the same. Even though by now, he didn’t really care about Hungary. Even though it wasn’t what he really wanted to say.

Would you rather you owed it to me?

Lando’s mouth went cruel, and he said, “I gave you your first win.”

Oscar’s eyes went wide. Yes, he admitted, he probably wouldn’t have won Baku 2024 if it wasn’t for Lando holding Checo up during his pitstop. Still, maybe he would’ve won, even without Lando. They’ll never know. Regardless, it was his win. He made the move on Charles. He was the one defending for more than half the race. It wasn’t Lando’s to give.

Holding onto what little self-composure he had, Oscar shook his head and sneered, “You just don’t get it, do you?”

Lando winced, like he was physically lashed.

Oscar went on, “You wouldn’t have been happy with it. You would’ve been mad at yourself, if you’d won that way. It wouldn’t have been worth it.”

Lando’s lower lip was wobbling. He looked up at Oscar, finally, and his eyes were liquid and shaking.

“You have no idea what it was worth.”

They had the advantage in most of 2024, no matter how much they played it down—they knew their car was better than Red Bull’s. They had a shot—they won the constructors’ for a reason.

But by the British Grand Prix 2025, they were trailing behind on points. It wasn’t even close. Not even a fight. Oscar with 166, Lando with 192, and Max with 269.

He had Lando backed up against the wall. Lando kept blinking rapidly and he brought a fist up to rub at his eyes. His mouth was pink and wet; he kept running his tongue over his lips, a nervous tick of his. His mouth was shiny. Oscar forced his eyes away.

“Why are you here?” Lando mumbled, from the back of his throat. His voice cracked midway. Oscar felt something inside of him break.

“Because I care,” Oscar said, because he did. “I care about you—”

“You care?” Lando scoffed. “You didn’t even fucking—” He cut off, frustrated. “I didn’t hear from you at all. All of winter break—I was fucking miserable, and I’d kept thinking that you’d—I kept thinking, I, I’d keep waiting for you, that you’d—you’d fucking text, or call, or—”

Oscar shook his head, spluttered, confused, and said, “I did.”

Lando’s mouth flopped shut. “What?”

Oscar didn’t understand. “I texted, I called, and you—you had me blocked—” he said. “You still do—”

“No I—” Lando said, and his mouth was doing a weird thing. “What?”

He pulled out his phone, frantically tapping, and Oscar’s heart was roaring in his ears, thinking, All this time, you’ve been waiting.

Lando’s eyes widen, with realization. He makes a noise, a small gasp, shaking his head. He looks up, at Oscar, hands shaking, and breathes out, “I didn’t. I didn’t do this—”

Oscar swallowed. It hurt. “Max said—”

“Max?” Lando asked, his voice a whisper, face pale.

“Fewtrell,” Oscar said.

“Max?” Lando repeated, weaker.

“Yeah,” Oscar said, eyes bulging out of his head, shaking. “The FIA gala. He—he’d said that you said—to stop texting you.”

LN says to stop texting, Oscar remembered, clear as day. So he did. So he hadn’t even tried, when the new season came along.

Lando blinked, like he couldn’t see, and he was shaking his head so violently that it must’ve made him dizzy. “I—I didn’t—” he starts. “I was sick, I—I wasn’t on my phone, and—”

Oscar went quiet. His mouth parted. His head reeled. “It wasn’t you,” he whispered, with revelation.

Lando’s throat bobbed. “It wasn’t me.”

“Oscar,” Lando said, voice cracking, vulnerable, and wet.

Oscar took a step closer. There was already so little space between them, but he felt like he couldn’t get close enough. Lando smelled like clean water and shampoo. Oscar wanted to breathe him in. “All this time, I’ve—” he started. “I thought you—didn’t want me to—”

“I did,” Lando said, mouth trembling. He looked so small. He looked—quite beautiful. “I was waiting.”

It was a selfish, horrible thought, but Oscar had always thought that Lando looked unbearably, absurdly pretty when he cried. And he was crying then. The tears he’d been trying so hard to keep from spilling finally spilled, running down his cheeks, and Oscar—

Surged forward. Grabbed Lando’s face, already tilted back to meet Oscar’s gaze. His cheeks were red and tear-streaked, warm, under Oscar’s fingertips. He felt like a stranger in his own body, his heart a pilot, limbs moving on automatic.

Oscar wanted this. He had wanted this for a long time, maybe. Longer than he was aware.

Lando’s lips were wet when he met them, salty, warm, and Oscar felt like a part of him was breaking. He pushed Lando against the door, and Lando’s hands found his waist, grabbing him, gripping him under his soft cotton shirt, impatiently, desperately. He kissed back, in full measure, gasping. Oscar pressed his thumbs into Lando’s cheeks, their noses were pressed against one another’s so firmly it was hard to breathe, and Lando was burning. They both were.

With clarity, he realized—Lando wanted this too.

“I’ve missed you,” Lando said, muffled by Oscar’s mouth, and Oscar made a noise.

Oscar missed him too. More than he knew how to let on.

He couldn’t bear to put it in words, he didn’t want to lose Lando’s slick-warm mouth against his, so he tried his hardest to communicate it physically. Couldn’t bear to spend a second without Lando’s mouth on his.

Lando was making these sweet, desperate, broken noises into Oscar’s mouth. Oscar’s hands slid down his cheeks, to his neck, feeling him, his warmth, his tendons, his tender skin, and Lando’s fingers had slipped under the fabric of his shirt, finding the ripples of his spine, pulling him closer. Oscar shoved a knee between Lando’s thighs, and he gasped into his mouth, groaned. He was so hard, and Oscar was chubbed up against Lando’s hip.

When Lando noticed, he whined, squirming beneath Oscar. Oscar had never felt so hungry for it, never so full of want. It felt so intimate. They felt so close.

The kiss slowed. Oscar was mouthing at the side of Lando’s cheek, and Lando was gasping into Oscar’s ear, and he asked, jokingly on the surface, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness and self-pity to it, “S’this what you came here for? To fuck me?”

“No, I—” Oscar said instantly, nosing at the side of Lando’s neck. He was so warm, and he felt so real. “Just wanted to see you.”

It was the truth and it was enough, because Lando was lifting himself from the door, taking hold of Oscar’s hips, and walking him down the corridor and to the bedroom. They were kissing all the way down. Oscar’s shoulders slammed against the bedroom door, and Lando was fiddling with the door handle, and Oscar almost tripped and fell when the door gave out—Lando caught him, and with an impossible amount of strength, shoved him onto the bed.

His thighs were bracketing Oscar’s, hands on his shoulders, and when he pulled back from the kiss to suck in a breath, Oscar opened his eyes and found Lando gazing down at him, and he was positioned just so that the ceiling light was right behind his head. It was like a halo. He looked like an angel.

Oscar’s warm hand shook as he brought it up to Lando’s nape, pulling him back down. His other hand clasped Lando’s hip, under his shirt, and he flipped them over, and Lando let out a delicious noise, all sweet and surprised, and Oscar’s heart fluttered.

They were kissing and kissing, and Lando was rutting up against Oscar’s thigh, flush against his crotch, and they were grabbing at each other, desperately, touching every part of each other they could, after months of not talking, not speaking, and barely being in each other’s spaces. Oscar was starved, and it hit him like a revelation that Lando was starved too, that Lando had missed him just as much, in equal measure.

Lando got his shirt off, and Oscar got Lando’s off, and he dove back down to catch Lando’s mouth, all hungry and wet. He grabbed Lando’s hips, hard, because he knew Lando could take it, and Lando just shuddered under him, gave a shivering little whimper into Oscar’s mouth, and it sounded concerning, and he tasted like salt. Oscar broke the kiss, and found Lando in tears, a slight stream down his face.

Oscar’s heart was catastrophic in his torso. “Does it hurt?” he asked, feeling so lightheaded, stupid, all the blood in his body concentrated lower, where he was nudging Lando’s hip. He felt out of control.

“Told you,” Lando said, sounding choked up. “Not even a bruise.”

Oscar’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Lando shot him a wobbling smile. His hands found Oscar’s neck, thumbs pressing against his heartbeat, and Oscar felt so warm, ribs sore. All the edges between them were lovely and bruising. “Too late for that,” he murmured, quietly. Oscar’s eyes widened.

He didn’t give Oscar a chance to reply, because they were kissing again, and everything else ceased to matter.

Oscar woke up with Lando plastered to his side like an octopus, head tucked into Oscar’s shoulder and breathing softly. For a long time he was confused, until his brain came back online, and the memories from the prior night started coming back to him.

Gently, so as to not wake Lando, he managed to decouple their limbs and scoot over to the side of the bed, scavenging his clothes from the floor, and slipping them back on. It wasn’t till his shirt was falling over his torso that he felt the bed shift behind him.

He turned around and saw Lando frowning, his eyes still closed, a wrinkle between his brows, tugging the duvet to his chest with a soft, displeased puff of air. “Oscar,” Lando called, voice raspy and slow with sleep, and Oscar remembered how Lando had felt, squirming beneath him.

“Yeah?” Oscar asked, voice shaking. Looking at Lando, his heart felt like bursting. He needed to leave.

“Where are you going?” Lando mumbled, words all slurred into one string.

Oscar shivered. It was too cold in Lando’s room. Goosebumps ran vivid down his arms.

“Gotta pack,” Oscar said. He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was eight, and they had to be in Woking by ten. It was an hour drive.

Lando didn’t seem concerned. He curled his knees up toward his chest, a knit between his brows, small and shivering. Instinctively, Oscar grabbed the duvet and pulled it over Lando’s shoulders.

“Mmh,” Lando hummed, soft and pleased, rubbing his cheek against the pillow, a tiny smile on his lips, like he was slipping back into a happy dream. “Okay.”

Oscar swallowed. He bit his lower lip. He had to tear his eyes away. If he looked any longer he’d want to stay, it would overcome him, the feeling, and he’d stay. He couldn’t. He had to leave.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

“Yeah,” Lando mumbled, and once his breathing went steady and quiet again, Oscar left.

It wasn’t until Oscar was standing listlessly in the hallway that he recalled he didn’t have his phone, or his keycard, but he reckoned he could just head down to the lobby and beg a concierge to give him a replacement. If not, he could’ve gotten someone to call Mark and bring the spare, but he really didn’t want to explain to Mark where he’d spent the night.

The concierges, after a bit of back-and-forth, made an exception for him, and gave him a replacement card even though he didn’t have any form of ID. He went up back to his room, stripped off last night’s clothes and changed into new ones for the day. He glanced at the clock. He still had about thirty, forty minutes until he had to go back to the lobby and meet up with Kim and Mark.

Left alone with his thoughts, he sat on the bed, threw his head into his palms, and took a deep breath. He grabbed his phone, then broke up with Lily.

“That was better than I expected,” Lando said, as they were heading to the garage.

Honestly, Oscar wasn’t exactly sure if that was true.

Throughout the meeting, Lando had kept shooting him little looks, distracted, had kept shifting around in his seat, wincing every now and then, and it got to the point where Zak had asked him if he felt sore from the crash. Lando’s face had erupted with heat. He had started sputtering incoherently, and Oscar had started coughing on his own spit so hard that Tom had had to pat his back, thinking he was choking.

“Yeah,” Oscar replied anyway, because he didn’t know what else to say. He hadn’t been able to focus either during the meeting. He felt awful about the fact that he didn’t really feel that awful about the breakup, about the fact that he cheated on his girlfriend of five years. Instead, it felt like everything was in pieces.

The team had explained that they’d still be able to race, that they wouldn’t use team orders unless it was absolutely necessary, but warned them to consider the team, before they pull anything stupid like they had in Silverstone. After apologizing to the mechanics, Oscar and Lando were let go for the day, and half of the factory gawked at them with bulging eyes when they went off to the garages together, like it was that much of a surprise that they were on speaking terms again.

Oscar still had to figure out what he was going to do before he got back to Monaco. His team were only able to book him a flight for later that night, so he had to dick around for a couple hours in the UK. He thought about driving to Mark and Ann’s place and killing time there, or seeing if one of his mates from school happened to be free. He threw both ideas out. He was too exhausted from the triple header to be social, and he didn’t really want to make the drive all the way up to Buckinghamshire only to have to drive down to Heathrow. He sighed. He’d probably just end up fucking around in London until it was time to head to the airport.

They arrived at their cars, parked a few spaces away from one another in the garage.

Oscar glanced over at Lando, and saw he was chewing on his bottom lip.

“Hey Osc,” he said, after a moment.

Oscar’s eyes widened. That was the first time Lando had called him that, Osc, in months.

“Yeah?” he asked, voice hoarse.

Lando stalled for a moment, one cheek hollowed from how he was chewing at it, before he darted his tongue out to wet the corner of his mouth. “Last night,” he started, looking off to the side, and Oscar swallowed.

“Yeah,” Oscar said. All afternoon he’d been trying his hardest not to think about last night, about this morning. Every time he did, it felt like he was about to burst, thinking about what Fewtrell had done, how they could’ve fixed things over the winter break, or at the start of the year. How it didn’t have to be this way. It felt like he was about to burst, thinking about how Lando wanted to fix things with him, how Lando was waiting for him to reach out, all this time. It felt as if he was about to burst, thinking about how Lando was crying, but in that moment Oscar wanted him so badly he didn’t have the sense to stop. How Lando had wanted him just as much. Maybe, Oscar thought, all this time, they might’ve wanted each other.

He didn’t want to look for a root cause. He didn’t want to understand when or how it happened, when it started, the want. He didn’t want to investigate it, didn’t want to analyze it, didn’t want to figure it out. He didn’t want the reason, he didn’t want to know just how long he’d been harboring it all inside.

Lando’s eyes flicked up to meet Oscar’s, for the first time. “Did you mean it?”

Lando’s eyes, they looked—hesitant, but they also looked a little hopeful.

Oscar told him the truth. He didn’t have to think about it.

“I meant it,” he said, and Lando’s eyes narrowed in consideration.

“Okay,” Lando said after a beat. They were still standing in the silent garage. It smelled like pavement and heat.

Lando licked his lips again. Oscar felt stuck in place.

“I have a flat, er,” Lando said, eyes darting to the side, “in Woking. If you wanna, like. Nap. Before the flight.”

And Oscar knew that Lando wasn’t really offering him a place to nap. He knew exactly what Lando was doing, was asking, was offering, and he said, soberly, “Okay.”

They were silent in the car ride over. Lando was driving, and Oscar was quietly staring out the window, thinking about it just how much he meant what he said last night, that he missed Lando, that he cared about Lando. He meant it more than he could understand. And it frightened him, sometimes, just how much he cared.

It isn’t until months later that Oscar realizes, maybe that wasn’t what Lando was asking at all.

PART THREE

The car doesn’t feel good in Hungary. The RB22 feels a bit like it did at the start of the year: unstable, twitchy, like a wild animal. Oscar barely keeps his hand around the leash.

Liam bins it in FP1, and Oscar narrowly comes close to it too, managing to save it in Turn 8. They fiddle with the set-up in FP2, come up with something they think is decent, but by the end of FP3, it becomes clear they hadn’t figured it out at all.

Oscar doesn’t make it into Q3. Liam does. Lando wins pole.

In Hungary, Oscar’s caught up in a first lap incident, a first turn incident, and doesn’t complete a single lap.

The race gets red flagged, and he climbs out of his car, lets Alex apologize to him as they walk back to the pitlane.

From the garage, Oscar watches Lando win—stealing the fastest lap at the very end.

From a two point lead to a twenty-four point deficit, just like that.

The flights are short enough that Oscar makes a last minute decision and spontaneously decides to go back to Monaco after the race, even though he’d planned otherwise.

Tuesday morning, he thinks about whether or not he should let Max know he’s in Monaco. They already rescheduled their weekly padel match, but Max is pretty much unemployed and surely free, and Oscar is bored.

He pulls his inner cheek between his teeth, face growing hot, remembering how he’d drunkenly sucked Max off in a club bathroom, how good it had felt to be touched for the first time in months, how easy it had been afterwards, walking home, chatting about things that mattered.

He spends the rest of the morning lazily scrolling through social media in bed, working out in his home mini-gym, then cooking himself a recovery meal. By 1 PM, he’s thinking about it again, reaching out to Max. These days, he’s realizing, Max might be his closest friend, not even just limited to Monaco—out of all his friends. At the very least, Max is the one Oscar’s spent the most IRL time with this year. His friends from school and back home all have real person jobs, so it’s gotten harder and harder to keep in contact.

A lot of people get Max wrong, Oscar thinks. What a lot of people, the British media, angry fans, other drivers, saw as bullheaded arrogance has only ever been unflappable confidence, honesty with himself and others. An understanding of the way things are and a disinterest of what anyone else thinks. Say it as it is. Play it as it lays.

Underneath it all, the brutish straightforwardness, the five world championships, and the unwavering self-assuredness, Max, Oscar has figured out, is actually quite nice, quite friendly, and quite—sweet.

It’s not like they talk about the championship very much—only passing remarks, here and there, when they’re talking about racing—but there’s still some comfort in the fact that Max has lived through it, that he gets it, what it’s like to fight for a championship, to want something so badly it feels like you could give up everything else. He gets it more than everyone else Oscar has ever been close to.

Well, Oscar realizes, shaking his head. Almost everyone.

He pulls up their messages, sends off a Hey before he can overthink it, then cringes immediately in a panic, following up quickly with I’m in Monaco, and cringing even more.

The texts are read almost immediately, and Oscar holds his breath when he sees Max typing.

I thought u were going straight to Turkey?

Oscar chews on the inside of his cheek. He just decides to tell the truth.

Changed my mind, he sends, and then when the text has been read but Max isn’t typing, Oscar asks, Are you free?

Max invites him over.

Oscar’s been here before, that one time Max was pouring him a gin-tonic that was more gin than tonic, but he was too drunk to really pay attention to the space, barely remembers his walk home.

Max’s cats zoom toward him and nuzzle their cheeks against his ankles as soon as Max lets him in. Max lovingly squats down and strokes their heads, something fond in his eyes, mutters something in Dutch, and they scamper away somewhere deeper in the penthouse.

Max asks what he wants to do, and Oscar says he doesn’t mind anything, so Max decides on FIFA, and grabs two beers from the fridge as the game is loading.

Oscar is still terrible at FIFA, and Max is pretty much pro level—Oscar can’t help but wonder if this is what he’s been spending most of his retirement doing, so it’s only after two games, each that Oscar loses by embarrassing margins, that he puts his controller down and says, “Mate, could we maybe try something else?”

He feels a bit guilty about it, because he did let Max choose, but he doesn’t know if he could handle getting crushed even more, with the Sunday he had.

But Max only hums, pauses his XBox, and leans forward to place his controller on the table. He says, “Alright.”

Oscar blinks. He hadn’t expected Max to agree so easily.

His eyes widen a bit, when Max stands up and walks toward Oscar, until he’s standing in front of him. His face is hard to read. He regards Oscar for a long time. Heat crawls up Oscar’s nape at the sudden onslaught of attention. Oscar swallows. He doesn’t know if he can play this one cool.

“Oscar,” Max says.

Oscar swallows again, head tilted back to meet Max’s gaze. “Yeah?” he asks, and he’s so caught up in shock that he doesn’t see it, nor expect it, when Max places his hand on Oscar’s bare knee, sliding up under the fabric of his loose workout shorts.

“This is why you asked if I was free, yes?”

Oscar’s mouth flops open and shut. His cheeks burn. “I, uh—”

Easily, Max responds, “It’s why I invited you over, of course.”

Oscar sucks in a shuddering breath through his nose. Max’s hand is warm against the inside of his thigh. He finds his brain starting to melt out of his ears.

“We could have started with this,” Max says, with a small smirk, “if you had just said so.”

“I—” Oscar starts, then decides that he doesn’t really have anything to say.

In lieu of words, he nods his head, anticipation and infatuation filling his chest, and closes his eyes.

With Lando, Oscar knew it wasn’t a good idea, what they were doing, what they’d started doing after Silverstone, and he knows that Lando knew it too, but they’d done it anyway.

The thing was, Oscar just felt so consumed by it, desperate for it, that he couldn’t think straight. He fucked Lando again, in his Woking flat, the afternoon following Silverstone 2025, and then again, the Wednesday they’d both landed in Belgium, in Oscar’s Hilton suite. Again, in Hungary, before media. It drove him mental, just how much he wanted it, how Lando had wanted it in equal measure.

Things didn’t go back to as they were before Abu Dhabi. They weren’t talking about it. They weren’t even really talking at all.

It still hadn’t felt like Lando had forgiven Oscar for Abu Dhabi, and Oscar still wasn’t sure if there was anything he had to be forgiven for.

A part of Oscar wondered if they’d gone about it all wrong. If only they hadn’t done what they did in Silverstone, if only they’d properly talked it through. If they hadn’t acted on impulse. But at the same time, it was hard to imagine things going any other way.

In the end, it was better this way, Oscar had a feeling, deep down.

It was the only way they could be close to each other that hadn’t already been ruined.

In 2025, Lando’s poor run of form worsened in Belgium and Hungary. In Belgium, he finished second to Max in the sprint, but finished the actual race in eighth. Then in Hungary, he finished ninth.

Oscar won both races.

Going into Spa, Oscar was twenty-six points behind Lando.

Coming out of Budapest, he was twenty-two points ahead.

The team rallied behind Lando, said they’d do what they could to get him back in full form. They were still on equal status. Lando had still won more races than Oscar had, and neither of them were looking to be in championship contention.

And it wasn’t like what started happening off the track started affecting what was happening on the track. Oscar hadn’t started outperforming the car or anything, just because he started fucking Lando.

In Spa, Max had won the sprint easily, but in the actual race, he had an awful start, and from second, Lando went wide trying to overtake. Oscar saw a gap, and cleanly went through, and Lando fell back places, got caught up in the carnage behind him.

In Budapest, Oscar suddenly found himself leading the race after a slow stop from Max’s pit crew, and spent most of the race defending. For Lando, the race win was off the cards from the start—from pole, he had too much wheelspin, collided with Lewis into Turn 1, had to pit early to replace his front wing, then received a ten second penalty for causing the collision.

Oscar struggled with the idea that Lando’s performance worsened because of him, because of what they were doing.

No matter what everyone online said, no matter the pundits speculating and gossip mongering, Oscar doubted Lando was the sort to let what happened off the track affect his on-track performances.

He knew how good Lando was. It just wasn’t a possibility.

Besides, if it was really because of him, Oscar reckoned, Lando would’ve had the sense to stop things before they got even worse.

But the night after Hungary, they were in Oscar’s suite, both of them loose-limbed and warm, tangled under the sheets. Oscar felt halfway to passing out, but there was still cum drying on his stomach and he knew he needed a shower. Even so, he was too exhausted to get up.

And Lando was looking at him. There was a sweet, hesitant look in his eyes, and it was like he wanted to say something.

“What’re you looking at me like that for?” Oscar mumbled. His brain felt foggy. He’d barely managed to tie up the condom and throw it on the floor. They were both on their sides. Cool wind from the A/C brushed his hip.

“Not looking at you like anything, you muppet,” Lando muttered back, blushing. Then he rolled onto his back, flinched a bit, and Oscar couldn’t help but feel a sick sense of pleasure, of satisfaction, knowing he caused that, knowing that Lando felt that way, physically, because of him.

Oscar stayed on his side, looking at Lando, watching how his chest rose and fell, the sheen of his face, pink and shiny. He was unbearably beautiful.

“Osc,” Lando said, after a long moment, gazing at the ceiling. He bit his bottom lip, then licked over where his teeth had been.

“Yeah?”

Lando pursed his mouth, shyly, then asked, “What’re you doing for the break?”

Oscar winced. It was a bit of a sore subject. There was this whole vacation planned earlier in the year: him and Lily and their families were supposed to spend the break together in Australia, but that had all gone to hell, and Oscar hadn’t made any plans in substitution. Not to mention that his parents and his sisters were pissed at him. He couldn’t blame them. During the breakup, Oscar’d been half-honest with Lily. Told her he cheated. Didn’t tell her whom with. At the end of the line, she told her parents and they told his.

“Nothing, really,” Oscar answered truthfully.

Lando hummed, musingly, then said, “I’m thinking about going to Greece.”

“Yeah?” Oscar said again, because he didn’t know where Lando was going with this.

“One of the islands,” Lando continued. “Somewhere quiet.”

“Thought you were following Martin around on tour with Max,” Oscar said. Fewtrell went unsaid. Back in Austria, just before the drivers parade, a bunch of the drivers, Oscar and Lando included, had been chatting about their summer break plans, and Lando had mentioned it.

Lando’s expression went tight. He frowned, and there was something else there. Oscar didn’t comment on it. He didn’t know if he had the right to.

“Don’t really feel in the mood anymore,” Lando said gloomily.

All Oscar did was hum.

This was the fourth time, but only the first time they’d talked afterwards. It was unfamiliar.

“Wanna come?”

Oscar’s eyes shot wide. He sucked in a breath through his nose; he wasn’t sure if he was understanding Lando right.

“With you?” he asked.

“Where else,” Lando muttered, petulant, like it was a stupid question. Maybe it was. His eyes flicked away from Oscar when he went on, “Dunno, though. If your girlfriend would be okay with that.”

Oscar pressed his lips together.

He hadn’t really told anyone, other than his family, that they’d broken up. Lily wasn’t public on social media, and she wasn’t the sort to go around telling everyone. Besides, he’d hurt her. He doubts she wanted everyone to know the truth.

“Don’t have a girlfriend,” Oscar replied, then pulled his top lip between his teeth.

Lando froze, visibly, then asked, “What?”

“I broke up with her,” Oscar explained, his heart rapid in his chest.

Lando shifted onto his side again, his eyes narrowed, and he held his lips together tightly.

“After Silverstone,” Oscar said into the silence, and immediately, Lando’s face broke open.

“Oh,” Lando said, and it was—

A million different emotions and expressions flitted through Lando’s face. It almost looked like he was happy.

Oscar was overwhelmed. There was a dissonance in his head. Lando had been making him feel this way, confused and in pieces, so full of desire he couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think straight, couldn’t get a grasp on himself, even though he knew better.

Even though he knew better, his hand was shaking as he brought it up to cup Lando’s cheek. Lando burned, and Oscar kissed him. Hard, and with everything he had. He didn’t really know what he was doing.

“You’re also, uh,” Oscar starts, blushing like crazy, tucking himself back into his pants, “quite good at, er, that.”

Max laughs. “I’ve had practice,” he says. His lips are swollen and plush, his eyes are all bright, and his cheekbones are dusted with pink. Oscar can’t stop staring.

Max gets up from where he was knelt between Oscar’s thighs, and goes to sit on the sofa, manspreads, a tad. Oscar’s eyes flick down to his crotch, and he swallows thickly, still feeling like his brain is leaking out of his ears.

“Can I—?” Oscar starts, wanting it a little too much. He tries not to sound overeager.

Almost in surprise, or maybe something like awe, Max’s lips part. “If you want to,” he says.

“I want to,” Oscar says, biting his lower lip.

“Yeah?” Max asks, breath shaky.

Oscar rises to his knees, but he’s too loose-limbed to get up from the sofa. Instead, he puts a hand on Max’s thigh, bends over, with laser-sharp focus, and says, “Yeah. I like it.”

“It’s official,” Mark said, as soon as Oscar picked up the phone. He sounded out of breath. He sounded over the moon.

Oscar groaned. He felt hazy and still half-asleep. The fucking ringtone had woken him up, and he had one-handedly patted around the bed to turn it off, but then he saw it was Mark. Mark wasn’t the type to call him early in the morning, without notice, so Oscar sighed, picked up the call, and brought his phone to his ear.

“What?” Oscar drawled into the speaker, cringing at how rough his voice was. He rubbed at his eyes. It was barely 6 AM.

“Max is retiring,” Mark said, and Oscar’s eyes shot wide open. “They’ll announce before Monza. Maybe next week.”

Oscar froze, and his eyes slowly drifted to check if Lando was awake. He wasn’t. He was still plastered to Oscar’s side, breathing softly into his neck.

“Fuck,” Oscar said, then he swallowed. He couldn’t have this conversation here. “Gimme a second,” he said, then set his phone down to the side.

Carefully, he started to disentangle himself from Lando, biting his lip when he saw Lando frown in his sleep. Oscar didn’t want to wake him up, so once he got himself free, he grabbed a pillow and placed it against Lando’s chest. Lando’s arms and knees closed around it easily. Oscar tried his hardest not to stare at the bruises on Lando’s hips. He tore his eyes away, then located his undies from the floor. He didn’t bother putting anything else on, grabbed his phone, and ambled over to the balcony.

Greece was brutally hot, but it was early morning, and they’d rented a beachside house on one of the more remote islands, so the cool breeze from the sea drifted and billowed toward him. It smelled like salt and sun. Oscar closed the balcony doors behind him, took a seat on the little sofa facing the water, and brought his phone back to his ears.

“Yeah?” Oscar asked, feeling all out of sorts.

Mark chuckled from the other end of the line. Oscar grimaced; he could imagine the smirk on Mark’s face. “Busy night?” he asked.

Oscar groaned. He decided not to acknowledge it, and started, “Why’re you—” He ran a hand through his tousled and tangled hair, trying to focus and wake himself up, but the sun was making him drowsy.

“Are you sure?” he asked. He still didn’t believe it. It wasn’t a surprise; the writing had been on the wall for months but it still was hard to swallow. To Oscar, the sport without Max was hard to imagine, even harder to fathom.

“Christian called,” Mark said. “I’m sure.”

It took Oscar a long moment to understand the implications.

Still, Mark spelled it out.

“They want you,” he said.

Not this again, Oscar thought. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, feigned ignorance. “Who does?”

“Red Bull.”

Oscar groaned again. “Fuck off,” he said. Mark’s been on this for months. “I’m with McLaren.”

“You don’t have to be,” Mark replied. Oscar looked out at the aquamarine of the water. It was so quiet here. Tranquil. Almost serene. “Development’s going well. The Ford project’s decent too, I hear.”

It was mid-August. Three days after Hungary, they flew from Monaco to Athens together. They rented a car, drove up to Mytikas, then chartered a private boat to Kastos. Martin had hooked up Lando with one of his friends, gave him the recommendation, said it was a good place to go if you were looking to get away.

Oscar loved it, but at first, he was hesitant. It was beautiful here, quiet beaches and warm waters, but the island was tiny, and there wasn’t a nightlife scene here. For a while, Oscar kept figuring that Lando would grow bored, feel isolated, and cut the holiday short, book a flight to Ibiza.

But the summer break was almost over. They’d spent all of it together, swimming and snorkeling, lazing under the sun on white pebbled sand, walking through the small town, shopping for groceries, feeding stray cats, drinking and chatting at tavernas, and spontaneously taking day trips to the other Ionian islands. It was easy, this intimate and undefined thing they had. It felt like a life they could never live. It felt like the world only consisted of the two of them. Maybe it did. They didn’t talk about racing. They didn’t talk about the wound.

They had four days left before they had to fly back to Monaco, then fly to Woking. Oscar dreaded it; he didn’t want to leave.

“I have a contract,” Oscar said, taking a deep breath.

“You also have an exit clause,” Mark reminded.

The truth was, after Abu Dhabi, Oscar could leave at any time.

But leaving wasn’t something Oscar had ever seriously considered, not even after 2024. He wanted to stay, and it wasn’t an emotional decision. He’d already spent two and a half years with them. He had a contract until 2026 that he was planning on renewing as soon as he could. Despite everything, they were building a long-term future around him and Lando. They were his best shot at a championship.

It didn’t make sense to leave.

“They’re offering twenty, but I think we can get more.”

Oscar’s voice rose, frustrated. “For fuck’s sake, Mark. It’s not about the money.”

Mark laughed at him, and Oscar felt a bitterness rise in his throat. “Then what’s it about?”

Oscar glanced at Lando through the glass panes, the peaceful expression on his face, how the angles of sunlight cut into his skin, muscles perfect and chiseled, how he looked like a Romantic’s wet dream. He said, decisively, “I’m not leaving McLaren.”

For a long time, Mark said nothing. Oscar closed his eyes, and listened to the quiet of the island.

“It’d be your team,” Mark said.

Oscar pursed his mouth. “McLaren is my team.”

Mark hummed, then asked, “Is it?”

Oscar opened his eyes. He tipped his head back, gaze roaming around at the light blue expanse of the cloudless sky, and winced at the sun.

“They’ll announce Liam before Max,” Mark said, when it became clear that Oscar wasn’t going to reply. “It’s a good time for negotiations.”

Throughout the first half of the season, it was common knowledge that Liam was going to take Checo’s seat. Liam was doing well in VCARB, and Checo’s lackluster performances continued.

Oscar knew what Mark meant; with Max’s surprise retirement and Liam’s new seat, people would be distracted. Speculation would run rampant. If any news leaked, it’d just look like another theory.

“Think about it,” Mark said. “But we’ll have to move fast.”

The line cut, Mark ended the call, and Oscar strolled back inside. Lando was still in deep sleep. Oscar slipped back into bed, and stared at Lando. He thought about the past two weeks they spent together. He thought about Lando napping on his shoulder on the ferry to the island, the warm weight of him; he thought about Lando laughing his heart out when Oscar inhaled a bunch of sea water the other day, the sound of his voice; he thought about Lando, tipsy on two glasses of wine, curling into Oscar’s side one night, tucked into a little wooden booth in the corner of the taverna, telling Oscar how happy he was, how he hadn’t felt that happy in a long time.

Oscar wouldn’t take that away from him. Oscar wouldn’t let go.

“When are you leaving for Turkey?” Max asks.

Oscar sucked Max off, got a little too into it, and Max had subsequently gotten him off a second time, with his hands.

Afterwards, they ended up ordering takeout from the Italian place they crossed paths in, earlier in the year, and putting on an old race. Neither of them are paying much attention. They were chatting about Max’s family, how he’s been able to see them so much more this year, how he’s actually been able to spend time with his nephews and niece, and attend some of his dad’s races. Oscar likely had something of a frown on his face, because Max changed the topic.

Oscar chews on his pasta. “Tomorrow morning,” he says, not really looking forward to it. He’s starting to feel like he’s in a bit of a funk, even if it was only one bad race.

“Are you nervous?” Max asks, and Oscar realizes his face must’ve given him away again.

“Not nervous,” Oscar says, “but… I dunno.” He’s never raced in Turkey. He’s studied it, prepped for it in the sim, watched old races, but he isn’t sure what to expect. It’s the last race before the summer break. He needs it to be good. “I just don’t know what to expect.”

Max hums, and his eyes drift to the TV. Lewis Hamilton has just achieved his one-hundredth grand prix victory. Lando Norris has just lost his chance at a first.

“Want some advice?”

It’s advice from a five-time world champion. Oscar isn’t going to say no.

They watch clips of Turkey 2020 and 2021, Max explaining what lines he thought worked well, where to brake, how much speed to take into which corners, and it’s not revolutionary advice, but it’s helpful to talk it out.

Then, more generally, they watch parts of Oscar’s worst races this season, Melbourne, Imola, Montreal, and Budapest, Max critiquing, going over what he thought Oscar did well, what he thinks he could have done better.

It’s midnight by the time they’re done. At the end of the line, as Oscar’s walking back to his own flat, he can’t stop thinking about it, what he wanted to say, what he has wanted to say, all year: You still love it. You love it more than anything. I see that look of love in your eyes when you talk about F1, my races, my racing. It’s like you’re trying to live it through me. You gave up the biggest part of yourself, but it was a choice. You didn’t have to leave it all behind. You didn’t have to leave.

The morning Oscar arrived in the UK, following his and Lando’s holiday, he got a text from Zak, inviting him out for a nine-hole. At first, Oscar had assumed that Zak had switched him and Lando up, but Zak had mentioned him by name. That was the thing: Zak was his boss, and knew Oscar was in the UK. Oscar didn’t have much room to say no.

While Oscar far preferred cricket, he could get by in golf. He knew the basics from the few times that Mark had forced him to the range last year, going on and on about how it was an important life skill. In a way, Oscar supposes, he wasn’t wrong.

For the first few holes, they talked about how Oscar had been feeling with the team, his back-to-back wins in Spa and Hungary, and how the season was going. Zak also asked Oscar about what he spent his break doing, but both Oscar and Lando had come up with stories, in preparation for the second half of the season, so Oscar gave his well-rehearsed lie about how he’d just gone home to Melbourne and had a quiet holiday with family.

They were in the last hole, walking to the putting green. Oscar was keeping up, surprisingly; he was up only five, but he could kind of tell that Zak was going easy on him. He was mostly just relieved that the game was almost over, and he hadn’t embarrassed himself.

“I must say,” Zak said, as they neared where the balls had landed, clapping Oscar on the shoulder, with force, “you’re not half-bad.”

Oscar didn’t really care whether Zak meant it or not. Zak always kind of made him uncomfortable, but he’d known him for almost three years at that point, so he’d been used to it. Lando always got along much better with him—though it was hard for Oscar to tell whether he genuinely liked the guy, or was Stockholm Syndromed as a child into thinking he did.

“Er, thanks,” he said, and let out a breath when Zak removed his hand.

“Your dad teach you?”

Oscar shook his head. His dad got him into racing—not golf—and for that, Oscar will be forever grateful.

“Mark did, kinda,” he explained.

Zak laughed and said, “Close enough,” and Oscar flushed.

The sun was beating down so hard that Oscar was sweating, and he wished he’d put on more sunscreen. Lily had always been on him about putting on sunscreen, with how easily he burned, and she had been the one who’d remind him. Oscar didn’t have that anymore. He’d have to be more self-sufficient, going forward.

“I will say, though,” Zak started, “you’re much better at driving than you are at golf.”

Oscar forced out a laugh. “I’d hope so.”

“Seriously, you’ve improved a lot. I remember how you were, your first year, chasing after Lando every race. Now you hold your own. Your ceiling’s high, and I don’t even think you’re near hitting it yet,” Zak said. This time, it really did sound like he meant it.

Oscar wasn’t stupid. He knew why Zak had invited him for golf and not Lando. Lando was committed to McLaren. Oscar was too, but not to the same extent. Zak probably knew about Max’s retirement—it was yet to be announced, but the TPs knew things like this. He wanted to compliment him a bit, make sure he knew he was valued. More than anything else, make sure Oscar wasn’t thinking about leaving before his contract ended.

I’m not, he wanted to tell Zak. Trust me, I’m definitely not. He wanted to say it out loud, confirm his loyalties, get straight to the point, but instead they’d had to waste three hours on a nine-hole.

Oscar composed a diplomatic response. “The team’s been really helpful and supportive. Really helped me grow and learn,” he said, and he did mean it. Even though it was hard and a bit painful, the whole mess with team orders in 2024, the championship battle and the fallout from Abu Dhabi, at the end of the day and at the end of the line, they stood by him and believed in him. From day one, they wanted him and they followed through with all their promises.

“And Lando?”

Oscar swallowed. He suspected that was coming.

Oscar felt kind of weird, talking about Lando to their boss behind his back. He hadn’t told him how Zak had asked him out to golf. He considered telling him, because he knew golf was their thing, and didn’t want to take that from him, but it was just a harmless nine-hole, a one-off consequence of Max’s early retirement, and besides—Oscar kind of wasn’t sure where he and Lando were at.

Things had been weird on their last day in Greece.

Lando had been quiet, and Oscar hadn’t wanted to push. He knew why—the holiday was over and they had to go back to being teammates, rivals. They barely talked on the ferry, in the car, or on the plane. They said a shoddy goodbye at the airport, and they went off to their own flats. In any case, he’d see him soon at the factory that afternoon.

It wasn’t an important meeting, just something to get everyone back in the mindset for the second half of the season, but Oscar and Lando were going to be at the center of it, naturally. They would be flying back to Monaco together right after.

“Lando’s been a good reference,” Oscar said, biting his lower lip. It was Zak’s turn to putt, but he was stalling, spinning his putter on the grass, and Oscar wished that they’d just get it over with. “I’ve learned a lot from him, and, you know, I think we’ve gotten past what happened last year.”

Oscar wasn’t sure if that was really true, but he figured that was what Zak wanted to hear.

It wasn’t. Zak asked, “What are you now, twenty-one points ahead of him?”

“Er,” Oscar said, furrowing his brows, “twenty-two.”

It was the first time Oscar had ever led Lando in the championship. It came in Budapest, after Oscar’s win and Lando’s P9. Before Spa, Oscar had been twenty-six points behind. He knew he deserved those wins, but he was aware that the sudden magnitude of the gap was partially due to Lando’s poor run of form following Silverstone. He figured Lando would bounce back; it would be good for the team if he did. The summer break was probably what he needed to reset, after all.

Zak grinned. “Even better.”

Oscar was starting to feel weird. He decided to play it down.

“Still not as fast as Lando,” he said, and he meant it. The thing is, he knew that speed wasn’t all it took. If it was, Lando would’ve won a world championship by now.

“Oscar,” Zak said, scoffing. “You’re up on the head-to-head. I think it’s something like nine-four?”

“Yeah,” Oscar said, cringing. He tried not to think too much about that. Since Miami, Lando hadn’t beaten Oscar in a single race. “But, well, it’s a long season.”

Zak laughed. “You sound like you don’t want to be beating him.”

Oscar’s response came like a reflex. “I do.”

Zak’s eyes widened, like he was impressed. He smiled, and Oscar felt a little sick.

“You know,” Zak started, voice going contemplative, and even before he got the rest out, Oscar knew where he was going, “I wasn’t happy with you, in Abu Dhabi, but it took guts. I’m not saying you did the right thing, and it was unfortunate how the season played out for Lando, but it’s a good character trait to have, for a racing driver. One we value.”

Oscar’s hand tightened around the grip of his putter. “Thanks.”

“I mean it,” Zak said, grinning. “Ruthlessness and bravado, the marks of a future world champion.”

Oscar grimaced, but tried to make it look like a grin. Zak was really laying it on thick.

“Hopefully,” he said.

He was still waiting for Zak to line up his putter, but Zak was lingering. He was silent for a long time. Birds were chirping, wind rustled in the trees. And then he asked, “What do you think about Alex?”

Oscar blinked. “What?”

“As a driver,” Zak clarified. “He’s been doing pretty well in Williams, don’t you think?”

“He’s—” Oscar stumbled. He didn’t understand why they were talking about Alex. He’d been bringing Williams solidly up the midfield, sure, and was constantly outdriving his car, but he wasn’t decisively beating Carlos. Oscar didn’t see how any of that was relevant. “Yeah, I mean. He’s doing well.”

He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach when Zak wasn’t saying anything, was only looking at Oscar’s face, like he was trying to read him, like he was calculating.

Against his better judgement, Oscar couldn’t help but ask, “Why?”

Zak shrugged, and there was an air of pretend casualness to it. “Just thinking about the long-term.”

Oscar’s throat felt tight. He knew what Zak was saying. He didn’t want to believe it.

“You have a long-term already,” Oscar said, voice shaking.

Zak smiled, and might’ve been a silly thought, but in that moment, Oscar thought he looked like the grim reaper.

“Might be time for a change, at some point,” he said, and finally started to line up his shot.

Oscar skipped the team meeting. Said he felt sick. Heatstroke from the nine-hole with Zak.

It wasn’t entirely a lie.

He kept playing it over and over in his head. All of it. Tried to convince himself he misunderstood, but he knew, deep down, that he hadn’t.

From day one, Andrea had always favored Oscar over Lando—Oscar knew that, but Zak had always been in Lando’s corner. Oscar hadn’t minded it; it kept the balance. But that had changed at some point this year. Zak made his choice. The scales tipped.

And it wasn’t just about that.

Oscar knew where McLaren’s problem lay. In modern F1, unless you have a monstrous pace advantage, you can’t win a drivers’ championship with two number one drivers. They learned that in 2024.

Lando was no number two driver, and he wouldn’t be made one, either.

Someone had to leave first. Leave, or be pushed out.

Mark was bewildered when he opened the front door, and Oscar was on the steps, waiting. He’d been ringing the doorbell for ages, and a part of him was starting to worry that Mark wasn’t actually home. He made the drive immediately from the golf course up to Buckinghamshire. He should have texted or called before showing up, he knew, but he also knew that Mark would’ve interrogated him.

He blinked, confused, then asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be at that team meeting?”

Oscar knew that was coming. Mark kept tabs on his schedule. But Oscar just pursed his lips. Gave Mark a look, something he couldn’t do over the phone, and that was all it took for Mark to sigh and let Oscar in, saying, “Ann made lunch. The leftovers are in the fridge.”

Oscar laid on the couch for hours, thinking about how Lando invited him to Greece, how they spent the entire summer break together. They had a silent dinner, Mark, Ann, and Oscar, and Oscar went back to lying on the sofa, thinking about how he kissed Lando after their crash in Silverstone, and Lando kissed him back. At roughly 10 PM Ann set up the guest room for him and let him borrow some of Mark’s spare clothes, and Oscar relocated to the bed, thinking about Lando with his helmet on in Abu Dhabi, how he was crying beneath it.

They wouldn’t do it this year, but Oscar knew how this story might go.

Over the course of a few years, Ferrari pushed Seb out and Red Bull centered the team around Max. It’s just how the sport works.

It was midnight when he finally left the bedroom and ambled downstairs. Mark was alone in the sitting room, at the table, focused on something on his laptop.

His head swiveled, following Oscar with curious eyes. He didn’t say anything. He stayed patient.

For a long time, Oscar was completely silent, frozen in place. The feeling ebbed and waned. The words were in his throat, curled around his lungs. He took in a deep breath, exhaled an even deeper one, and he said, “I think I want to take it.”

Mark didn’t look surprised. He lifted a brow, then said, “You think.”

Abu Dhabi, three years apart: Max screaming on the radio for his first, sobbing in relief and disbelief for his fourth.

“I want to take it,” Oscar said.

His voice shook, not out of hesitation, but out of fear. It scared him, just how much he meant it.

Mark regarded him for a long moment, like he wanted to make sure that Oscar wasn’t just saying it or choosing it because he’d been pushing him.

“You look exhausted,” Mark eventually said.

“Mark,” Oscar said.

Mark’s eyes softened. “Sleep on it,” he ordered. “If you don’t change your mind come morning, I’ll call Christian, and we’ll get it done.”

In the end, Oscar knew he wasn’t going to change his mind.

In the end, they weren’t in Greece anymore. It wasn’t actually so hard to let go.

PART FOUR

Turkey isn’t great.

Despite all of Max’s help and advice, it doesn’t change the fact that the RB22 doesn’t exactly suit the track, and the MCL40 excels in it.

After a difficult qualifying, Oscar starts the race in P6, and manages to make it to the podium.

However, Lando wins from pole.

Thirty-four points difference now. Oscar has lost thirty-six points to Lando in just two races.

Going into the summer break, Oscar doesn’t have to go online to know what everyone’s saying—he ran from a fight, and made the wrong choice.

He doesn’t care. They questioned him when he chose McLaren over Alpine, and he proved them wrong. He’ll just have to do it again.

Mark had meant it, when he said that he and Christian would get it done.

The next day, Oscar flew back to Monaco. By the time he landed, the meeting with McLaren’s lawyers to discuss the specific terms of his exit had already been set up. It would happen next week in Monza on Tuesday. Oscar himself wouldn’t be involved.

They were aiming to have everything signed before Zandvoort.

Things were moving quickly, but it wasn’t Oscar’s first time in rush, clandestine contract meetings. He trusted Mark.

Lando also texted, asking if he could come over. A part of Oscar wanted to say no, but he also—wanted to see Lando. It had felt so long since the last time they were together, even if it was only a few days.

He said yes, lay on the couch, and stared listlessly up at the ceiling for an hour until Lando came.

He let Lando in and seeing him again was like a breath of fresh air. Oscar had missed him, more than he could understand.

But there was a clarity to it, the dissonance that returned. The summer break had been so good. It had been so good, because nothing that actually mattered mattered there.

Lando pressed his lips together, crossed his arms over his chest, and narrowed his eyes. “You don’t look sick,” he observed, even though Oscar felt close to breaking.

“I was,” he said, and meant it.

Suspicion still showed on his face, but Lando sighed and asked, “Are you, like, feeling better?”

Oscar swallowed. He felt his face pale. “Yeah,” he lied. “Think it was something I ate.”

Lando scoffed. “Probably the salmon you love so much,” he said. “I keep telling you, it’s nasty.”

Oscar couldn’t help but smile. Lando had a cute look of faux disgust on his face, his nose wrinkled. “I know,” he said, with terrible fondness, and maybe fear.

They were still standing by the door. Neither of them made any effort to move. Lando’s cheek hollowed from where he was biting at it, and the pretend disgust was replaced by something tight, insecure, and hard to place.

His throat bobbed, and he was looking off to the side when he said, worried, “I’d thought it was ‘cause of me, you know.”

Oscar drew in a shaking breath through his nose. He didn’t want to lie, but he also couldn’t tell Lando. Not yet. Not until the contracts were signed.

He also wouldn’t be telling Lando about what Zak had alluded to. That would go with him to the grave.

“Because,” Lando continued, in Oscar’s silence, still looking away, his voice small and trembling, “If it was just, like, a summer thing. I’d wanna know that. Like it’s—it’d be fine, and I’d get it, but—”

“Lando,” Oscar breathed out. He couldn’t hear any more of it. Couldn’t stomach it. He wanted to tell Lando everything, and he didn’t want to tell Lando anything. There was this feeling in his chest, and it felt like he was about to burst. He had become so familiar with it—it was how Lando had always made him feel, maybe. Still, despite the familiarity, he had no idea how to put any of it in words.

So he didn’t. Instead, he surged forward and kissed him.

Lando made a noise in surprise, but kissed him back, open-mouthed, grabbed his hips, and pulled him closer.

“Okay,” Lando said, smiling through the kiss. Oscar could feel his happiness radiating off him in waves. “I understand,” he said, and Oscar didn’t have the heart to tell him that he really, really didn’t.

On Sunday night, Oscar went over to Lando’s flat. They’d seen each other the day before already, but Lando asked if he was free, and asked him to come over.

When Lando opened the door, his eyes were red-rimmed and a little puffy. Oscar’s heart sank, and for a moment, he was terrified. The news hadn’t broken yet and the contracts hadn’t even been signed, but maybe, somehow, Lando found out.

Oscar swallowed, unsure about how to go about it, and just decided to ask, “Is something wrong?”

Lando sucked in a breath and mumbled, “Can we go to the couch or something?”

Oscar swallowed again and followed Lando to the sofa.

Immediately after Oscar sat down, Lando pressed his face to Oscar’s chest and nudged him until he was lying back. He slid further down until his face was buried in Oscar’s stomach, breathing in the smell of, like, his jumper. Oscar brought a hand down and ran his fingers through Lando’s hair.

For a long time, they stayed like that, and Oscar’s chest was in knots.

“I told Max about us,” Lando said quietly, so quiet Oscar almost didn’t hear him, muffled by his hoodie.

It was horrible, how Oscar instantly felt relieved that it wasn’t what he thought it was.

“Which one?” he asked stupidly.

Lando rolled onto his cheek and snapped, frowning and glaring at Oscar with fire, “Why the fuck would I tell Verstappen?”

Oscar shrugged helplessly. He felt at a loss.

Lando winced. “Sorry,” he said, contrite and embarrassed. “Fewtrell.”

“What happened?” Oscar asked.

Lando made a miserable noise, snuggling harder. “We fought.”

Oscar and Max had been friends too, at a point in time. It all felt so long ago.

“Sorry,” Oscar said. He’d figured, after Lando found out that Max had blocked Oscar on Lando’s phone and never told him for months, that they’d had a bit of a falling out. But those two had been friends almost as long as Lando had been racing. Oscar assumed they’d just come out of it right-side-up. Max had been the one who’d put Lando back together after Abu Dhabi, in the first place. He had his heart in the right place, even though Oscar had been furious too, when he found out.

“Don’t be sorry,” Lando muttered. “He’s being a dick. He thinks you’re going to, like, break my heart, or something.”

Oscar looked up at the ceiling, throat tight. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what. The worst part is, he couldn’t even really say that he wouldn’t. He would never make a promise he couldn’t keep.

“Do you want me to, like, you know, take your mind off it?” he suggested, and only realized how shitty that sounded, and how shitty of a proposal it was, until he got the words out.

Lando hummed, considering it, but then he slipped his arms under Oscar’s back, sighing contently.

“Nah,” he said. “Just this is enough.”

Oscar spends the 2026 summer break mostly in Monaco. His mum and sisters come up in the first week, and they travel a bit in Italy, but they’re only there for a few days, and after that, Oscar hadn’t made any real plans.

He sleeps. He works out. He watches a lot of TV. He works out even more. He studies a lot of old races. He works out because he has nothing better to do.

And he sees Max. Quite a bit. They play a lot of padel. They play video games. They go out with Max’s friends. They get each other off.

It’s hard to fathom, how it all happened, how they keep doing it. How easy it is. They’re good friends, just with the smallest of benefits. Blowjobs, handjobs, and nothing more than that. Oscar can’t even really say they’re sleeping together. They’re pointedly not.

It’s casual. The most casual non-arrangement Oscar’s ever had in his life.

Which probably doesn’t mean much. He’s only been with two other people before.

Still, though, it’s kind of driving him crazy. He keeps expecting the other shoe to drop. It never does.

Monza 2025 was a media storm.

In the week leading up to the race, three things were announced in quick succession:

1. Sergio Perez was retiring.
2. Liam Lawson would join Red Bull in 2026.
3. Max Verstappen, whether it would be four championships or five, was retiring.

For the first time in their history, since 2005, Red Bull would have an all-new driver pairing.

Fresh blood.

There would be no crossover, no handover. They would be gutted from the inside. The vultures were ready, and they were hungry.

Everyone in the paddock, and even online, knew that Liam wasn’t taking Max’s seat. All year, it was a well-known fact that Liam would take Checo’s garage. Max’s seat was open.

And of course, there were theories. There were rumors about nearly every driver on the grid. None of them had any substance.

Well, except for the one.

Thursday morning, Oscar and Lando met with Andrea and Zak in preparation for the weekend. It was a short meeting, more of a pep talk than anything, an affirmation that even though they weren’t fighting for the drivers’ championship, they still had a shot at the constructors’. They had to remain focused.

At the end of the meeting, both Lando and Oscar got up, but then Andrea said, “Oscar, could you stay for a moment? It’ll be quick.”

Lando glanced at Oscar in confusion. Oscar couldn’t meet his eyes.

He sat back down, and pulled his lower lip between his teeth as Lando left the room.

They were all quiet for a long moment. It was the first time that Oscar had seen Zak since they’d gone golfing, and Andrea since before the summer break.

“Did I scare you off?” Zak asked, breaking the silence.

Oscar regarded him, pressing his lips together. He shrugged, and told them the truth. “Just realized I needed something different.”

He didn’t want to linger. It was already done, practically. The lawyers figured out the terms of his exit yesterday, and it went well, according to Mark. The new contract would be drafted by Monday.

Zak let out a long sigh. He looked disappointed.

“Guess I had you wrong,” Zak said.

Oscar sucked in a breath. “Guess you did.”

His eyes flicked to Andrea. He looked betrayed.

That one hurt. Oscar swallowed the feeling.

More silence ensued. Oscar wasn’t in a chatty mood.

“Alright,” Zak eventually said, and he shook his head, did something odd with his mouth. “I won’t keep you. Just keep in mind we still have ten races to go, a constructors’ championship to win. You’re still a part of the team. Nothing changes this year.”

Oscar nodded, then glanced again at Andrea, to see if he was going to say anything, but he was looking away.

So Oscar stood from his chair, and made to leave, when Andrea called his name. He turned around.

“Lando doesn’t know, does he?” Andrea asked after a moment.

Oscar’s eyes widened. “No,” he says, throat feeling tight. “I don’t think.”

“Are you going to tell him,” Andrea asked, “or should we?”

Oscar, quite honestly, couldn’t think of anything worse than Zak and Andrea telling Lando that Oscar’s leaving the team.

His breath shook in his chest when he decided, “I’ll tell him.”

“Okay,” Andrea said. “Just wait until after the race. You understand why, right?”

Oscar loathed it, how he did understand.

They couldn’t afford to get distracted. Lando least of all.

“Yeah,” he said, starting to feel unmoored, “of course.”

Lando was waiting in Oscar’s driver room. He was laid out along the small bed, knees curled up slightly, and scrolling through his phone. He looked up as soon as Oscar walked in.

“What’d they wanna talk to you about?” Lando asked. He swivled so that he was sitting upright, making a space for Oscar on the sofa bed.

“It was a quick check-in, since I missed the team meeting last week,” Oscar said, and made to sit next to Lando.

Lando hummed, and hadn’t questioned Oscar’s lie. He squirmed around a bit on the bed so that he was perpendicular to Oscar. His neck came to rest on the sofa’s arm, head propped up, his legs thrown over Oscar’s thighs. Oscar’s hand reflexively curled around Lando’s ankle and he drew tender circles into his shin. Lando went back to scrolling through social media.

They still had a few minutes before they had to head to the fanzone. Oscar wanted to linger in his tiny driver room on the tiny sofa bed.

“Hey Osc,” Lando started.

“Yeah?”

“Who do you think’s gonna fill Max’s seat?” he asked, and Oscar’s heart dropped. “Social media’s been going crazy with it.”

Oscar managed to keep his voice level when he asked, already knowing the answer, “Max hasn’t told you?”

“Nah,” Lando said, shaking his head, then pulled his lips to the side. “I mean, I knew he was planning on retiring, but whenever I’ve asked about the seat he’s been dodgy about it. Makes me think they’re close to signing someone.”

“Yeah,” Oscar said, looking up at the ceiling. Once more, he felt in pieces. He felt exhausted. “Maybe Yuki?” he suggested. According to Mark, Yuki would’ve been the back-up, if they couldn’t get him. They hadn’t explored that option too hard. They had their eyes set on Oscar. They wanted Oscar, so they got him.

It was all or nothing.

Lando laughed. He sounded so bright. Oscar thought of sunshine. “Dunno if he can fill that seat, mate.”

Oscar swallowed over the lump in his throat, and he asked, “Can anyone?”

It seemed that coming out of the summer break, Lando was back in full form.

He won pole, and he was grinning his way through interviews and the post-quali. Oscar managed a P2, and George was close behind in third.

They were in the presser, and Lando was asked about his recent lackluster performances, how he was being beaten in the head-to-head with Oscar. Lando started out with a joke, took the tough question with ease and grace, but eventually, he answered it seriously, “Yeah, I know. We all have our ups and downs. Oscar’s been doing a great job this season, and I just haven't. Obviously, I’m hoping to turn it around on Sunday, but me and Osc, you know, I wanna beat him and he wants to beat me, but we still have so many years together as teammates, and we’ll continue to compete like this for a long time.”

Lando put his mic down.

In his peripheral vision, Oscar saw George’s head swivel dramatically in Lando’s direction, noticed how his eyes grew wide with shock.

Then, slowly: he pivoted toward Oscar.

Oscar met his gaze. For a long moment, they regarded one another.

It didn’t take Oscar long to connect the dots. He’d had a feeling that most of the drivers knew already. He’d been getting stares all day.

McLaren would be trying to fill his seat as soon as possible, while the drivers’ market was wide-open. They already had their sights set on Alex. They probably had started negotiating with him. George and Alex were close. Alex would’ve told George, and George would know exactly who’s taking Max’s seat.

George continued to stare at Oscar and ignored the question that one of the reporters on the floor had asked. There was something like horror and disbelief in his expression. He was asking Oscar a question of his own.

Oscar shook his head. Lando hadn’t noticed. It’s hard to notice what’s just under your nose. It’s hard to find something you’re not looking for.

George followed Oscar as the three of them and their respective team members walked to the TV pen. He was clearly waiting to get him alone, but Lando was stuck to his side. Then, Lando realized he left his water bottle in the FIA building, and he elected to double back himself to grab it, rather than have someone else do it for him.

George pounced. He grabbed Oscar’s elbow and dragged him off to the side. Oscar didn’t fight it.

“Is this, like, a mind game? Because I thought you two were past that.”

Oscar shook George’s hand off his arm and glared. He huffed out an annoyed breath and he asked, even though he knew the answer already, “What the hell are you talking about?”

George gawked for a second, then said, “You haven’t told him.”

It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Oscar confirmed. “I haven’t.”

There was a difficult expression on George’s face. “You should,” he said with force. “Before it gets out. It should come from you. You know that, right?”

Oscar chewed on the inside of his cheek. He didn’t exactly appreciate how George was butting into the situation. George didn’t know a thing. He probably thought he did, thought what he went through with Lewis at the start of 2024 was similar enough. It wasn’t. Oscar knew it wasn’t.

“I mean—”

“That’s what I’d do,” George said, “if I was in your position, if it was someone I cared about. And I do care about him.”

George and Lando went way back. They were difficult with each other, sometimes, a lot of the time, but even Oscar could tell it always came from a place of care.

Still, frustration climbed up Oscar’s throat. Don’t you think I care too? he wanted to scream. Why the fuck do you think I’m even doing this?

“I’m going to tell him,” Oscar said, because he would.

George pinched his mouth. “When?”

“Soon,” Oscar said calmly. He sighed and he carefully explained, “After the race. The team don’t want him to know yet.”

George scoffed. Disappointment flooded his face. “That’s your excuse, is it?”

Oscar’s eyes widened. George shook his head again, like he was a parent scolding a child, opened his mouth like he was going to say something—but instead, he just sauntered off.

It was at that moment that Lando returned with his water bottle, in a slight jog. His eyes darted from Oscar to George, storming away into the distance.

He squinted, looked at Oscar weirdly, and asked, “Now what was that about?”

Oscar exhaled. “Dunno,” he lied. “Must’ve been something I said.”

He was planning on telling Lando after the race.

But the race was—

It was difficult. Lando had been comfortably leading the race, and he’d gone to make his first pitstop, but he’d come out right behind Carlos. He was faster, on fresher tyres, but he couldn’t make it past.

Carlos was defending like he was fighting for the fucking race win, like he was fighting for a goddamn title. Like he wasn’t set to finish in P12, like he didn’t have only nineteen points to his name. He was moving in the braking, ignoring his race engineer’s orders to calm down, and let Lando through.

He brake tested Lando. Ruined both their races. But Carlos wasn’t on to win twenty-five points. Lando was.

Oscar was in the cooldown room with Max and George. Oscar was watching the incident on the screen, in horror and revelation. George was too.

Instantly, he knew that George also understood what had happened there, why Carlos had defended so hard.

His old team chose his current teammate, and his old teammate and good friend hadn’t even given him a heads up.

Carlos thought Lando knew.

Everyone thought Lando knew.

As they drove back to Monaco, Lando was complaining about Carlos, not even about what he did in the race. It was about how he had stormed up to Carlos on the side of the track, expecting an apology, and Carlos had merely bullied past him, refused to speak to him.

“Like,” Lando said, pursing his lips, “I dunno. Have people been weird with you lately?”

“Uh,” Oscar said.

Lando wasn’t stupid, nor unobservant.

People had been weird. As the weekend progressed, the more drivers and paddock insiders found out. The more stares they got.

Online, however, and to most serious outlets, the frontrunners were Alex, Carlos, and Yuki. Former Red Bull drivers who either had an exit clause, or were out of contract at the end of the year. Oscar’s name was thrown around here and there, but next to no one actually took those theories seriously.

Lando was the one driving. His eyes were fixed on the highway, and he was biting his lower lip. “Like, there’s the Carlos thing, but, other than that, George has been, like, really clingy? All weekend. And Charles, like, he keeps looking at me like he wants to say something. And Alex, oh my god, don’t get me started on Alex. He just looks so guilty, like he’s hiding something. Do you think he’s the one with the drive? But that doesn’t make sense—I don’t know why he’d look guilty.”

Lando went on, and he ended up convincing himself he was paranoid. Oscar hadn’t managed to get a single word in, not that he could even string together a coherent sentence that didn’t make him feel like shit.

The timing just wasn’t right, he decided.

They were going to announce him between Zandvoort and Baku. They wanted to formally announce it as soon as possible, so that it wouldn’t get leaked by a news outlet, so what happened with Lewis and Ferrari wouldn’t happen to them.

He didn’t have much time, but he still had time.

Throughout Monza and in the lead-up to Zandvoort, Lando never asked Oscar if it was him. Oscar felt sick to his stomach when he realized why. To Lando, Oscar leaving wasn’t an option. It wasn’t even a possibility.

Two weeks into the 2026 summer break, Oscar decides to ask it, when he and Max are sharing a beer in Max’s house, playing a round of FIFA. Oscar is getting better at it. He’s still not very good, but it is kind of fun to play, he’s learning. It’d been on his mind for a long time. Months, maybe close to a year. At this point, he feels like they’re close enough to ask.

“Max,” he starts.

Max hums, brows furrowed in concentration, and throws a finesse shot into Oscar’s goal. “Yeah?”

Oscar groans. Of course. They play on, he forces himself to focus on what he wants to ask.

“What happened between you and Lando?”

It was a bit unnerving, their quiet fallout. They’d been friends for so long, and somehow managed to maintain that friendship through a close title fight. It all changed overnight.

Max shrugs. “Nothing really,” he says. “We just stopped talking.”

In a way, Oscar knows, that’s just how most friendships end.

“After Zandvoort?” Oscar asks.

“Yeah,” Max answers. “Of course I tried to keep in contact, but he didn’t want to talk to me, so. And I understand why, but I’m not going to put effort into a friendship that isn’t returned.”

Oscar glances Max from the corner of his eye and notices a small frown. His distraction allows Max to steal the ball.

“I’m sorry,” Oscar says after a long moment, chewing on his lower lip.

Max sounds genuinely confused when he asks, “Why?”

Oscar shrugs, makes a noncommittal noise. “Feel like it’s my fault.”

And Max laughs, his entire face stretching with a grin. “Mate, Zandvoort was my fault.”

Well, yes, Oscar thinks. For a long time, a part of him considered the possibility that it wasn’t for Max, maybe he and Lando would’ve come out of 2025 whole. Every time Oscar follows that train of thought, however, he comes to the same realization: while what Max did definitely made things way worse than they could’ve been, even in the best possible scenario, it’s not like things could’ve gone much better.

“Fine,” Oscar admits, “it’s half-and-half.”

Max hums in agreement. On screen, Virgil van Dijk defends the goal from Jamie Maclaren. The crowds cheer.

“What about you?” he asks, running the ball to the other end of the field.

“Hm?” Oscar asks, and Oscar’s Australian team chases after Max’s Dutch team.

“What happened between you and Lando?”

Oscar’s heart thumps. A part of him regrets asking his original question. “Don’t really wanna talk about it,” he says quietly.

“That’s okay,” Max says, earnest and gentle. “If you ever do, though, you know you can.”

They’re close enough for that, Oscar knows. The thing is, he’s never talked to anyone about it, before, what happened between him and Lando. He’s never felt the need to.

Sometimes, he feels like there’s not much to say.

Will Buxton @wbuxtonofficial · 04/09/25
Big news to come about the Red Bull seat after Zandvoort. It might come as a surprise at first, but we’ve seen this story before. Lots to look forward to in the coming years.

The 2025 Dutch Grand Prix was Max’s last Dutch Grand Prix, and also the last Dutch Grand Prix on the calendar. F1 had originally intended on alternating it with Belgium, but when Max announced his early retirement, interest decreased and sponsors pulled out.

Media day was all focused on Max, and Oscar was grateful for it.

He signed the contract on Monday, and they decided they would announce him on the Sunday between Zandvoort and Baku, so this was Oscar’s last race before everyone knew he’d be driving for Red Bull in 2026 and onwards.

He still hadn’t told his parents—he was going to tell them after Zandvoort. He was going to tell them after he told Lando.

Friday free practices went well—he and Lando were comfortably matching Max’s times, and their race and quali paces seemed to be roughly even. It would be a dogfight—it might’ve been Max’s last home race and everyone in the whole country might’ve wanted Max to win, needed Max to win, but none of that mattered to Oscar.

Saturday morning, Oscar woke up with a numb arm, a crike in his back, and Lando’s hair in his mouth. They’d spent the night spooning, and they’d gotten twisted up in a weird position sometime during the night. Oscar’s phone alarm kept blaring. He groaned and tried to extricate his limbs from Lando’s hold, but Lando was, like, hugging his arm.

“Turn it off,” Lando started slurring, squirming.

“Y’hafta let me go then,” Oscar mumbled, but he found himself unconsciously pressing closer, sleepily nuzzling his cheek against Lando’s curls.

Lando huffed, but he eventually let go of Oscar’s arm, and lifted himself just enough for Oscar to slide his arm free. Oscar rolled onto his other side, and he located his phone and turned off the alarm.

Groggily, he rubbed at his eyes, then went to sit up, only for Lando to roll on top of him, and snuggle into his chest. He was so warm. He smelt nice.

“Lando,” Oscar murmured, trying desperately to stay awake, even though he knew how nice it would be to sleep a few more minutes.

“What?” Lando asked, eyes closed and mouth only half-open.

“I have to—” Oscar said. “Need to get dressed.”

“No,” Lando said. “Mmh. Stay. Just for a few more minutes.”

Really, Oscar couldn’t. He set his alarm for the latest possible time he could, but he still had to get ready two hours before Lando. He had a meeting with Christian and Mark and had to get to Red Bull’s hotel before anyone noticed.

He told Lando that he was having breakfast with a friend from school who’d flown out.

“Lando,” Oscar said, and he knew what he needed to do.

“What—mmph!” Lando squeaked, when Oscar grabbed Lando’s hips and flipped them over. He pressed Lando into the mattress, licked into his mouth, and Lando breathed out a content sigh. He kissed him until he stopped writhing, was distracted and boneless enough that Oscar could sit up, find last night’s clothes strewn on the floor, and quickly put them on.

Lando was pouting behind him, but he’d gathered up the sheets around his body in the meantime, the white fabric sitting on his shoulders by the time Oscar was dressed. He was watching Oscar, and there was a look on his face. Moony-eyed.

He shuddered and hesitated. He really had to go now. Had to stop by his own room and brush his teeth, put on his kit, and speed to NH Zandvoort.

But Lando was—

He looked like he was—

Slowly, Oscar walked toward him. Lando’s puffy-eyed gaze followed him, a pillow line on his cheek like he’d just pulled his balaclava off. Oscar’s thumb traced it, and it was only then that he realized he had been cupping Lando’s face. Time felt external to him, unstuck and unmoored in this moment.

Lando closed his eyes, tipped his head back, like he was waiting.

This kiss felt different than the last. Lando’s mouth was soft and slack. Oscar lingered. When he pulled back, he kept his hands on Lando’s cheeks. He laid his forehead on Lando’s. Their noses brushed. Oscar could feel Lando’s eyelashes on his face. He felt so close but so far away.

“Lando, I—”

Oscar, for the first time, wanted to tell him. Oscar thought, for a moment, selfishly, that maybe they could still make this work. He wanted to make it work. It would be better if they were on different teams, if they weren’t directly fighting each other in the same machinery, without the team politics. Maybe they could still fight for a title and still have this. Maybe Oscar didn’t have to let go.

“Later,” he started. “I need to tell you that I—”

Lando started giggling. “Yeah, yeah, I know you do,” he said, and he gently pried Oscar’s hands from his face, and pushed on his chest. “Just go. I’ll see you on track. I don’t want you to be late.”

Oscar swallowed. “But—”

“It’s fine,” Lando said, grinning so wide it must have hurt. It hurt Oscar too. “You can tell me later. I already know you do. I do too.”

Suddenly, Oscar couldn’t get any words out. He nodded stiffly, and headed to the door.

It wasn’t until Oscar was in the hall, alone, and reeling, that he realized what Lando thought he was going to say.

Will BUXTON: Going into quali, I have to say, I’d hedge my bets on Max. Red Bull looked mighty in FP3. But the McLarens look good too, and if you throw a Charles Leclerc miracle in there, I’d say we’re in for a stormer of a qualifying.

Nico ROSBERG: Speaking of Red Bull, Will, we have to talk about your tweet from yesterday. It’s gone viral! Can you tell us a little more about what you meant?

BUXTON: [laughing] Nico, come off it. I know you know.

ROSBERG: [grinning] But for the viewers at home?

BUXTON: Alright, alright. All I’ll say is that Red Bull are returning to their youthful origins, and the man who’s about to take the mantle from Max—quite honestly, it’s felt kind of inevitable.

Qualifying started out well. He and Max were matched on pace, and Lando was within a tenth. It really could’ve gone in any direction. It felt fucking electric. Really—Oscar felt fucking good.

Ted KRAVITZ: HAMILTON GOES WIDE AND ABORTS HIS LAP! HE’S OUT IN Q1—

David CROFT: Two secs, Ted. I think we’ve just—oh my lord. Max Verstappen has made a huge mistake, and not on track. From what I hear, he was speaking to a reporter before qualifying, and he was asked about the future of Red Bull, and he said, of course in translation, that Red Bull have nothing to worry about, because next year, and for the years going forward, they’ll have Oscar Piastri driving for them.

Jenson BUTTON: [nervously] David, there’s no way he just said that.

CROFT: He slipped up. Must’ve forgotten they haven’t announced it.

Nico ROSBERG: I can confirm that Viaplay is going crazy right now. Max did say it. There’s a recording. Wow. And he just climbed into his car after that? Sensational.

KRAVITZ: [laughing] Does Oscar know what he’s about to walk into?

When Oscar climbed out of his car, he was frustrated. He was only seven thousandths off of Max. He could’ve won pole. If he’d just had a better exit out of Turn 12, it would’ve been his for sure. It was almost a perfect lap, but almosts meant nothing at the end of the day.

Annoyed, he pulled off his gloves and then his helmet as he headed to the weighing scale, in his head about what he should have and could have done better. Once he was done, he walked to the second place stand, put his things down, and suddenly Max started barreling toward him, grabbing his upper arm, and pulling him into the safety car garage. Oscar was taken aback.

“Mate, I—” Max said, barely audible over the crowds shouting his name. “I am so sorry.”

Oscar blinked. He tried to remember if he’d been impeded by a Red Bull, or something, but he had no memory of that.

“For what?” Oscar asked, unnerved.

Max stammered. It was so uncharacteristic. “Before quali, I—” He waved his hands around frantically. “I, uh. I—I meant to say good hands.”

Oscar blinked again. He still didn’t get it. “Mate, what the hell are you talking about?”

“In my interview,” Max said, then trailed off, pressing his lips together.

Parc fermé, Oscar was realizing, felt different. It felt more chaotic than it should’ve been. Louder. Like everyone was looking at him and Max. Oscar could feel their eyes on the back of his neck. He could feel the cameras too. All of them were pointed toward them.

Something was wrong.

Max threw his face into his hands, like he’d just himself realized the magnitude of what he did. “Oh my god,” he said.

Oscar thought of the worst possible thing Max could’ve done or could’ve said in an interview. There was only one possibility.

“Max,” Oscar said, with quiet horror. “You didn’t.”

“I did,” Max said, with a hand over his mouth. “And I am so sorry.”

His shoulders started shaking. He was laughing. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

As Max would later explain to Oscar, it happened about forty minutes before quali, but because he was speaking to a reporter from a smaller, obscure Dutch outlet, it took some time to reach Sky Sports and F1TV. On his way to the pits, he was answering questions and he was also signing autographs for kids at the same time. He was already late and he was distracted, but since it was his last home race, he was adamant to sign every hat he could, and entertain any and all questions he got.

In Dutch: “Max, last question, obviously, you’ve been with Red Bull for ten years. It’ll be Red Bull’s first time with an all-new line-up. How does the future at Red Bull look?”

Max was signing a little kid’s hat, and then another one came up to him, and he stopped for her too.

He wasn’t thinking, not really, when he replied, “Of course I can’t know for sure, but I don’t think they have anything to worry about. I’m leaving it in Oscar’s hands.”

The reporter froze. Max continued to pace away, and it took the reporter a long moment, reeling, and questioning whether he heard right, to jog and catch up to Max, and follow up. “Oscar? You said Oscar Piastri?”

Max froze. His eyes widened, and they flicked to the phone that was held up to his mouth. He wasn’t on camera, but it was being recorded.

“Um,” he said. “No comment.”

The stewards shepherded them away from the safety car garage, back into the thick of parc fermé.

Oscar was staring at his feet. He felt sick. Maybe it wasn’t—maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, he thought. Maybe it hadn’t gotten out. Maybe he still had time, but he couldn’t help but feel like he’d already run out of it.

Lando went to do his interview first, and Oscar held his breath.

He was asked about his lap, and he was hard on himself. He said he knew pole was there, but that he had faith that he had the pace, that he’d won here before and he could win again. Bounce back from Monza.

Oscar let out a breath. Maybe that was it.

But then Naomi opened her mouth, and said, “Lando, final question. You might not be aware of this, but while you all were on the track, Oscar was announced. I know it’s a bit sudden, but while I have you here, how do you feel?”

Lando blinked and smiled. Tilted his head to the side. “Hm?”

“For Red Bull,” Naomi said, and Oscar felt out of his body. “He’ll be driving for Red Bull starting next year, I’m sure you know.”

Lando laughed. Boisterous. All teeth. He threw his head back with it. “Oh, that’s a funny one,” he said, then he shrugged his shoulders. He looked a little confused, but kept smiling. “I mean, sure, yeah? It’ll be great. No more salmon at the table. Good with me.”

“Yeah?” Naomi asked. “Everyone knows you two had a difficult start to the year, your relationship was strained following Abu Dhabi, but you two lately have really seemed to patch things up, both on track and off. Will you miss him?”

“I mean, yeah, but—” Lando faltered, brows furrowing. “Wait, we’re still just joking, right?”

Max squeezed Oscar’s shoulder. Oscar startled.

“He didn’t know?” Max asked quietly. His eyes were wide. He was no longer smiling.

Oscar shook his head. Max went pale.

Lando was still speaking. His voice was frantic and high, but he was laughing too. It was hard to listen to. He rambled, defensive and hysteric at the same time, “He has a contract. What’re you on about? He’s not leaving. It’s literally not true. Where’d you even hear that from?”

Naomi’s eyes went wide, and she glanced over at Oscar and Max. “Max let it slip before quali.”

Lando’s head slowly swiveled over to them. Oscar’s head dropped back to his feet. He couldn’t look.

“Well, uh,” Naomi transitioned. “We’re running a bit over time, so, Lando, congratulations on P3, and good luck tomorrow,” she finished cordially.

Oscar felt frozen to the spot. He was still looking at his feet. The next thing Oscar knew, Lando was in front of him, of them, and in a soft voice, he asked, “Oscar, it’s not true, right?”

Finally lifting his head, Oscar met Lando’s eyes. He was still smiling. His lips wobbled. “I, uh,” he said dumbly, feeling like he was in Silverstone again, crashing out into the gravel, his head banging around in the cockpit.

He couldn’t get a single word out. It didn’t matter, because Max was stepping between them, grabbing Lando’s shoulder, and saying, “Lando, I of course thought you knew. Like, I thought someone would’ve told you by now—”

Max was explaining what happened, gesticulating wildly with his hands, and Lando’s face was white and shattered.

You could see, in real time, the moment he got it in his head that it was true. The signs were all there. Carlos’ weird behavior in Monza, George’s overprotectiveness, Charles’ stares, Alex’s guilt—everything. And he’d never thought to ask.

“Like,” Max was going on, somehow making it worse, “I thought all the drivers knew—”

There was a boom mic over their heads, Oscar vaguely became aware, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be there, in that spot. He fled the scene, and walked toward Naomi, who’d been waiting for him and watching. Everyone was watching. Someone handed him a mic.

“Oscar,” she said, but Oscar wasn’t looking at her, “congratulations on P2, but I’m sure you know that’s not what anyone wants to talk about right now.”

“Um.” Max was talking at Lando.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“Yeah.” It looked like Lando hadn’t said a single word.

“What about your contract with McLaren?”

“We used a break clause.” Max was still talking. Oscar couldn’t understand how he had so much to say.

“You’ll be a Red Bull Racing driver in 2026?”

“Um,” Oscar said. And he finally looked at Naomi. There was no going back now. “Yeah. I will.”

“Well,” she said, grinning. “Now that that’s confirmed, take me through your lap.”

And Oscar did, in great detail. It felt like it was the only thing he could do.

“Chat, why the fuck do you keep telling me to turn on the F1? I fuckin’ told you I’m not in the mood—no, me and Lando aren’t fighting, he’s just being a bloody moron, and I’m not gonna sit and watch him break his own—what’s all this about Piastri to Red Bull? No, no way. Fuckin’—if you’re all pulling one on me, I swear to God. Fine, I’ll fuckin’ turn it on. Jesus Christ. Rewind to Lando’s interview? Chat, this better be good.”

Oscar didn’t want to have the conversation in parc fermé. There were too many microphones and too many cameras. It was already such a mess. And Lando was off speaking to Zak and Andrea. He looked furious.

Oscar stood quietly by his second place stand as Max gave his interview, and waited until it was time to take the top three photo. When it was time, they all quietly headed over to the photo taking spot. Max put his hands around both of their waists like everything was normal, like he didn’t just—drop a bomb on them and the F1 world. Neither of them returned the favor and neither of them were smiling, Oscar was pretty sure.

When it was time for Max to sign his Pirelli tyre trophy and take the pole position photo alone, Lando immediately stormed off.

Oscar chased after him. It was only once they were far enough away from parc fermé that he started shouting his name. “Lando—”

Lando only walked faster.

“Lando—” Oscar said again.

Lando kept walking. Oscar jogged to catch him, and grabbed his elbow.

“I was going to tell you—”

Finally, Lando stopped. He turned to face Oscar. His face was—

His lips were trembling. His eyes were watery. His voice shook as he said, “But you didn’t, yeah?”

Oscar felt desperate. He didn’t know how to fix this. He needed to fix it. “I swear I was going to—”

Lando cut him off. “Did literally everyone else know?”

Oscar’s eyes grew wide. He felt sick.

“Yeah,” Lando said. He put on a smile, and shoved Oscar’s hand off his arm. “I get it now. I finally fucking get it.”

This time, when Lando walked away, Oscar didn’t follow. He didn’t have the strength.

Q: Max, tell us about your interview before qualifying.

MAX VERSTAPPEN: I mean, of course it was an accident, and of course my timing was not the best, but I meant what I said. The team will be in good hands with Oscar. Always, he has been proving himself—he almost beat me to pole, after all.

Q: I know this is a bit out of the blue, but it’s just been announced that Oscar Piastri will be driving for Red Bull Racing next year. As a former McLaren driver yourself, any thoughts?

LEWIS HAMILTON: Oh man, that was announced already? Thought they were waiting for Baku.

Q: Max let it slip, before qualifying.

HAMILTON: [laughing] Did he? Well, it’s exciting, isn’t it? It takes a lot of courage to leave a team, especially your first. I wish him the best of luck.

Q: Mega line-up Red Bull has next year. Young and hungry. Back to roots, right?

LIAM LAWSON: [grinning] Yeah. Me and Osc, I reckon we’ll have a lot of fun.

Q: Oscar notoriously has had a bit of a rough relationship with his current teammate. Should we expect the same from you two next year?

LAWSON: [laughing] Nah. We go way back.

Q: Red Bull was interested in Norris for some time, weren’t they? Did you reach out to Lando first? Or was Oscar always the target?

HELMUT MARKO: Prior to 2024, sure, we were interested in Norris. But it became clear after that season that Oscar was the best fit. It should not be hard for anyone to understand why.

Q: Why Oscar?

CHRISTIAN HORNER: I mean, why not? I don’t know what to tell you, really. Oscar’s young, he’s fast, he’s intelligent, he’s talented. Over the past two years, he’s shown himself to be ruthless. Shown that he has what it takes. And, you know, he’s Australian—we obviously do well with our Aussies. Of course, Mark Webber did a great deal in helping the negotiations go through.

Q: Oscar hasn’t exactly made a name for himself for being a team player, since he entered the sport. He joined McLaren in controversy and is leaving in controversy. Do you have any worries, reservations, about Oscar’s history of, as a lot of people have said, backstabbing?

HORNER: [laughing] Controversy and backstabbing, is it? Well, looking at our world champions, I’d say he fits right in.

A brief pause.

HORNER: [smirking] Plus, in a way, he kind of already won us a championship.

Q: Oscar, you’ve been quite successful at McLaren. You’re up on the head-to-head with Lando, and McLaren have shown that they’re able to fight for championships. You had a contract until 2026. Of course there were rumors about you leaving the team after Abu Dhabi 2024. Did that have anything to do with your move?

OSCAR PIASTRI: No. This was a recent-ish decision. Over the summer break, Red Bull reached out, expressed interest, and… It took me a long time to make this decision, but I know it’s for the best.

Q: Starting last year, McLaren has established themselves firmly as a championship-contending team, and continue to bring in new talent. Red Bull, on the other hand, have only continued to lose many of its key figures to their competitors, Adrian Newey, Will Courtenay, and Jonathan Wheatly, to name a few. Do you think it’s risky, joining while they’re in such an unstable state?

A brief pause.

PIASTRI: Well, they’re gaining me. So I suppose it evens out.

Q: How large of a role did your manager Mark Webber play in your decision to sign? Obviously, he’s a former Red Bull driver himself, and someone who’s stayed close to the Red Bull family. You’ve always had that connection to Red Bull, in a way.

PIASTRI: Mark, he—obviously, he handled most of the actual negotiations and communications, but the decision was mine, and no one else’s.

Q: Why Red Bull, and why now?

A long pause.

PIASTRI: No comment.

If Monza was a media storm, Zandvoort was a typhoon.

Oscar got swarmed by reporters on his way to the TV pen and out of it. He hadn’t been prepped yet for what he was supposed to say, but he did his best to be vague and confident, and tried to remember his media training from 2023.

He got back to hospitality later than planned, and his phone was blowing up with texts and calls. He hadn’t even told his parents yet, hadn’t told his sisters. He cringed, knowing it’d be a busy night.

Next door, he could hear Lando pacing around. The walls were paper thin, after all.

Oscar wanted to go to him, talk to him. But the problem was, he didn’t know what the hell he could even say.

Nothing had gone as planned, and there were still seventy-two laps of Zandvoort to go.

“There was a conspiracy theory after Zandvoort, you know,” Oscar says to Max. They’ve given up on FIFA, and they’re kinda just playing with Max’s cats as an old cricket match plays on the TV. Oscar’s only half paying attention. Max isn’t at all.

“Hm?” Max asks, rubbing behind the boy cat’s ears.

“That you did it on purpose,” Oscar says. He’d seen it all over social media, how Max was trying to get them off their A-game, or how he was simply trying to get the media’s attention off of him.

Max frowns. “Of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you,” he says, then pauses. “Or to Lando. I care a lot about him, of course.” Max’s eyes flick to the side, meeting Oscar’s. “I know you do too,” he says, voice soft.

Oscar lets out a long exhale. The girl cat is pawing at his chest. Oscar picks her up and sets her in his lap.

“Reckon you’re the only person in the world who thinks that.”

Oscar’s present-day reputation isn’t the best, he’s aware. How people see him as a racer is marked by Abu Dhabi, and how people see him as a person is marked by Zandvoort.

He feels like, sometimes, people only understand him in relation to other people. He’s Lando’s Brutus, Mark’s revenge, and Max’s successor.

He knows he’s more than that. A lot of the time, though, he just doesn’t know how to show it.

“Maybe,” Max says. His eyes suddenly fill with fire. “But fuck them. They don’t know what it takes.”

Lando hadn’t stood on the podium after the race. He hadn’t even finished in the points. Coming out of the pits, he’d gone wide on his outlap and lost a place to Kimi, and they fought, and he locked up, and they crashed.

Max won. Oscar finished second. Liam, in his VCARB, had managed a miracle, and benefited from Lando and Kimi’s collision and a poorly timed Ferrari double stack, right before the safety car, and got his first podium.

On the podium:

Max looked forward. Liam looked upward. Oscar kept looking into the crowd, trying to find someone he knew wouldn’t be there.

Q: Do you feel like your race was impacted by finding out your teammate is leaving? Obviously, you were quite shocked after qualifying yesterday. […] Would it have been better for the team to continue not telling you? I hear they were worried how the news would affect your race. They seem to have doubts about your ability to—

GEORGE RUSSELL: [storming in] Alright, what the f**k is wrong with you? You can’t f**king ask things like that.

LANDO NORRIS: George, get off me—

RUSSELL: No, we’re leaving, and I’m getting this nutter kicked out of the pen.

Lando and George exit.

The rest of the 2025 season was nothing to write home about.

For Oscar, at least. He’d only win one more race that season, Qatar, and stand on the podium for only two more: Austin and Abu Dhabi. He couldn’t explain it. Things just stopped clicking.

Lando would win Baku, Singapore, and Austin, narrowly miss out and finish Mexico in second, then win Brazil. He would stand on the podium in Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. He’d lose the championship to Max and lose the teammate head-to-head, but he’d finish twenty-seven points ahead of Oscar, and finish second to Oscar’s third in the standings, putting an end to all the headlines about his fall from grace.

And that was that.

Really, that was it.

Once the 2026 summer shutdown ends, Oscar visits the factory. He does some sim work, then talks to some of the engineers.

The upgrades they brought to Canada weren’t at all as effective as they needed to be, so everyone at the factory’s been working hard to improve things by Spa.

It’s still a bit awkward with the team, if Oscar’s going to be honest. He can tell, sometimes, that they look at him and try to see Max in him. If Max hadn’t retired last year, he’d probably be miles ahead in the championship.

But Oscar’s not Max. He’s not anyone but himself.

The Sunday night before Spa, Max texts, asking if Oscar is free.

Oscar is, so he invites Max over, realizing that in the two months they’ve been hooking up, he’s never had Max over. He’s always just gone over to Max’s place.

Max is a little late, but Oscar was cleaning up anyway. It’s not a pigsty in his flat, but he doesn’t mind a mess, so there’s always clothes and water bottles and miscellaneous items thrown everywhere—so he’s been tidying up.

He barely gets a word out before his phone starts ringing. He pulls it out from his pocket and groans.

“Shit, sorry, my sister’s calling,” he explains. “Gimme a sec?” he asks, and Max shrugs, closing the door behind him. Oscar cringes, putting a hand on the back of his neck. “You can look around, or whatever.”

He answers the call, and heads off into the hallway for some privacy.

Hattie’s, like, convinced that he accidentally took one of her K-Pop photopapers with him the last time he went home, and Oscar has to explain to her that, firstly, he doesn’t have it, and secondly, he has no idea what she’s even talking about. Oscar manages to get off the phone with her after only about seven minutes of back-and-forth, and he sighs in relief, heading back into the room where he left Max.

When he finds him, Max is standing at Oscar’s display case of trophies and old helmets, in the center. Oscar doesn’t have many displayed in his living room—he isn’t a fan of showing them off, and besides, McLaren kept all their originals, and Oscar only asked for replicas for the important races, his first wins with McLaren, with Red Bull, and some others.

But Max looks like he’s been standing frozen in place for a long time.

Oscar regards him for a few seconds. Max still hasn’t moved at all. Oscar walks behind him, wondering what Max is staring so intently at.

“What’re you—”

His eyes widen when he realizes.

“Oh,” he says, like the breath’s been punched out of his lungs. His cheeks burn.

“Mate,” Max says, and there’s a tremble in his voice.

“I, uh—”

At the very center of Oscar’s display case is his Abu Dhabi 2024 trophy replica, right next to Max’s 2025 helmet.

After the podium, interviews, press conference, and more interviews last year in Abu Dhabi, Oscar had been outside McLaren hospitality, saying goodbye to some of the mechanics, when he’d been tapped on the shoulder by someone from Red Bull, telling him that Max wanted to see him. Oscar was surprised, hadn’t really known what was going on, but he cut his goodbyes short, and followed her into Red Bull’s motorhome, to Max’s driver room.

Max was still in his race suit. He was drenched in champagne. His cheeks were red. His eyes were a bit puffy. He was sitting on his mini-sofa. Oscar’s eyes flicked to the helmet in his lap, and he understood.

“I didn’t bring mine,” he said, as Max stood up, holding the helmet.

Max shrugged. “That’s fine. This is a gift, anyway,” he said, handing it over to Oscar.

With shaky hands and wide eyes, Oscar took it from him. Their fingers brushed. The carbon fibre was warm against his palms.

Max smiled at him, then put his hand on Oscar’s shoulder, squeezing.

“Take good care of them,” he said. His voice was shaking. His eyes were too.

It felt like something important was happening. It was Max’s last championship helmet—his last with Red Bull, his last in F1.

His voice cracked when he replied, “I will.” It was a promise, and he meant it. He wanted to say more, but he couldn’t find the words. It all went to naught, because then there was a knock at the door, and they both had to leave.

It wasn’t until Oscar was standing outside Red Bull hospitality, that he had a chance to read what Max had written on the helmet.

Enjoy it.

As they boot up FIFA, Oscar is desperately trying and failing to play it cool. Honestly, Max’s helmet has been there for so long that he’s gotten so used to seeing it. He hadn’t even thought about it, when he was cleaning up. He’d put it there at the end of last season as a reminder of what he had to live up to, wanted to live up to, and it’s just—been there, ever since.

It’s not a big deal, really, but for some reason, it feels like a big deal.

They play in silence. It’s a bit awkward. Oscar keeps glancing to the glass case, to Max’s 2025 helmet, hyperaware. The back of his neck is so hot.

Three in-game minutes until the end, Max nudges him with his knee, his thigh warm where it’s pressed to Oscar’s.

“You’re very red,” Max says, putting his controller down. He’s two goals up.

Oscar licks his lips. He stares at the screen. He keeps playing, despite the fact that Max’s team is still. He doesn’t respond.

“Oscar,” Max says. Vaguely, Oscar is aware that Max is staring at him, in that intense way he’s wont to do.

“Yeah?” Oscar asks, swallowing thickly. His eyes remain fixed on the screen, burning all over.

And then there’s a hand on his chest. Oscar sucks in a sharp breath. Drops his controller. It clatters to the floor.

Oscar falls onto his back, laid out over the arm of the couch. His pupils blow wide—he can feel it. His mouth parts. Max is still looking at him, heavy-gazed; his palm slides firmly down Oscar’s chest, to his stomach, then slips under his shirt.

“Is this okay?”

Oscar doesn’t trust his voice, so he nods, a breath caught in his throat.

It’s never felt like this before, between them. Oscar’s heart is a wild animal in his chest.

Max’s hand tightens around his waist. He twists on the couch so that he’s got one knee on the cushion, and the other shoves Oscar’s thighs apart, one falling off the side of the sofa. Oscar sucks in a breath, his mouth parted in anticipation.

He gets a grip on himself. Recovers the strength in his hands, lifting them up to the back of Max’s neck. Max is burning too. His lips are parted too.

For a long time, they regard one another.

“You have to know I—” Oscar says, because he needs Max to know this, “I didn’t—I didn’t do it for you.”

You don’t owe me anything, Oscar wants to say.

Max’s eyes look feral, pupils huge and dark and hungry.

“I know,” he says, grinning. “You did it for yourself.”

For the first time in a long time, Oscar feels understood.

With gratitude and delight, he grins back, and pulls Max all the way down.

“Max,” Oscar murmurs, after. He’s feeling slow and sleepy, exhaustion thrumming through his limbs. It was frantic and desperate, hungry. He couldn’t explain it, couldn’t fathom it, how he felt, how it had felt. His lips haven’t felt this swollen and sore in months. His stomach is all tacky with drying cum. He hasn’t felt like this in so long, and even then—it feels different than it did, all those months ago. Less like he has something to lose, less like he needs to hold on as hard as he can.

“Mmh?” Max replies, sore-limbed and on his back. They’re in Oscar’s bed, the sheets wrinkled at their feet.

Finally, Oscar asks it, the question he’s been wanting to ask since he happened to cross paths with Max on that coastal jogging trail, all those months ago.

“Why’d you quit?”

Max makes an offended noise. Out of the corner of his eye, Oscar sees a frown. “I didn’t quit,” he says, almost petulantly.

“You were supposed to drive till twenty-eight. You quit,” Oscar argues. “Five titles. Why not six, seven? Eight?”

Max grumbles and says, “Are we counting sheep now.”

Oscar scoffs. The sheets feel damp with sweat beneath him. His thighs and back are sore, and lube is tacky between his thighs. He feels sex-stupid and slow, but it feels kind of good.

“You can’t tell me that you didn’t want more.”

Max frowns. “It wasn’t about wanting more,” he asserts. “Of course I wanted more, but it wasn’t about that. There were too many sacrifices I had to make. At a point, it felt like I wasn’t myself anymore. Of course, F1 isn’t everything.”

Oscar purses his lips, doesn’t say what he wants to say: It was. It was everything. You put your whole life into it. You sacrificed everything else for it. It was everything you were. It was all you knew.

Instead, he asks, “Would you ever come back?”

Max shakes his head, a small dimple carved into his cheek. “Michael came back. Fernando came back. They didn’t know how to quit.”

“The Red Bull was still good when you left,” Oscar retorts.

“Guess I’m more like Britney than I thought,” Max says.

Oscar’s frown deepens. He doesn’t think that’s an apt comparison. “Nico only won once. You won five times,” he says. “I don’t really get it, mate. If I had five, I’d just keep going.”

Really, he thinks. He would.

Every time he gets in the car, every time the lights go out, he still feels the same way he did in Bahrain 2023, not caring if he was driving the slowest car on the track. It was still an F1 car. It was still a dream he’d never allowed himself to have.

He’s let a lot of things go in his life, but he doesn’t think he could let go of this.

Max laughs. “You’ll understand it, I think, once you’ve won a couple times,” he says, then pauses. “Or maybe you won’t. You’ll stay hungry, like Lewis.”

Oscar hums, staring up at the ceiling. They hadn’t managed to turn the light off, in their rush from the couch to Oscar’s bedroom. It’s too bright, but Oscar feels so spent he can’t even consider getting up to turn the lights off. “The mythical eighth,” he says.

For a long time, especially in his first season, he thought that if anyone was going to get eight, it’d be Max.

“You have to know when to quit,” Max says.

Oscar lifts a brow, eyes flicking toward Max. “Thought you said you didn’t quit.”

Max flushes. Oscar stares at the mole on his lip. “Well,” he says, biting his mouth.

Oscar sighs, and continues to look up at the ceiling. “Five, huh?” he muses, then laughs, thinking about his season. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt this desperate, this full of want, all his life. “Honestly, I feel like I’d give up a leg for just one.”

Max snorts, so obnoxiously that Oscar furrows his brows. “You wouldn’t,” he says.

“Yeah?”

Max pokes his shin with a toe. “You can’t race with one leg,” he points out.

Oscar laughs, cheeks hurting with how hard he smiles. He pokes Max back. “Yeah,” he replies. “You’re right. Maybe a pinky.”

It’s almost midnight when Oscar, halfway to sleep, hears Max say, “I wanted to make sure I still loved it.”

“What?” Oscar mutters, voice hoarse. They’d managed to wipe themselves dry and turn off the lights, but Oscar still feels a bit grimy. Still, he’s too tired to haul himself into the shower. Max kind of did a number on him.

“When I left,” Max says, speaking slowly and clearly, like he needs Oscar to understand, “I wanted to make sure I still loved it.”

Even in the darkness, Oscar can see Max’s tender eyes.

“Make sure you enjoy it,” he says. “To the very end.”

In the morning, Max is gone. Oscar rolls around in bed for a while, trying to savor the last moments of sleep he can, before he finds his phone.

An hour ago, Max texted—they’re the most recent notifications he’s received.

Had to go
Getting lunch with a friend
Enjoy Spa
I’ll see you after you win

PART FIVE

In Spa, it pours.

It’s a rainy free practice, but the FIA deem it safe enough to have all the cars out on track. It’ll be wet all weekend, so all the teams are trying to optimize their set-up with what little information they can gain from a single free practice.

Instantly, even just in Oscar’s outlap, the car feels different.

They aren’t bringing upgrades until Monza, but for some reason, it feels different. The car feels like a living, breathing thing.

Coming out of Raidillon, he spins but saves it, does a 180, and the spray from a McLaren whooshing by on their outlap blinds him, for a second, but he keeps driving, remembers the program, and wrestles the car where it needs to be.

He wins the sprint and wins pole. The car is alive and he is grotesque but God, is he fast. Oscar fights him in each corner, down each straight.

Honestly, it doesn’t really feel like he’s fighting anyone else.

Sunday: Oscar’s vision is a kaleidoscope of water and light, fluid and bright motion.

In the rain, there are so many variables. Grip and rubber, racing lines and braking points, corner entry and aquaplaning.

The rain is letting up as it’s time for first pitstops. They make a bad, risky call and put Oscar on inters to match Lando. He can’t hold it, the car is screeching beneath him. Oscar listens. He asks to box for full wets only a few laps later, and drops to the back of the field. The race could be anyone’s, at that point, but a faith Oscar’s never felt before thrums through him, respirating, vocal chords harsh in his ears, visceral.

Two laps later, Lando spins and nearly crashes into the wall—he recovers, but he loses five places, and they’re side by side coming out of Eau Rouge. Oscar barely notices him. The car is singing in his bones, with verve, a marvel of a thing.

Lando pits for full wets. For him, the race win is lost. But this isn’t about Lando. It hasn’t been about him for a long time.

DAVID CROFT: Look at that, Verstappen’s on the charge—

A brief, stuttering pause.

CROFT: Sorry, everyone. I meant Piastri.

JENSON BUTTON: [laughing] I can’t blame you. Honest to God, for a second there, it felt like I was watching Max. Nico, do you remember?

NICO ROSBERG: [groaning] How could I forget?

Oscar makes the overtake on Alex. The tyres are good, and the car is good. He overtakes three more cars in a single lap and he’s finding grip where he never expected any to be.

The car, Oscar thinks, this lovely monster, this incomprehensible feat of engineering, a technological miracle, a machine made divine—

MARTIN BRUNDLE: There Piastri goes, into the podium positions. Ten laps to go, two cars to go. My God, I think he might have this.

He is imperfect, and he is bare-boned. Stripped metal and carbon fibre, a neural network of tubes and perfectly sculpted parts—vibrations pulsing beneath him where the wheels kiss the ground and groan and breathe, like a heartbeat, like a voice maybe. Sitting in the cockpit, his toes on the pedals and his imperfect hands gripping the wheel, he is, he realizes, part of the car. It is intimate. It is like nothing Oscar has ever felt before. It is not Oscar’s job to tame him. Oscar keeps him wild.

DAVID CROFT: If anyone had their doubts whether or not Oscar Piastri was a true championship contender, surely they have all gone silent. Today, in Spa, Belgium, we witness a coronation. Red Bull has crowned their boy king, and in his eighty-sixth race, and his fifteenth for Red Bull, Oscar Piastri crosses the chequered flag, and wins the Belgian Grand Prix.

It’s still raining when Oscar climbs out of the car.

The crowds are muffled by the downpour and his helmet, but still, he hears it, the roar, the rapture of sound.

His feet are unsteady when they touch the ground. He feels weightless, untethered. Sublimated.

Oscar’s never been very religious.

Still, he tips his head back and looks up at the sky. His visor is blurred by mist and rain, but it doesn’t matter. He isn’t looking for anything. He closes his eyes. He doesn’t scream, but he breathes, and he breathes, and he breathes.

A feeling overcomes him. He is overwhelmed. He’d stay here forever, if he could. He drops his head, turns to his car. His. Not Red Bull’s, not Max’s, but his.

He puts his hand on the nose and he won’t find out until he’s doing his interviews in the pen, that he was covering the 8 in the 81. People think it was a statement. To Oscar, it was an act of reverence.

“Fuckin’ hell, mate,” Liam says, grabbing his shoulders after Oscar’s finally got his helmet off and has come back to earth. The top three—him, Liam, and Lewis, are drying off in the safety car garage.

Liam’s eyes are wide and he’s smiling so hard it must hurt. His eyes are bright with fire, unquenched by the rain.

Oscar hadn’t even noticed Liam had finished in second. He grins when he realizes it was a Red Bull 1-2. Their first, but not their last.

Overcome and overwhelmed, he yanks Liam in for a hug. They’re both soaked and flush-faced. Liam returns the hug in full measure and they nearly come tumbling to the ground, laughing and shouting. The world ruptures around them.

WILL BUXTON: In spectacular and sensational fashion, Oscar Piastri has won the Belgian Grand Prix, with his teammate finishing in second behind him. This is a new Red Bull, but those of us who have watched them through the years recognize that this is just a team who’s returned to their roots: ruthless, young, and fast. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the enormity of who Max was as a racer eclipsed the team. But now, it’s clear that Red Bull have found their footing again, and the bulls are back.

Something shifts after the race. Oscar can feel it even as he’s doing media. Nearly all the drivers come to congratulate him for his drive. The rookies all turn to look at him, wide-eyed, as he enters the pen. Oscar really doesn’t know what that was, those two and a half long hours in his beautiful beast of a car. It felt, in a way, like he was possessed.

He leaves Spa on a high, but with his head on his shoulders. With the sprint and grand prix wins, he cut fifteen points from Lando’s lead in the championship, but for the majority of the season, Lando has had the edge on him. One good weekend doesn’t win a championship, even though it was probably the race of his life.

“Nice drive,” Max says, squeezing his shoulder the next time they see each other—Monday night. Oscar flew back in the morning, only a few hours after he’d made it back from the club that Liam and some of the younger engineers dragged him out to, after the Red Bull after. It was the first time he properly went out after a race, as a Red Bull driver. Earlier in the year, he’d been too wired up after each race to even think about spending it with other people.

He spent most of Monday napping, and at about 9 PM, he got a text from Max, so he quickly showered and made the short walk to his penthouse.

“Thanks,” Oscar says, crouching down to pet one of Max’s cats, who’d zoomed toward him as soon as Max let him in. Oscar still can’t quite tell them apart, even though Max has explained again and again how the difference is obvious, if you look at their coats closely enough. He doesn’t really get it.

Max closes the door behind him and hums. “Maybe your best.”

It wasn’t a dominant drive by any means, but it was a recovery drive in the wet, the sort that people at home like to see. Something from a fairy tale.

“Dunno if I’ll ever have a drive like that again,” Oscar admits, getting back up on his feet.

Max’s eyes soften in understanding. “You’ll be chasing it for the rest of your career,” he says, and Oscar thinks about what Max had said before Spa. I wanted to make sure I still loved it.

Oscar swallows, throat tight.

It makes him a little crazy, whatever this thing is that he’s found himself in with Max. He doesn’t really know what it is, doesn’t exactly care to find out, either, and he’s pretty sure that Max feels the same.

It took Oscar a while to realize, and to truly get in his head, that Max is actually doing nothing all year and next, other than, like, play Minecraft and stream on iRacing. He tests GT cars for Verstappen.com every now and then, but it’s nothing serious. He doesn’t have plans for a drive, not Le Mans, not WEC, not anything. They don’t talk about it, but Mark’s revealed to him how Max has had offers, but has turned each down immediately, saying he wants more time to himself and more time to rest before he gets back into any car—if he ever does.

In the second half of the 2025 season, every time Max was asked about how he’d be spending his early retirement from F1, he’d shoot off the same line about selling his penthouse and buying a plot of land in rural Australia.

Sometimes, it was hard to tell if he was joking.

They catch up on what Max has been doing, since last week. He spent the weekend at his sister’s house in the Netherlands, went karting with his nephews, then helped fix around her house. Simple things. He looks happy when he talks about his family, quite happy—eyes all bright and face all pink and wrinkled with laugh lines.

“I was right, you know,” Max says, once the conversation has come to a lull.

They’ve been drinking these canned gin-tonics that Max bought from a superstore the other day. Oscar takes a sip then places his half-empty can on the table. He leans back against the couch, arms coming up around the top, getting comfortable.

“About what?”

Max grins. “I said you’d win, didn’t I?”

Oscar laughs and rolls his eyes, remembering. “You did,” he says, then tips his head to the side. “Say that to me before every race,” he drawls, and nudges Max in the thigh with his knee. He’s a bit tipsy. “There’re still nine races to go. Maybe I’ll match your record. Beat it next year.”

Max’s eyes go dark, carnal, almost. It’s easy to see, even in the low light of the living room. “Maybe,” he says. His cheeks are a bit flushed, and his hair is getting a little long.

“Would you be mad if I did?” Oscar asks.

Max barks out a laugh. “Mad is the last thing I would be, I think,” he says, then sits up, inches forward, and decides that’s enough conversation. He pushes Oscar down till he’s sidelong on the couch, and the night begins, hands, mouths, teeth, as easy as that.

Monza is rough around the edges.

Oscar has a bit of a messy qualifying and barely makes it into Q2, but he manages to get P2, squeezing himself between the Ferraris. Liam is in fourth.

The good part is, Lando had an even worse qualifying. He topped the times in Q1 and Q2, but he found himself unable to put a clean lap together in Q3. Lando starts the race in P6, behind his teammate, but Oscar has no doubts that Lando will quickly charge through the field; compared to the RB22, the MCL40 is generally better at power tracks like these, and the Ferraris appear to have sacrificed race pace for one-lap speed.

But the race itself is—

There’s a first lap incident that has Lando falling to the back of the field. Liam gets the jump on Lewis into Turn 1. Charles drives off into the distance, but Ferrari stops him early, too early to get a one-stop in. They box Oscar to cover Charles off—Oscar trusts the decision.

But it becomes clear, later in the race, that the one-stop was right, because by Lap 40, Lewis is in the lead, and even on faster tyres, Oscar can’t catch up.

But that isn’t on his mind. Liam is right behind him, catching and catching. He’d cleared Charles in his second stint. Oscar had been careless with his tyres, chasing Lewis, and finds himself lacking in pace.

There are no team orders. They’re assured they’ll be allowed to race. The people want a show.

Oscar grins under his helmet.

They’ll give them a fucking show.

Oscar parks his car in the P2 slot.

Climbing out of the car, he doesn’t feel guilty, per se, just a bit uncertain about how the post-race will play out. He and Liam have never had any racing incidents before—they’ve never even really raced on the track.

On Lap 49, they’d been going side by side on the main straight. Liam took the inside line and locked up, and they almost made contact. They kept going and they kept going. To the line, Liam was fighting, Oscar was defending. He was sweating and wrangling his monster of a car in front, blocking him off, all the way to the chequered flag. Oscar felt wild.

The first thing he does when he’s got his feet on the ground is go to pull his helmet off, but then there are hands on his shoulders shaking him, and even through their helmets, he can see Liam grinning, can see it in his eyes.

Everyone’s cheering for Lewis—a Ferrari driver winning at Ferrari’s home race—but Oscar doesn’t care. Liam doesn’t either.

Oscar throws an arm around Liam’s shoulders, and Liam snakes his arm around Oscar’s waist. Neither of them won today, but together, they give the Italian crowd, that beautiful and majestic sea of blood, a wave. This isn’t about them.

Helmets on, teeth bared, and Oscar thinks, How’s that for a fucking show?

On the podium, lifted high and above:

Lewis is, like, definitely having some sort of religious experience. As the British anthem plays, his eyes are all watery and he keeps looking up at the sky.

From his spot on the podium, Oscar looks over at Liam. Liam wiggles his eyebrows. Oscar laughs. They know what they need to do.

As soon as all the trophies are handed out, they glance at each other once again, and in unison, reach down for their champagne bottles, shake them as hard as they can, and aim the spray right in Lewis’ face.

Later, he and Liam are lounging about in Oscar’s driver room, killing time before the debrief.

They both changed into dry clothes before the presser, but they both got drenched in Red Bull during the team photo, and Oscar’s shirt is kind of sticking to his chest.

Liam doesn’t seem bothered, even though his bleach-blond hair is matted and sticking up in places.

“Y’know what they’re saying about you?” he asks, sidelong on the sofa, heels kicked up over the arm, as he scrolls through social media.

Oscar, sitting on the massage bench, sighs and asks, “What?”

Lately, they’ve been saying a lot of things about him, but after Spa, they’re not really calling him any of his old nicknames anymore, not Brutus, not Iscariot, not even Webber’s Revenge or The Ice Prince.

Liam’s grin is shit-eating and wide. “You’re a teammate eater,” he says, laughing. “Piastri unleashed: a monster in the car. He’ll eat everyone alive,” he reads melodramatically, then starts laughing, wiggling his brows. “You gonna eat me, now? Looks a bit like you wanna eat me in this photo,” he says, turning his phone around to show Oscar a photo from parc fermé, where, when Oscar squints, it unfortunately kind of does look like he wants to eat Liam.

Oscar grins. “Fuck off, mate.”

Liam roars with laughter, clutching his stomach and nearly rolling off the couch. “Oi, that’s not a no!”

Baku doesn’t go as well.

Oscar was only five points behind going into the weekend, but in his last flying lap of Q2, he fucking sent it into the wall, qualifying in P14.

It’s a dismal Sunday too, finishing out of the points, but Lando only finishes in sixth, and Liam gets a podium, so there’s that.

Fourteen points behind. Seven races to go.

“Hey Oscar,” Liam starts, as they’re flying from Baku to the UK, “you ever gonna introduce me to that girlfriend of yours?”

Oscar blinks.

“What?”

“Like,” Liam says, waving his hand, the one that’s not holding his phone, “when we were out after Spa, a million girls were all over you, and you kept running away. And, like, they were hot too.”

And they were hot, and all over him, but it was just—it wasn’t like Oscar really wanted any of them.

On the other side of the plane, in the corner of his eye, Oscar sees Mark’s head slowly turning.

Oscar winces. During the summer break, there had been a couple times that Mark had called him when he’d been with Max, with Max, and there was this one time in the afternoon when Max reached over to accept the call. Oscar had obviously been panting into the fucking speaker and the sheets were clearly rustling. Mark hadn’t said anything then, but Oscar’s face burns up thinking about it.

“Don’t have a girlfriend, mate,” he says, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“You’re blushing,” Liam gasps, with delight, and Oscar groans when he realizes that Liam had just been teasing, fucking with him, and hadn’t actually thought he had a girlfriend.

Oscar sinks further into his seat, blushing even harder. Liam kicks him lightly under the table.

“Someone special?”

Oscar thinks about, like, Max with morning breath and a pillow-creased cheek, Max with toothpaste stains and cat hair on all his shirts, Max with his patchy uneven facial hair, Max who rolled his ankle last week when they were at padel, Max who laughs at his own jokes, Max who’s really good with his mouth and loves to shove a hand down Oscar’s shorts when they’re both on the couch and some show’s playing on the TV that neither of them are watching, and says, “Not really.”

Liam scoffs and shoots Oscar a look. “Mate, I think she’d be mad if she heard you say that.”

Oscar can’t help but laugh, shaking his head.

They’re not really anything more than what they are—which isn’t much.

“She really wouldn’t.”

Liam quirks up a brow. “So there’s a she?”

Oscar purses his lips and doesn’t say anything. He looks off to the side, ignoring the curiosity in Mark’s expression. It might just be better if everyone comes to their own conclusions. In the end, it’s just not his problem.

Hattie flies up for Singapore, but only because one of the K-Pop boy groups she likes is performing on Saturday in the stadium near Marina Bay. Oscar gets a paddock pass for her anyway, and on Thursday, she makes her rounds in his garage, talking to Oscar’s mechanics and pit crew, charms them all, then spends a suspicious amount of time in Liam’s garage.

As Oscar’s staring at the sim data he’s been told to look over, she apparates, puts her elbows up on the counter he’d been leaning on, elbows his upper arm, and says, “Sooooo. Liam tells me you have a new girlfriend?”

Oscar groans. Maybe he should’ve expected that.

Hattie gives him a look. “Try not to cheat on this one too,” she says.

Oscar groans again. Right.

Last year, in Singapore, Oscar’s whole family flew up for the race, his mum, dad, and his sisters. They all got dinner on Wednesday, and Oscar was yelled at for a good two hours. Along with the fact that he cheated on Lily, he signed with Red Bull and didn’t tell them, and he indirectly, but more directly than they knew, humiliated Lando on live TV. Oscar took the verbal beating. He didn’t really have anything to say for himself.

He doesn’t have anything to say for himself now, either, so he just lets out a quiet sigh. He knows that they still haven’t really forgiven him.

“Whatever happened to that girl?” Hattie asks, when it becomes clear that Oscar isn’t going to reply.

Oscar frowns. “What d’you mean?”

“The one you cheated with,” Hattie says, and Oscar flinches. He doesn’t really like to think about last year, all of the things he did. “Broke up with Lily for.”

Oscar’s frown deepens, and defensively, he snaps, “I didn’t break up with Lily for her.”

Hattie’s eyes widen. The garage thrums around them like an organism, mechanics flowing in and out, miscellaneous mechanical noises filling his ears as they fine-tune his set-up for FP1. “Yeah?” she asks.

Oscar looks over to the side. Christian’s talking to Pierre Wache by the monitors. Outside the garage, Oscar spots a flash of papaya. He reels himself back in.

It never got out, how Oscar or Lando really spent the break, or the circumstances of Oscar’s breakup with Lily. It was a quiet breakup—people had only found out that Oscar was single by the end of 2025, when he hadn’t shown up to the FIA gala with anyone on his arm.

“We weren’t dating, or anything,” Oscar says, turning to face his sister again. “It wasn’t serious.”

Whatever they were—it had barely lasted a full two months.

Hattie rolls her eyes. “Must’ve been serious, if you spent the holiday with her.”

His whole family knew about that. Not where he’d been or whom he’d been with, but he’d gone around telling the media that he’d been in Melbourne with family, when they obviously knew he hadn’t.

They extrapolated, and the conclusions they came to weren’t too far off from the truth.

Oscar doesn’t really feel like lying about it. “We don’t really talk anymore,” he answers. It’s the truth, anyway.

“Yeah?” Hattie asks. There’s something hard in her expression. Aside from his mum, Hattie had been the one who’d been most furious with Oscar, for everything he did last year. Even now, a year on out, it’s still difficult between them.

“Yeah,” Oscar says.

She hums, looking around the garage herself now. “I feel sorry for her.”

“You never even knew her,” Oscar retorts.

“Still,” Hattie says, and glances at Oscar in her peripheral vision. “Must’ve sucked for her, thinking you cared.”

Oscar’s jaw clenches. He doesn’t see the point in explaining how he did care. How he still cares. How all of this—it all fucking happened because he cared.

There’s no point in looking back. It’s not like you can fix anything. It’s not like Oscar would do anything differently.

In Singapore, the city of lions, Oscar gets his first grand slam.

He wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

But the triple header is brutal.

In Austin, Oscar’s engine blows up in FP1, and he has to take an engine penalty, starting the race from P9. In Mexico, he has wheelspin coming off the line and loses eight places in the first lap. In Brazil, he just doesn’t have the pace.

Lando gets second in Austin, then wins Mexico and Brazil.

Oscar comes out of Brazil twenty-three points behind, despite two sprint wins and two podiums.

He thinks about Achilles and the tortoise.

It’s driving him mental, how the gap just won’t seem to close.

Before Las Vegas, he and Max play padel with Alex and George.

Somehow, George and Max have struck up a loose friendship that consists of sending each other memes on Instagram and not actually exchanging any words. Oscar’s seen their DMs. He doesn’t really get it.

In any case, George invited Max out to padel, told him he should bring a friend, and Max clearly didn’t tell George who he was bringing, because when they arrive together, as George is talking to Alex about something, he pauses mid-word, and his eyes pop out of his head when he sees Oscar.

“You of course told me to bring a friend,” Max says, frowning.

George blinks. “I mean,” he says, eyes flicking to Oscar warily. “I guess.”

Oscar pulls his inner cheek between his teeth.

He and George are, like, fine. George isn’t the type to hold grudges, and the whole mess in Zandvoort was so long ago. They’ve all moved on, but it’s still kind of awkward.

“When did you two become friends?” Alex asks, tipping his head to the side curiously.

Max turns to look at Oscar and shrugs. His eyes are soft. Oscar blushes. “Dunno. It just happened.”

Halfway into the second set, George goes to smash the ball to their side of the court. Max chases after it, misapproximates the distance, and is struck right on his back.

“Mate!” George is shouting, running over to the other side of the court and stammering out apologies.

Max is, like, fine, and he’s still standing, but he’s wincing, and his arm is twisted around to feel for the point of impact.

Oscar drops his racket and jogs over, and he, George, and Alex all crowd around Max.

“It’s fine,” Max mutters, but he’s pouting, and Oscar rolls his eyes.

He puts his hands on Max’s shoulders, turns him around, and tugs on the end of his shirt.

“Here,” he says, “lemme look.”

Max keeps insisting he’s fine, but he’s pliant, letting Oscar pull the back of his shirt up to his shoulders.

Immediately, Oscar’s eyes widen. George makes a choking sound. Alex starts coughing.

“Blimey,” George is saying.

“New girlfriend?” Alex asks.

Cheeks burning, Oscar ignores them, and also the deep red scratch marks lining Max’s back, and starts feeling around for heat, making sure to avoid the cuts. He should start trimming his nails more often.

“Where does it hurt?” he asks softly, gently pressing his palm around.

“It doesn’t—ow,” Max hisses, when the heel of Oscar’s palm presses lightly at his shoulder blade, where there also happens to be one of the reddest scratches from the morning.

Since the triple header ended, they’ve kind of, like, gone a bit crazy.

They hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Max was in the Netherlands for the majority of September. He spent his twenty-ninth birthday with his sister, brother-in-law, and their kids, and Oscar was flying to Singapore by the time Max got back to Monaco. And then by the time Oscar got back from Singapore, Max was away for some Verstappen.com event. And then the triple header.

They’ve kinda been overcompensating. Oscar doesn’t think he’s been this sex-obsessed since, well, last summer.

He bites his lip, and quickly pulls Max’s shirt back down.

“Someone’s gotta have an ice pack,” Oscar says, smoothing down Max’s forearm, comforting. “I’ll ask.”

“I’m fine,” Max is huffing, but Oscar just rolls his eyes and heads to the lobby, disregarding how George and Alex are, for some reason, gawking.

They quit padel after that, and decide, since they’re all together, to go for dinner.

Nearby is the Japanese restaurant that he and Max get takeout from sometimes, so they walk a couple blocks, secure a table, and get chatting over drinks and apps.

Max happens to be in the restroom as the waiter comes over to take their entree orders, so Oscar gets him the chicken teriyaki dish. He also asks for a fork, because in Max’s twenty-nine years of jet setting around the world, he never learned how to use chopsticks properly.

George and Alex are looking at him strangely once the waiter leaves, and Oscar flushes a bit, not really getting why they’ve both been so weird all evening.

“What did you get me?” Max asks, when he returns and sees that their menus are gone.

Oscar shrugs. “The usual,” he says. “Got you a fork too.”

Max grins, squeezes Oscar’s thigh, then turns back to George and Alex, asking them how F1 is going, as if he doesn’t already know.

“So, Max,” Alex asks, putting his elbows on the table and dramatically leaning forward. “Any plans to race next year?”

Oscar can tell Max is tired of getting that question, because he rolls his eyes, sips on his Sapporo, then deadpans, “I’ve signed for Mercedes, of course.”

George chokes on his water, eyes so big Oscar is afraid they might pop out of his head. “You what?”

Oscar presses his lips together, trying not to give it away. Max maintains a serious expression for a few seconds, but gives it up quickly, combusting with laughter.

“Mate,” Oscar says, when George is still looking at Max with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty in his eyes, “he’s fucking with you.”

The fear turns into irritation. “Not funny,” George mutters, crossing his arms over his chest.

Alex snorts. “S’kinda funny.”

Max, once he’s stopped laughing, takes a deep breath, leans back into his seat, then he says, “But no. I am happy as I am. Maybe I will be bored in the future of course, and I will want to race again, but right now, I am very happy.”

He turns his head to the side, looks at Oscar sitting next to him, then says, “I like my life as it is.”

“Seriously, though,” Oscar asks, when it’s just the two of them, back in Oscar’s flat. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning back into his hands, as Max brushes his teeth in the en suite; he’s left the door cracked open. “You kinda let it all go at once.”

“What do you mean?” Max asks, spitting into the sink.

Oscar thinks about the gentlest way to say it, but he remembers there’s no point in pulling his punches with Max. “You retired, you broke up with your girlfriend, and you got new friends, like, all at once.”

Max rinses his mouth in the sink, cleans the brush head, then leans against the counter, hip resting against the edge. “I guess,” he concedes, then shrugs. “I was very happy as things were back then, of course. But I wanted something different, I think.”

“Different?”

Max had a little nuclear family. Oscar thought it was everything he wanted.

“Retiring was—” Max starts, pulling his mouth to the side, “of course, you know why. The retirement, or the decision, came first, but then… I don’t know. It was all moving very fast.”

Oscar hums in understanding. He hadn’t known Max very well when he was with Kelly, but he’d seen enough from the outside looking in.

“I was very young when we started dating,” Max goes on, wiping his face dry with Oscar’s towel. “And I think I thought I wanted a certain life for myself. But then I almost had it, and we got to a point that if I went past it, there was no going back.”

Like a black hole, Oscar thinks. The event horizon.

“When we got there, I realized I had the wrong idea,” Max concludes. “It all needed to slow down.”

Max steps out of the bathroom, toward Oscar, and settles in the space between his thighs, standing.

“Are you ever lonely?” Oscar wonders. He pulls Max closer by his hips.

Max looks at him for a long moment, silent. Eventually, he cups the side of Oscar’s face and presses his thumb into his cheek.

“I was,” he says quietly, shyly, and Oscar understands.

In a strange turn of events, Max goes to Vegas, and is staying in the same hotel as Oscar.

He hadn’t flown in on Monday like Oscar had, but the RedLine guys had flown out on Wednesday, and at the last minute, Max decided to come along, in secret, just for the booze and the parties.

But so far, there isn’t much booze, and Max hasn’t been doing much partying.

It’s 3 AM and they’re in the bedroom of Max’s suite, lazily making out on the bed. Max is on top of him, broad-shouldered and heavy, a knee parting his thighs, and Oscar slides a hand under his shirt, gripping the small layer of fat on his waist. It’s kinda driving him wild.

Qualifying ended two hours ago. Oscar just beat Lando for pole by three hundredths.

He knows he’s supposed to be sleeping right now, but he’s jetlagged, and he also feels wide-awake. He sort of doesn’t know what time it is, like, at any point he’s awake, and the sessions all run so late that he’s waking up at 5 PM, confused, and barely getting any sunlight.

He tugs on the end of Max’s shirt, helps him get it off, and laughs loudly when Max’s head gets stuck in the hole. Max pouts at him, but merely dips down to catch his lips again, pins him down. His stubble is rough against Oscar’s cheek.

“Sure you don’t wanna come to the race? Be in the garage?” Oscar can’t help but ask, as Max is kissing wetly down his throat. He’s too lazy to get Oscar’s shirt off, so he just rucks it up to Oscar’s chest, and starts to mouth down his stomach, to his happy trail.

“I’m sure,” Max says, kissing his way back up. He finds Oscar’s lips again, all open-mouthed and biting, his hand sliding down to palm Oscar down where he’s tenting. “I’ll just have it on the TV.”

“Suit yourself,” Oscar says, then he kicks up his knee between Max’s thighs for leverage and flips them over.

Max has a surprised look on his face once he’s flat on his back. It’s cute.

“I was gonna—” he says, as Oscar’s slipping his thumbs under the band of his shorts and boxers, pulling them down.

“Wanna get you first,” he explains, putting his mouth on Max’s pubic bone.

“Yeah?” Max asks, breath shaking.

Oscar rests his cheek on Max’s hip and smiles. “Yeah.”

It’s only after Oscar gets Max off with his mouth that they realize that Max was expecting him to bring, like, stuff, and Oscar was expecting Max to have it already in his suite. Oscar hadn’t brought any to Las Vegas—he wasn’t exactly thinking he’d be needing it—and they argue about what to do. Max thinks they can just ask the hotel staff, but the thought of asking a concierge, even if it’s just over the phone, for lube and condoms to be delivered to Max’s deluxe suite, is kinda the worst thing in the world to Oscar. He manages to win the argument and takes it upon himself to make the trip to the CVS Pharmacy near the hotel.

His shorts have, like, an embarrassing wet spot on them, so he grabs Max’s shorts from the floor, takes his own off, and pulls them on. He grabs Max’s keycard and his ballcap from the bedside table, checks himself quickly in the mirror to make sure he doesn’t look, like, incredibly sex-crazed or anything, and looks back at Max, who’s still fully naked, pouting, and on his phone, probably messaging the RedLine guys.

“I’ll be right back,” Oscar promises.

“Yeah, yeah,” Max says, waving his hand vaguely.

Oscar’s trip to the 24/7 pharmacy kind of feels straight from a horror movie. It’s past 4 AM, and other than himself, there’s one employee in the whole store, a few drunk twenty-somethings in tuxes who look like they came straight from the casino, messing around in the gifts aisle, and an old man buying painkillers. Wanting to just get in and out, Oscar secures his hat firmly on his head, locates the aisle with lube and condoms, only to find Charles Leclerc, the F1 driver, staring at the different selections, looking immensely stressed and honestly like he’s a bit constipated.

Oscar stops at the end of the aisle. Squints, just to make sure he’s actually seeing this right. Charles has grabbed two boxes, is comparing the two, and looks even more stressed out than before.

Pulling his cheek between his teeth, he walks over to Charles and clears his throat. Charles is kind of blocking the entire selection.

“Oh!” Charles shouts, blinking rapidly. His cheeks erupt in flames. “Hello Oscar!”

Oscar wants to tell him to lower his voice, but instead he just quietly says, “Um. Hi Charles.”

Charles’ throat bobs, and his eyes dart wildly between the lube boxes in his hands, and Oscar.

“Um,” he starts to stammer. “I wasn’t—um. Well, I mean—”

Oscar doesn’t really have time for this. He turns to the shelves and frowns when he sees that the only flavored lube they have is water-based, so he sighs and grabs a plain, branded silicon-based bottle, checks that it’s unopened, then says to Charles, “This one’s pretty good.”

Charles is looking at him with wide-eyes and apple red cheeks.

“All-purpose,” Oscar adds uselessly.

“Ah-hah,” Charles laughs nervously.

They stand there in silence for a few moments, under the too-bright lights, until the group of guys in the other aisle knock something down, and there’s a whole ruckus.

Oscar, pulled back into time, clears his throat again and says, “Well. Have a nice night, Charles.”

“You too…” Charles says quietly.

Oscar paces away, grabs a random box of condoms, and heads to the check-out to pay.

Oscar wasn’t gone for long, and he’s pretty sure that Max won’t have left the bedroom in that time, so when he gets back to the suite, gets the door open, he shouts, voice raised so Max can hear him, “They didn’t have the flavored lube you like, but guess who I—”

Max, standing in the kitchenette, looks a bit like he wants to throw up.

“Um,” Oscar says.

Daniel’s eyes dart from Max to Oscar, from Oscar to Max. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

Oscar knew that Daniel was in Las Vegas for the race, but he hadn’t—

Max’s mouth tightens. He looks just as flushed as he did when Oscar saw him last, and he’s managed to put on a shirt and his boxers, but he looks—

There isn’t much room for plausible deniability.

“Daniel was just leaving.”

Daniel laughs, full-mouthed, and all teeth. He’s been out. He looks like he came straight from the club, shirt half-buttoned and flushed up to his neck. “Oh,” he says, eyes flashing with realization, and scoffs. His smile widens. “You’re joking.”

Oscar’s gaze drops to his feet.

“Max, are you serious? Him?” he asks, like Oscar isn’t there. “After everything he did to Lando?”

Max purses his lips. He looks off to the side, arms crossed over his chest like armor, and says, “I don’t see how that matters.”

“You don’t see—” Daniel starts, cutting himself off with a laugh, incredulous. Voice low and harsh, he mutters, “What the fuck?”

Max is silent. His lips are still pursed, but Daniel goes on.

“He wins you a championship, and sucks your dick too, is that how it is?”

Oscar lifts his head. His eyes widen, and his hands furl into fists.

You weren’t even there, Oscar thinks. You didn’t even have a fucking seat.

Daniel laughs again. “Pity I didn’t think to do the second.”

“Daniel—” Max hisses, voice shaky, and for the first time, he actually seems upset. “I think you should leave.”

“What?”

“You should go,” Max says, then with firmness, he corrects, “You need to go.”

Daniel’s eyes go wide and finally, the smile drops from his face. He takes in a deep breath and exhales, and walks to the door, where Oscar’s been frozen. He bullies past him, gets his fingers over the handle, and as he leaves, he murmurs, only loud enough for Oscar to hear, “You two deserve each other.”

The door slams shut. Oscar winces.

Immediately, Max is storming into the bedroom. Oscar drops his fucking—shopping bag to the floor and follows him.

Max is sitting on the bed, face marbled and neck flushed. He’s staring at his own feet when he says, “I am sorry he said that.”

Oscar is—he feels more annoyed than anything. Embarrassed, a little, but more angry than anything. He sits down next to Max and asks, “Why was he here?”

“I was supposed to go out with him and Martin tonight, but I wasn’t in the mood. Like… I don’t know. I would rather be with you, so,” Max explains, with sincerity, and Oscar feels some of his irritation melt away.

He places his hand on Max’s thigh in an attempt to comfort him. He doesn’t really know what else he can do.

“And I guess he was seeing what I was doing instead,” Max goes on. “I think Martin gave him my hotel info. I thought he was you, so I let him in.”

Oscar chews on his bottom lip. He feels clawed up inside. It’s unfair. They’re not hurting anyone.

“I wouldn’t—I think he just wanted something to be mad about, since I chose you over him. I doubt he really meant any of it.”

Oscar shrugs. “It’s fine,” he assures, because it really is. If Daniel wants to have a problem with them, that’s his problem to have.

He closes his eyes, tries to rationalize Daniel’s fury and disbelief. It felt like there was more to it, than just being mad for Lando’s sake. Daniel doesn’t even know the full story. Oscar doubts Lando would’ve told him. And then Oscar remembers: in 2024, Max had won the championship by one point. In Daniel’s last lap of his last ever F1 race, he’d stolen a point from Lando; in the end, he was written out of that story. Three times, Oscar took his place: McLaren, Max’s fourth title, and Red Bull. He hadn’t even thought about it like that.

But maybe Oscar is projecting, because he wonders, and he wonders out loud, “Were you two ever…?”

Max regards him carefully, and he’s silent for a long moment before he answers, “No, not like you and Lando.”

Oscar’s eyes go wide. He gapes at Max, blinks, then swallows. “How did you—”

“I was also there, you know, at the gala,” Max replies quietly. “I didn’t know, then, but you two were quite obvious.”

Oscar presses his lips together. He leans back into his hands then looks up at the ceiling. “Didn’t think you’d remember the gala,” he deflects, shooting Max a look.

They’d all gone a bit wild at last year’s gala.

Max laughs and flushes. “Not much of it, but I remember that much, at least. And you said December was the last time you—before me.”

“Yeah,” Oscar breathes out, remembering.

“And you, you know you used to, you know…”

He thinks about how he gushed about Lando, earlier in the year, the first time he was at Max’s place, how obvious it had been, how Max had told him he looked happy, whenever he talked about Lando.

“I know,” Oscar says, his throat feeling tight. And then he adds, because he needs Max to know, “But I don’t, anymore.”

He doesn’t think he’s felt that way in a long time.

Max knocks his knee into Oscar’s, and his voice is soft when he says, “I know.”

Last December, Max, Lando, and Oscar all solo attended the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony.

McLaren won the constructors’ in Abu Dhabi by a hair, so Zak and Andrea were there as well. They’d all been sitting at the same table. Oscar kept glancing at the Red Bull table, wishing he was there instead. Lando was looking to the side, wishing he could be anywhere but where they were. After all the awards had been given, it was silent and it was loud and it was miserable and there was actually nothing to do but drink.

Oscar doesn’t really remember it very well, how it happened, but he remembers being in a restroom stall, pressed up against the door, with Lando’s tongue down his throat.

He can’t remember who made the first move. He doesn’t suppose it mattered. Lando was panting into his mouth and Oscar was grabbing at every part of him he could. It was a sloppy kiss. They both tasted like too much champagne. It had been months since they had each other last. It had been so long.

He’d spent the past three months stuck in the past, missing Lando, wanting Lando, even if he knew it was wrong.

“We—” Oscar was panting, as Lando was kissing open-mouthed, hot down the side of his throat, biting at the warm curve of his neck.

“We shouldn’t,” he said, but he was still holding onto Lando, desperately keeping him close, more out of muscle memory than anything.

Lando made a noise of disagreement, and then the next thing Oscar knew, Lando was on his knees and mouthing at him over his crotch. “Just,” he was saying, “just one last time. No one has to know.”

Oscar exhaled through his nose, because he didn’t trust his mouth. His skull knocked back against the stall door, and the cold bright ceiling lights burned into his retinas. He couldn’t close his eyes. He had to remember where they were.

“Lando,” Oscar breathed, and Lando merely hummed, rubbing his cheek against Oscar’s zipper. He was desperate for it. He was hot and flushed. Oscar felt dizzy and lightheaded, looking down at him, at his thick lashes and lidded eyes and curly hair. The nose scar still hadn’t healed. Oscar tried to sober up. He couldn’t.

But he could do this—

He grabbed Lando by the hair and yanked him until he was upright. Lando moaned and the sound of it ricocheted through the restroom. Oscar pushed Lando until he was the one with his back to the wall, kept his hand twisted in his hair, and Lando’s hips were jerking forward. He was cross-eyed, a bit, and his tongue was peeking out of his mouth. Oscar sucked in a breath, and with his free hand, he shoved his hand down Lando’s trousers, got his fingers around Lando’s blood-hard dick, and didn’t even really have to do anything. Lando was fucking forward into his grip, doing all the work himself, and he came with a shout, biting at Oscar’s neck.

He slumped back against the stall’s wall, pupils blown and face so flushed, and finally, Oscar sobered.

It didn’t feel the same.

Oscar scrubbed his hands clean in the sink with boiling hot water and too much soap, and Lando came stumbling out behind him. He looked a mess. They both did. Oscar lost his bowtie and his shirt was all wrinkled. Lando’s trousers weren’t zipped and his hair was disheveled.

They came out of the bathroom together in silence, Lando walking behind him dazed and wobbly, and Oscar felt gross and guilty and like the world was spinning out under him. He felt so little.

He didn’t look back.

As they stepped foot into the venue, Oscar, for the first time, was aware of what they looked like, and knew that, one look at them, it’d be obvious what they were doing. He panicked, but quickly realized that no one was paying attention to them, because there Max was, in the very center of the room. The whole venue was watching him. He was standing up on a chair, face pink, laugh lines pressed deep into his tear-streaked cheeks, a champagne flute in one hand and a microphone in the other.

“Of course I want to start by thanking my dad. I wouldn’t be here without him. He guided me through everything, and my career—it would not be what it was without him. It is his as much as it is mine. I would not be who I am without him. Helmut of course, for believing in me, for giving me a chance, when I was just a kid. Christian, for leading the team so well. Of course, GP, for dealing with me all these years. Everyone at the factory, you’re the reason why I have five championships. I love you all so much.”

[hiccups]

“Lewis! Is Lewis here? No? Well, thank you Lewis, for pushing me and challenging me. And for crashing into Nico in Barcelona—”

[batting Christian’s hands away]

“And Lando, congratulations on P2, again, and thank you so much, for being my friend. I know we haven’t really been—in a while, but—I really am sorry about Zandvoort—we all thought you knew—”

[sniffles]

“Oscar! You helped me win my championship last year… It wouldn’t be five without you. The team is yours now. Take good care of them. Enjoy it. This team, they are everything, they’re champions, and I know you’ll be a champion too one day.”

Max went on for a long time. Christian eventually stopped trying to stop him, and Max started spotting random people in the audience and thanking them, and then he started thanking people who weren’t even there. He thanked all of his past teammates, the rookies for reminding him to have fun in the car, reminding him of the joy, Daniel, for being Daniel—he spoke for a long time, about Daniel—and then he almost thanked Kelly, and managed to cut himself off before he got her full name out. His thank you’s kept getting wilder and more incoherent.

DC and Mark were in stitches the whole time. DC was sitting in Mark’s lap because Max was standing on DC’s seat. Oscar is pretty sure that DC is the one who gave Max the microphone, and the one who was feeding him champagne flute after champagne flute the entire night.

Max finally stopped talking once he lost his footing and fell off the chair.

It was only at that moment that Oscar finally looked away. He had thought, back then, that that would be the last time he’d ever see Max Verstappen in a way that mattered. He’d been wrong, more wrong than he could’ve imagined, but even so, in that moment, Oscar felt in a trance. He wanted to commit it into memory, the silhouette of a champion.

He hadn’t even noticed that at some point during the speech, Lando had left.

In Las Vegas, Oscar stands on the top step of the podium. Clear-eyed, he looks down at Lando standing one step below.

It’s all negative space.

The eve of Qatar practice and sprint quali, as media day starts to die down and as the paddock starts to wrap up, Oscar’s last stop is his interview with Natalie from Sky. They talk about the championship, how Oscar has to close sixteen points in a sprint and two races, and then Natalie says, “Lastly, Oscar. Lots of good memories here, obviously, with your win last year, of course, but also, you got your first win here, kind of. How are you feeling?”

Oscar smiles. “Yeah. I like this track, and I’m feeling good about this weekend,” he says, shrugging. That’s really all.

“You’re so calm!” Natalie observes, laughing.

Oscar means it when he says, “I mean, I don’t really see a reason to get all riled up. It’s just another race.”

Oscar is pacing back to hospitality, eager to get changed and head back to his hotel, when he hears Will Buxton call his name.

He turns around and cringes. Will was in the middle of casually interviewing Lando, whose face goes all tight and pale with anger when he sees Oscar.

And Oscar doesn’t really get why. As hard as things have been between them, Lando’s been nothing but civil to him all year.

He walks over to them anyway, and asks, “What are we talking about?”

“Just reminiscing, chatting about 2023,” Will explains. Lando’s avoiding eye contact. “Remember when you and Lando finished here on the podium, with Max?”

Lando sucks in a breath at Max’s name.

Oscar doesn’t read too much into it and says, “I mean, yeah. I beat Lando, so.”

And he meant it as a joke. Deadpan, a small rib. He and Lando have joked around in press conferences before like this. It’s been harmless, especially when it’s for an audience—and Qatar 2023 is special, for Oscar. It’s the first place he won, even if it was just a sprint. It was the first time he beat Lando in a way that mattered. It was also where Max won his third title.

But this time, Lando’s head whips to meet his eyes. There’s fire in them. He looks—livid.

He scoffs, makes a disbelieving noise, and storms away.

Oscar recoils.

He doesn’t think it was really that bad, what he said.

Will Buxton’s head is ping-ponging from Lando to Oscar. He gapes at Oscar, a bit like a dead fish.

Confused, Oscar apologizes to Will, says he doesn’t know what that was about, and against his better judgement, he chases after Lando in a slight jog. He’s sort of getting deja vu.

They’re just in front of McLaren hospitality, when Oscar finally catches up. He reaches out and puts a hand on Lando’s shoulder.

Lando flinches. Oscar slowly removes his hand.

He doesn’t—

He doesn’t want things to be difficult between him and Lando. It was personal at one point, but that was so long ago.

Now, they’re fighting for a championship. It all can stay on the track.

Off the track—it doesn’t need to be like this. And at the end of the day, Oscar still cares about Lando. He doesn’t think he’ll ever stop.

“Hey,” he says, swallowing. “Is something wrong?”

Lando’s jaw drops. He stutters, “Is something—”

He breaks off into a disbelieving laugh. He shakes his head, and he’s got his fangs out when he says, “What the fuck.”

Oscar purses his mouth, and he realizes that this is the first time they’ve spoken all year that wasn’t for the cameras, wasn’t in a presser, wasn’t in a cooldown room.

He huffs out a breath, starting to get frustrated. “Did I do something, or—”

“Did you do something,” Lando mocks.

Oscar furrows his brows together. “That’s what I’m asking, so.”

He really doesn’t get it. They’d been so good all year, even going so far as to defend each other to the media. Lando, whenever he’s asked about Oscar being a poor team player; Oscar, whenever he’s asked about whether Lando’s mentality is strong enough to fight for a championship. They’ve always refused to answer those sorts of questions. They’d lost a lot of their old relationship—but that mutual respect persisted.

He really doesn’t get it, until Lando says, “Daniel told me.”

“Oh,” Oscar breathes out, eyes wide.

Lando’s tongue darts around to wet his lips. He lifts a brow and asks, “Is it true?”

Oscar swallows. It’s not like he or Max are keeping it a secret, or anything. Of course they can’t let it get out to the public, but the thing is—there just isn’t much to tell.

“I mean,” Oscar sighs, seeing no point in lying, “yeah.”

And Lando—makes a hurt noise. His mouth parts with a shaky breath. Oscar doesn’t understand it.

“I don’t really see how that’s any of your business, though,” Oscar says, frowning.

“Any of my—” Lando repeats, eyes bulging. He raises his voice. “You’re un-freaking-believable.”

Oscar looks around. There’s not many people still in the paddock. It’s officially after hours now, and all the reporters and photographers were escorted out a few minutes ago, if they hadn’t already left. But there’s still mechanics and team members and Oscar thinks he might see Kimi and Ollie, like, filming a TikTok outside Ferrari’s hospitality.

It’s dark, the lights are dim, and the air is damp.

“Lando—”

Lando cuts him off, smiling and shaking his head with incredulity. “Let me just—” he starts, and takes a deep breath. “You fucked my championship, you fucked me, and now you're fucking him?”

Oscar gapes. He blinks, lost for words.

Lando continues, “You give him my fucking championship, then you go and fuck him, yeah? Am I getting that right?”

Oscar doesn’t—he doesn’t fucking believe it.

“You’re still on that,” he says, and a single air-filled laugh is punched out of his throat. “You’re still on what happened two years ago?”

Lando’s mouth thins out into a tight line. His cheeks are red with anger, and his chest is heaving.

“For fuck’s sake,” Oscar spits, rolling his eyes. “Move on. Everyone else has.” He keeps his voice level but pointed when he adds, “It also wasn’t your championship.”

Even the media seems to have gotten bored talking about Abu Dhabi 2024. What’s the point? Max won, Lando lost, the end.

“I thought we were past this,” Oscar says, and he can’t help but feel disappointed.

“Past this?” Lando scoffs. “We never freaking—we barely talked about it.”

“What was there to talk about?” Oscar asks, and Lando’s face falls.

What Oscar did—it wasn’t about Hungary, and it wasn’t about Lando. There just wasn’t a conversation to be had.

Lando doesn’t say anything. He looks—baffled, in complete disbelief.

“What did you want?” Oscar asks, feeling so tired of it, all of this. He thought that they were done. Of all the problems they might still have, after everything, he can’t understand how it comes back to that. “Did you want me to hand it to you? Roll over and give it to you? Give you a championship you didn’t earn? That’s how you want to win?”

Lando sputters, “Those were team orders—”

Oscar scoffs. “Yeah, like you were a fucking saint—”

“I was fighting for a championship—”

Oscar shakes his head. Really, honest to god—he can’t believe this.

“I was fighting too.”

And Lando’s eyes just—widen, like he hadn’t thought that Oscar was fighting. Like he really did think Oscar would just roll over and give it to him. Like he was owed it. Like he was due a championship.

Finally, Oscar starts to understand. Starts to understand that he hadn’t known Lando at all, and that maybe, Lando hadn’t known him, either.

He hadn’t cared about Hungary. He understood it, so he thought Lando would come to understand Abu Dhabi too.

Don’t you feel ashamed? he wants to ask.

Instead, he sighs and says, trying to get Lando to see his side, “It wasn’t personal, obviously—”

“Yeah, frickin’ right,” Lando mocks, mouth twitching belligerently. “Zandvoort wasn’t personal either, right?”

Oscar winces. “I was going to tell you—”

“But you didn’t, yeah?” Lando asks, his voice taking an odd tone. “Instead you—” He cuts himself off, and his eyes go all glassy. He blinks, and his voice is croaky and shaking when he says, “You made me think that you—”

He trails off with shuddering, uneven breaths.

No, Oscar thinks. They’re not going to play this game anymore, of leaving things unsaid.

The last time they had it out, after their crash in Silverstone, in Lando’s hotel room—he thinks about how it ended. He thinks about how he had it all wrong.

“That I what?” he pushes.

Lando’s lower lip wobbles. He presses his lips together, can’t get any words out, nostrils flaring.

If you won’t say it, Oscar thinks, I will.

“That I loved you?”

Lando blinks. His mouth parts, but he doesn’t say anything. He looks—small, and helpless, and Oscar can’t fucking do it anymore. He can’t. He can’t.

“I didn’t make you think anything,” Oscar spits out, the words falling out of him. “It’s not my fault you made up this whole fantasy in your head that we were together, and we were in love.”

Oscar is vaguely aware that a few other drivers, a few McLaren and Red Bull members have gathered around them—keeping their distance, but listening, and watching, but at this point—Oscar can’t bring himself to care. He has cared so much, more than any of them have known. He can’t do it anymore. Sometimes, with Lando, it feels like it’ll never be enough.

Lando sniffles, and it’s—

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Oscar mutters, lip curling. “Ever consider this is why no one told you?” he asks, heart beating in his ears, blood roaring, realizing that everyone might have been right about Lando all along. “Because they knew you’d throw a fit about it.”

“Yeah,” Lando chokes out, and it’s a wet noise. He laughs, biting his lower lip, and smiles so, so wide. Even before Lando gets the words out, Oscar thinks to himself: This is where it breaks. This is where it splits in half.

“Pity I don’t have a manager to fight my battles for me,” he sneers.

Oscar’s heart drops, and he feels his face crack open. He feels it all—cracking open.

“If you won, could you even call it yours?” Lando asks, baring his teeth. “Leaving the team is the only way you could win, right? Couldn’t even fucking stay for a fight.”

Oscar laughs. Loud, so loud. His ribs feel tight, and he clutches his stomach, nearly bending over.

“Oh my god.”

Fine, he thinks. Fine.

“You don’t know,” he says, stepping forward. Lando flinches. “You haven’t fucking figured it out? And of course, no one’s told you.”

When Oscar breathes in, it feels like he can’t keep himself inside his body. When he breathes out, it feels like it’s all coming apart.

“You’re only fighting for this because of me,” he says. Finally takes the bullet lodged in his chest and loads it. If that’s what Lando fucking wants.

“You should be glad that I left,” he spits. “I left for you.”

Lando doesn’t get it. His brows furrow in non-understanding.

Fine then, Oscar thinks, anger swelling in his lungs. I’ll spell it out.

“They would’ve pushed you out,” he says, and his voice doesn’t even sound like his own anymore, like it’s coming from somewhere deep and ancient and taboo. “They were going to. You have to know that, right? Zak wanted to drop you.”

“What?” Lando asks, his voice a wet whisper.

Oscar laughs again. His cheeks hurt so much, like his grin is cutting through muscle. He can barely see straight. “Last summer,” he says, “he took me out for golf and told me.”

With shuddering emotion, Lando hisses out, “That’s not true—”

“It’s true,” Oscar reveals, and Lando’s face whitens in horror. “You really didn’t know?” he taunts, even though he knows what the answer is.

“God,” Oscar mumbles, under his breath, but he knows that Lando can hear him when he says, “You’re so fucking stupid.”

The dam breaks and tears spill. Lando sucks in a heaving, miserable breath. Oscar can’t even bring it in himself to feel sorry. He just feels like—

Maybe everyone was right about them both, in the end.

“Is Zak here?” Oscar presses, grin growing impossibly wider. “Let’s have him tell you himself, if you still don’t believe me.” He turns toward McLaren’s hospitality, and shouts, as loud as he can, “ZAK, HEY—”

A hand, gentle but firm, lands on Oscar’s shoulder.

Oscar jolts. He sucks in a breath, turning his head.

“Oscar,” Mark is saying, his voice low and quiet and—scared. There’s a deep frown on his face, and his eyes are—they look—Oscar doesn’t know. “I think that’s enough.”

Oscar blinks, swallows, and sobers. He looks around.

Nearly the whole grid is present now; half of McLaren’s crew and half of Red Bull’s crew have collected outside their motorhomes.

Oscar can see it in their eyes. They’re all looking at him like he’s a monster.

Mark walks Oscar to his driver room in silence, tells him to cool off, and says he’ll be back in ten.

Oscar doesn’t say anything, doesn’t meet his eyes. He doesn’t want to see that look in them again.

Mark hesitates as he leaves, and Oscar can tell he wants to say something.

He eventually decides against it, closes the door behind him, and leaves Oscar alone.

Over the years, Oscar has gained a reputation for being cold and unemotional.

He entered F1 in controversy, and most people hadn’t a clue who he was other than the Australian kid who put Daniel Ricciardo out of a seat. They needed a narrative. They needed him to be likable. They needed him to be understandable.

Oscar Piastri: unflappable, and unfeeling.

Soon, what they wanted Oscar to be, became all they thought he was. Occam’s razor, the principle of least effort. When Oscar was a rookie, he was cool and levelheaded, mature and wise beyond his years, but when he started to take points off his teammate who couldn’t start a fucking race to save his life, in the midst of a championship battle, he was selfish and uncaring, ruthless and egocentric. A liability. Incapable of feeling or expressing the full range of human emotion.

It was convenient. Lando was overly emotional and Oscar had no emotions and they were fighting for a title. It made sense. It made for a good story. It made for a good show.

But it was all fundamentally wrong. He feels things. He feels so much. A lot of the time, all the time, Oscar feels so much that he can’t even begin to understand what’s inside of him.

And he cares. All this time he has cared. He has cared so much but it’s gotten him nowhere, and no one can even see it. He never understood why no one else could see it.

But then Spa came around, that miracle drive, then Monza, Singapore. His narrative started to change. Oscar was no longer a backstabber, nor Mark’s revenge, nor an unflappable ice prince, but a teammate eater. Half-man, half-bull. A minotaur. A monster.

All year and all of last, he was painted as Lando’s villain. The one who takes everything away. But even that—that was all a misunderstanding too.

Sitting on the floor and against the wall, Oscar tips his skull back till the ceiling lights are burning into his retinas. He feels hollowed out and carved open. Like his heart’s been taken out of his chest.

He feels tired, mostly.

Even the way people talk about his Red Bull move like it was inevitable, he never understood that. Red Bull was never in the cards, until last year. They hadn’t wanted him when he was a kid in karts, but the way that everyone talks about him, it’s as if he was part of the story from the start. A continuation of the creation myth. Part of the bloodline.

Everything they say about him, his whole narrative since he stepped foot in F1—the truth is, it was all built on a misconception.

Oscar’s starting to understand that maybe he was the one who had it wrong. Misconceptions or not, he ended up proving them all right.

It goes around the paddock, what had happened and what was said.

Everyone stares, before practice. Everyone whispers. None of the drivers speak to him. Red Bull keep it purely focused on business. There’s that same look in everyone’s eyes from last night.

Oscar doesn’t care. He can’t find it in himself to. Putting on his helmet and sliding into the cockpit, he thinks to himself, Fine. I’ll be what you say I am. I’ll be the monster you all think I am.

It’s not like they’ve given him much of a choice.

MARTIN BRUNDLE: Piastri looks—what is he doing? He can’t be doing that.

DAVID CROFT: I’ll tell you what, Martin. I don’t think Piastri got much sleep. I saw him earlier, and he looked downright miserable. I’m afraid it might be affecting his performance on track. It’s so unlike him.

TED KRAVITZ: Crofty, Martin, you two went home early last night, so maybe you missed it, but there’s a reason why some of the drivers look so exhausted. Tensions were high last night, and I’ve heard that two of the drivers got into a heated argument outside McLaren hospitality.

CROFT: Two secs, Ted.

QATAR FREE PRACTICE 1 2026

Oscar Piastri’s Radio Transcript — 16:39

Oscar PIASTRI: What the F**K is Lando doing?

MARTIN BRUNDLE: [clearing his throat] Well. I guess we know which drivers.

Oscar crashes out twenty minutes into free practice.

The sun is low over Lusail as he climbs out of his cockpit. The track lights are bright through his visor. He pulls his helmet off, and the great wings of the world open up to him.

He walks back to the pits. He gets fined for crossing the track. He gives his feedback to the mechanics. He stays in the garage until the session ends. Three hours to sprint quali. He heads back to hospitality, to his driver room, lies back on the massage bed, and throws his forearm over his eyes.

It doesn’t feel like there’s anything left for him to lose.

George impedes him, but of course the stewards don’t see it the same way. He makes it to SQ2 by the skin of his teeth, shouts at GP over the radio in SQ3, and wins sprint pole.

Once he gets back to his hotel suite, he turns off his phone, and keeps it turned off for the rest of the day.

Oscar lines up at the start in the P1 box. Lando pulls up to P2. Liam is in P3.

Lights out and away they go. Oscar gets a good start, but so does Lando, coming up alongside him down the straight and into the first corner but Oscar gets the better entry and gets the better exit, and leads out of Turn 1. Lando’s in his slipstream, in his mirrors, and Oscar feels it before he sees it, and reacts, twitching. He goes to cover him off, but Lando doesn’t give way, Lando doesn’t yield, and into the next corner, he’s slamming into the side of Lando’s McLaren.

Metal splits sharp and the two of them are screeching, skidding, and sliding off into the gravel.

Q: Hey Lando. Obviously you and Oscar have been fighting hard all year, and it’s not your first time coming to blows. How does this one feel?

LANDO NORRIS: [laughing] I mean, it sucks, doesn’t it? Oscar is—I don’t know what’s going on. If he can’t get himself in control, he shouldn’t be driving. It’s dangerous and it’s stupid, what he’s been doing this weekend. I don’t care how desperate he is to win this championship. You need to show respect on the track.

Q: The season is closing out, and with only two races to go, you’re sixteen points behind your former teammate. On Thursday, we heard that you were super calm and relaxed going into this weekend. However, you had an emotional crash in practice, and again in the sprint. Lando has been on the record saying you’ve seemed out of control this whole weekend. Do you think your general approach to racing has changed in light of the championship battle reaching a climax?

OSCAR PIASTRI: Not really, no.

Q: In any case, Lando said he felt a lack of respect from you today on track, and that you seem especially desperate this weekend.

A brief pause.

PIASTRI: Respect has to be earned. You have to earn it. Lando hasn’t. [laughing] And he said I was desperate, huh? I guess he’d know what that feels like.

Oscar gets a warning from Christian when he gets back to hospitality. Says he doesn’t care what Oscar spouts to the media, but that he can’t let his emotions get the best of him on track. Oscar doesn’t say anything. He charges into his driver room, sits on the massage table, props up his elbows on his knees, and rests his head in his hands.

The damage to his car hadn’t been too bad, but qualifying is in three hours, and they’ll need to replace his sidepod and fix the damage to the floor. He hasn’t made it easy for them. He replays the collision in his head. Again, and again, and again.

Oscar doesn’t have any heroes. Half the grid worships Senna, Seb notoriously did everything he could to follow in Schumacher’s footsteps, Lando reveres Rossi, and while Max pretends not to have any heroes, he has his dad.

There was a time in his life when Mark and Daniel had been something of heroes to him, but in the end, they were only human.

In the end, he’s really only ever had himself.

Oscar wins pole by four monstrous tenths.

They ask him where it came from.

He tells them he doesn’t know, but it’s sort of a lie.

He feels like a beast of burden, without the burden.

What would’ve been a comfortable, easy drive to the chequered flag is slightly ruined by a ten second pitstop by his crew. He gets back onto the track, in third, behind Alex and Liam, and, furious, presses the radio button just to shout at GP, and GP just says, Head down, Osc.

Liam is ordered aside, but Alex isn’t so easy. It takes Oscar a few laps to make the overtake and make it stick. By Lap 50, he’s back in the lead, but he killed his tyres getting there, and has to hold Alex off to the line.

Orange in his mirrors. By Lap 54, Alex is within five tenths. Gaining in the slipstream. Oscar fends him off, defends with everything he has, cuts him off into Turn 14, and perhaps it’s too close for comfort, but going into the next turn, he’s still in the lead. But Alex is chasing. Oscar feels like he can read his mind: he’ll go for the outside line. They’re approaching the main straight; he’ll have MOM soon. Oscar decides he’ll let Alex take it and charge up his batteries, salvage his tyres and have a pace advantage down the long straight—Red Bull have the active aero advantage there. He brakes early, lets Alex slip through, but then—

Alex locks up. Oscar goes through and he sees it in his mirrors: a bloom of smoke, scrap metal, sparks, and fire.

Everyone is okay, but the race is red flagged and will finish under the safety car.

Alex took Liam out, and Oscar had barely escaped the carnage. He looks at the timing sheet: George and Lando are effectively promoted to the podium.

Oscar keeps his helmet on in the garage as he waits for the race to restart.

He wants to scream. He does.

In parc fermé, Oscar doesn’t celebrate. He got the fastest lap too, so if it wasn’t for the crash, he would’ve gained sixteen points over Lando and equalized going into Abu Dhabi. Instead, with Lando’s P3, it’s only eleven. He’ll be going into the last race five points behind.

Annoyed, he makes his way to the team, shakes their hands and lets them pull him into half-hugs. He just wants to get this all over with.

Mark’s at the front of the crowd, waiting. They meet eyes. He looks—torn. Oscar purses his mouth.

He looks away, and turns around. Heads to the weighing scale. He thinks about what Lando had said.

He’s not going to give him that. He can’t.

He sets his helmet down on the first place stand, grabs the water bottle and pours it over his head, drags his fingers through his hair. When he breathes out, it feels like steam. The conditions weren’t nearly as bad as it was three years ago, but he still feels out of breath, exhausted, heatstroked. He blocks out the noise of Lando and George’s post-race interviews. Unzips the top of his race suit, fans his fireproofs against his stomach, and waits until it’s his turn.

QATAR GRAND PRIX 2026

Post-Race Interviews — Hosted by Nico Rosberg

Nico ROSBERG: Oscar! What a race! A win going into Abu Dhabi. You must be very happy.

Oscar PIASTRI: Could’ve been better.

ROSBERG: It’s been a bit of a wild weekend for you, with your crash in practice and in the sprint, and then having to fight your way back to the front, after a difficult pitstop. How does it feel, bouncing back and winning the race in aggressive fashion?

PIASTRI: Feels fine, I guess.

ROSBERG: Can we talk about that move on Alex, in Lap 54? It seemed like you were giving up the place on purpose and planning to overtake on the main straight, once you had MOM.

PIASTRI: Yeah.

ROSBERG: I thought it was brilliant, and quite smart of you, but of course, it didn’t end up well for Alex or for Liam. Do you have any thoughts on the incident?

PIASTRI: Not really. But I’m glad they’re both okay.

Oscar arrives late to the cooldown room.

George and Lando were speaking quietly by the mini-platforms, but they both fall silent as Oscar walks in. The screens are replaying Alex and Liam’s crash.

Lando freezes by his third place stand, stares mutely at his water bottle. He’s in the way. Oscar sighs, charges forward, and bullies past him. He doesn’t mean anything by it. Even so, their shoulders brush, and Lando twitches, slightly stumbling.

George’s head whips toward them. “Oi,” he shouts, eyes belligerent.

Oscar looks him dead in the eyes. Cocks his head to the side. Purses his mouth. “What?” he asks. “Did I do something?”

To the side, Lando sucks in a loud, shaky inhale. He’s biting his lip, and his eyes look almost watery.

Oscar groans. He can’t look at him anymore, and he can’t do this anymore.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters under his breath, then grabs his water bottle and first place hat, and leaves the room.

On the podium, Oscar walks up to the top step, accepts his gold medal and trophy. The Australian and Austrian anthems play.

No one sprays champagne. Lando leaves the podium immediately. Oscar stares forward, and forward, and forward. He never looks down.

QATAR GRAND PRIX 2026

Post-Race Press Conference

Q: Oscar, a question for you. You won the race, but you don’t seem very happy with it, and you said to Nico that you thought it could have gone better. Can you explain what exactly you meant?

OSCAR PIASTRI: [sipping on his Red Bull] I mean, Liam should’ve been on the podium, so.

Q: Your early braking move on Alex in Lap 54. Earlier in the pen he was explaining how he wasn’t expecting for you to let him through there, and it might’ve caused him to lock up. Any thoughts?

PIASTRI: It’s my fault he crashed now? Let’s say I was feeling generous. Decided to give these guys a gift.

Q: What do you mean by that?

PIASTRI: They wouldn’t be here if Alex hadn’t crashed into Liam. Lando gained, like, what is it, five, six points in the championship that he wouldn’t’ve had, right? Because of me. Better late than never.

PIASTRI GONE WILD: The Raging Bull has no respect for “desperate” title rival Lando Norris
↑ 5.3K ↓ 384 comments
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/piastri-says-lando-hasnt-earned-his-respect…

papayarules • 5h ago •
Lol. Looks like Mad Max is back.

frownengine • 3h ago •
nah. this is something different.

Oscar flies from Qatar straight to Abu Dhabi.

It’s a short flight, only around an hour. He and Mark fly in a small private jet that Red Bull chartered for them. Oscar was supposed to fly out with Emirates, but the team didn’t want Oscar to be in public any more than he had to be. They’re worried about, like, his mental state. It’s ridiculous. Oscar’s never felt more in control.

For the majority of the flight, he and Mark are silent. They haven’t spoken about Qatar, any of it. Oscar hasn’t seen the need and Mark hasn’t pushed it. While they might cross the boundaries of manager and managee, sometimes, they’re not the sort to have heart-to-hearts.

But then as they’re starting their descent, Mark sets down his phone, takes a deep breath, and looks at Oscar.

“You know,” Mark says, and his face is doing that thing it kept doing in Qatar, the one that Oscar hadn’t understood. “I was happy for you, in Qatar.”

Oscar blinks. His brows furrow. “That I won?”

“No,” Mark says, shaking his head. “Well—yes, that you won, but that’s not what I meant.”

He looks out the window. They’re still above the clouds. The night sky is colored grey. They’re the only two people in this cabin.

“I stopped you back there, with Norris,” Mark says, “because I didn’t want you to do something you’d come to regret, and I thought you’d gone far enough, but—”

He lets out a breath, mouth folding into something indecipherable. “You’ve always… Since I met you, I could tell just how badly you wanted it. You want it more than anyone, but you were always keeping it inside.”

Evading Mark’s gaze, Oscar chews on the inside of his cheek.

Mark is silent for a long moment. Oscar replays the words in his head, catches the past tense.

“I need you to know that—that all of this… All this is for you,” Mark says, and Oscar’s eyes widen. “It’s all been for you.” Mark’s lips tighten into a thin line, and he says, “I didn’t… I haven’t done any of this for myself, or, I dunno, a dream I never got my hands on. I didn’t push for Red Bull for my own sake. It was for you, because I know how good you are, and you deserve a team who’ll back you through hell.”

Oscar swallows. His face feels hot. His breath trembles.

“If you win on Sunday,” he says, his eyes firm and certain, and Oscar is finally starting to understand, “it’s no one else’s but yours.”

Oscar meets Liam in the hotel lobby, and they go up to the front desk to get their keycards together. They haven’t really talked since before Qatar—after the race, when Oscar saw him, he squeezed his shoulder in the TV pen, told him the podium should’ve been his, but that was it.

After Qatar, the only drivers that congratulated him for the win were Lewis and Fernando. It felt a bit like Abu Dhabi again. Oscar doesn’t really care what they all think of him, if they know about him and Max, about how he and Lando used to be; if they all heard what was said, but it still—

Liam’s room isn’t ready yet, so Oscar tells him he can come and hang in his room until then.

Oscar gets settled, lugs his suitcase into his bedroom and joins Liam on the couch, and they put on the PSG match.

Only a few minutes in, it becomes clear that Liam’s not really paying attention to the TV. He’s staring at Oscar, eyes narrowed, mouth considering.

“What’s that look for?” Oscar asks.

Liam shrugs and hums. “Nothing,” he says, still squinting. “It’s just—so I’ve been thinking since Qatar.”

Oscar winces and pulls his mouth to the side.

Liam’s face broadens with a smile. “You’re actually kind of a dick, aren’t you?”

Oscar sputters. His eyes pop out of his head.

Liam bursts into laughter. “Mate, oh my god, you should see yourself. Really, though, I don’t mind,” he says, still laughing. “Honestly, it kinda makes you more interesting.”

Oscar makes another noise. He doesn’t even know what to say.

He leans back against the couch, looking up at the ceiling, and lets out a breath. He starts to smile. He can’t help it.

PSG has just scored a goal. The speakers are erupting with noise. Oscar is still looking up at the lights.

They’re both silent for a long time before Liam is nudging him on his upper arm, a smirk on his mouth, and saying, “Max was the girl then, huh?”

Oscar’s cheeks burn. He hasn’t talked to Max since before Qatar. He wonders if he watched that race, wonders if he’ll watch Abu Dhabi.

“Guess so,” Oscar concedes, thinking about how upset Max had gotten in Las Vegas, at what Daniel had said about him, about how Max had chosen to spend the night with him instead of going out with Daniel and Martin, even if they hadn’t even made use of what Oscar purchased from the pharmacy.

The past year has been strange, and it’s been hard, but it’s also been good.

“So,” Liam asks after a moment. When Oscar’s eyes flick toward him, his face is split with a megawatt grin. “What’s it like fucking a world champion?”

Oscar is shocked into laughter. His face burns. And he’s sputtering and pushing at Liam’s side, “Alright, get the fuck out.”

For the first time in his life, Oscar is nervous going into the weekend.

It doesn’t hit him until he’s in Yas Marina for media day and staring down the barrel of a camera, asking him how he feels, knowing he could win his first championship on Sunday.

Oscar has won championships before, but all of them were leading to this. This weekend, and Sunday’s race.

As for the constructors’, Red Bull are almost certain to win as long as he and Liam don’t both DNF. Still, you never know.

He doesn’t want to start the weekend on a bad note, so he apologizes to GP and the pitcrew for all the shit he said during Qatar. They all look at him with confused, narrowed eyes. They accept the apology, but go back to fixing up his set-up for the practices.

It isn’t until Calum pulls Oscar aside and says, “Mate, we appreciate it and all, but—honestly? We were kind of excited seeing you like that. All fired up and shouting at Norris. It never really seemed like you wanted it, and it was nice to finally see that you did.”

Oscar’s eyes widen.

“Of course, it would’ve been different if you hadn’t won, but you did, so.”

The truth is that, sometimes, it feels like he wants too much. It feels like he could swallow the world whole and it still wouldn’t be enough. Sometimes, it feels like he’ll stay hungry forever. It’s jarring to think that before Qatar, no one else could see it.

Calum grins at him, and squeezes his shoulder. “Give ‘em hell, even if it means you’ll give us hell.”

WILL BUXTON: Oscar Piastri. Let’s talk about it. He’s made a name for himself for being cool and unflappable, but in Qatar it seemed like he went up in flames. His comments on his title rival have made headlines, his racing on track has been aggressive, over the line, and brutal. From the Ice Prince to the Raging Bull—a minotaur. An absolute monster in machinery. Oscar Piastri has proved himself to be a true championship contender, and he has seemed to find a home in his new team, aided by his manager, Mark Webber. But don’t get me wrong, Red Bull are the underdogs in this dogfight. Oscar Piastri comes into Abu Dhabi five points behind his former teammate. Will he continue to bare his teeth? Will he stay unleashed? Only time will tell.

The nerves persist.

His entire family has flown up. His mum, dad, sisters, and grandparents.

Win or lose, they’ll all be here to see.

Like they did with Max and Lewis in 2021, with Max and Lando in 2024, he and Lando have to do a title rivals press conference on Friday.

Most of the questions are openly inspired by Oscar’s comments in Qatar. Almost all the reporters ask leading questions about respect and mind games and mentality, and what it truly means to drive on the limit. About Abu Dhabi, two years ago.

Really, Oscar doesn’t have much to say.

DAVID CROFT: And that’s the view from the Red Bull garage, where you see Sebastian Vettel, four-time world champion for Red Bull, speaking with his ex-teammate and Piastri’s manager, Mark Webber.

JENSON BUTTON: [laughing] I think that’s the first time we’ve seen Seb all year. Once a Red Bull driver, always a Red Bull driver.

Free practices go well. They’re not spectacular, and Red Bull’s still trying to optimize the set-up, brake balances, aero, suspension, but the car feels good. It feels alive. Liam is struggling a little more, going into the final weekend, but Oscar feels in tune with the RB22. Feels, a little bit, like he did in Spa.

Outside the Red Bull garage, in the TV pen, in the pitlane: it’s uncomfortable.

There were eyes after Qatar, but there are even more in Abu Dhabi. The anxiety makes him abrasive, short-fused. He’s cooled down since Qatar, but he still finds himself snapping at the occasional reporter who essentially asks if he plans to crash into Lando on Sunday to win the title, as if Oscar’s not the one on the back foot.

Vaguely, he also saw Max Fewtrell in the pitlane earlier, and immediately turned on his heel. He hadn’t fancied driving the final race with a black eye.

The other drivers keep staring at him. Liam’s the only one who’ll talk to him, but Oscar can tell Liam’s giving him his space.

He’s enemy number one in the paddock, as it stands. Everyone’s villain. While Lewis and Fernando have spoken highly about him to the media, going into the final race, they keep their distance.

This isn’t their fight.

One qualifying to go, and one grand prix to go.

Friday afternoon, Oscar is sitting on the counter in his garage, staring at the new helmet in his lap. Red Bull’s design team had the idea of leaning into Oscar’s reputation post-Qatar; they came up with proofs of a special helmet and asked Oscar to approve it ASAP so they could get it ready before Abu Dhabi. It’s midnight blue, almost black, fluorescent bulls on the side, overlaying the Australian flags. On the top is an intricate maze design, and a mini-minotaur in blood-red.

Oscar rubs his thumb over the bulls, and for the first time, a feeling overcomes him. A feeling too big to hold.

The first time Oscar visited the Red Bull factory, it was January 2nd. His McLaren contract had finally ended, and he and Mark drove up to Milton Keynes and were meant to meet Liam and the filming crew outside the front entrance. They were kinda milking the whole thing, requesting that Mark come with for the tour. Mark had offered to turn them down, but Oscar kind of wanted Mark there. In any case, he knew they’d only take bits and pieces from what they filmed, and string them together into a montage for Youtube and Tiktok. By then, he’d been used to the cameras.

As they shuffled out of the car, Oscar was half-asleep and shivering. He napped in the car, bundled up in his winter coat because Mark was cheap and refused to put the heat on full blast like Oscar asked. It was even colder outside, and Oscar felt his face blistering from the cold. His eyes were only half-open.

Once they got to the front doors, Liam came out from inside, elbowed him in the side to wake him up, and Oscar grumbled, rousing to full awakeness, and—

He finally took it all in, and he froze in awe.

Mark was scoffing at him. There must have been something on Oscar’s face. “I know it’s not as big as the MTC,” he said, patting Oscar on the shoulder.

Oscar frowned. He didn’t know what Mark meant. It still felt as big as he remembered.

He let Liam and Mark lead him and the film crew inside, and in the lobby Oscar got to meet and greet the engineers who’d spent half of last year making him a car. While he wasn’t exactly a people person, he reckoned he made a good first impression. Everyone seemed excited to either meet him or remeet him as a Red Bull driver.

They went a bit out of order, starting at the Race Bays where Max and Checo’s RB21s were displayed. The room was blinding white. Oscar hadn’t had much to say—he’d spent a whole season staring at the back of the RB21. Then they went to the sub-assembly workshops, the manufacturing lab, the model shop, the operations room, the heritage bays, and then—

They finished off the tour in the MK-7.

For the second time, Oscar froze.

Liam the whole time had been acting like a tour guide, even though Oscar was pretty sure he was just making things up on the go, but when the three of them and the film crew stepped into the MK-7, the hall where the RB1 to the RB20 were displayed, they all fell silent.

Mark walked over to the championship-winning RB9. His last F1 car, his last drive with Red Bull. It was right next to Seb’s. There was a caught expression on his face. Oscar decided to leave him alone.

Liam followed Oscar as he walked over to Daniel’s RB11. It was magnetic. It was also strange, how his throat felt tight. He felt overwhelmed.

“Not impressed?” Liam asked, the first words he’d spoken since they’d stepped into the room.

“Hm?” Oscar asked. He couldn’t stop staring. He’d barely heard Liam, despite the silence.

Liam laughed. It echoed through the hall. “You look bored,” he said. “Mate, at least try to seem a bit more excited.”

Oscar tore his eyes away from the RB11 and frowned at Liam. He didn’t know what Liam was talking about. He felt like his heart was in knots.

“You alright?” Hattie asks, hopping up onto the counter next to Oscar.

Oscar looks up from his helmet, regards her, in her Red Bull hat, an 81 printed on the visor, and he says, “Yeah.”

Their parents and sisters are in the drinks lounge, calming their nerves before qualifying. As difficult as it still is between them, Oscar appreciates that she’s chosen to be here.

She frowns. “You’re quiet.”

Oscar shrugs and says, “I’m always quiet.”

Hattie hums, swinging her legs by the tyres. She cocks her head to the side and says, “It’s different this time.”

Oscar takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he admits, breath trembling as he exhales, “maybe.”

His eyes wander outside his garage at the mechanics and drivers who pass by, chatting and laughing and horsing around for the cameras, like kaleidoscopes of motion and color. He feels so full, and uncertain, and maybe frightened. There’s a sort of bittersweetness to it, he thinks, the final race. This is how it ends.

“Heard you got into an argument with Lando in Qatar,” she says, tapping his foot with hers.

Oscar groans and shoots her a look. “Who told you?”

“Saw it online. Just rumors though.”

Well, Oscar thinks, at least she won’t know the full extent of it.

“Right,” he says, sighing.

“Think you wanna make up with him?” she asks. “Before the last race?”

It isn’t a leading question. She sounds genuinely curious.

And it’s not like Oscar hasn’t thought about it. He’d crossed the line in Qatar, let his emotions get the best of him, said unforgivable things, but so had Lando.

It’s not about pride, it’s not like who apologizes first loses, and who holds their ground wins, it’s just—

He isn’t sure if there’s a coming back from this.

“Do you ever feel like—” Oscar starts, then swallows.

“Like?”

Truth is, Oscar knows that, for a long time, plain and simple, he was in love with Lando. Sometimes, it felt like he loved him more than he knew what to do with.

Whatever they were—it had only lasted two months. Still, looking back—

What Lando had done in Hungary 2024, ignoring team orders and taking Oscar’s win for himself—it was then, maybe, that Oscar started to think that they saw things the same way. That they were the same. It was then, Oscar thinks. It started there.

What he thought was understanding turned into a small crush that turned into infatuation until it was something too big and too great to keep under the surface. Still, it was easy to think of the Lando on the track and the Lando off of it as separate people, the one that he loved and the one that he raced against. It took Oscar a long time to realize that it wasn’t the same for Lando.

They’ve never really seen eye-to-eye. They thought they did, but they’d maybe only seen what they’d wanted to see.

Oscar never really knew Lando. And Lando never really knew him. He loved Lando in the way he knew how, but he never really understood him, never even really tried.

Even now—he still doesn’t understand.

He kind of doesn’t even want to try.

Since Qatar, Oscar has spent a long time wondering if it was even Lando that he was in love with. He’d ridiculed him for making up a fantasy in his head, but it wasn’t like he didn’t do the same.

Oscar shakes his head, gives up on whatever it is he wanted to say. It wouldn’t capture it. He wouldn’t be able to put it into words.

It won’t make a difference today.

“After, maybe,” Oscar decides, looking out into the distance, clear-eyed, and with clarity. “After I win.”

The real first time Oscar visited the Red Bull factory, he was fourteen, and he’d just moved to the UK. He and his dad made the drive up to Milton Keynes on their second day, at Oscar’s insistence. They’d bought the tickets right after they booked their flights to London almost a full year in advance. Oscar wanted the full tour. The whole drive, his dad was making fun of him, said he’d never seen Oscar so jazzed to be anywhere, never seen him that excited.

More than a decade later, the first time he visited the Red Bull factory as a Red Bull driver, even though it had changed so much, and Red Bull had changed so much, he found himself still feeling the same way he did the first time he saw Daniel’s car.

It was a feeling so big, a feeling he had no idea how to hold.

Minutes before qualifying, Oscar puts his balaclava on, his earphones, and his helmet. Gloves on now. The old ritual.

By now, everyone, at least those in the paddock, knows that Oscar left McLaren for Lando. In truth, he only joined Red Bull because he had to leave McLaren, and because Red Bull happened to want him. He had a reason and they gave him an out—that’s just the way the cards fell.

At the end of the day, Oscar knows that it didn’t have to be McLaren, but it also didn’t have to be Red Bull. His whole Red Bull obsession when he was a kid had more to do with Mark and Daniel and the fact that Seb was winning championships right when he was getting serious about racing. It wasn’t like he carried it with him—Red Bull hadn’t wanted him, Red Bull hadn’t seen what they see in him today. But that was okay—Red Bull to him was never what it was to Max, never what Ferrari is to Charles or what McLaren is to Lando. It was never some childhood dream, driving for Red Bull, not like the media likes to spin it.

Still, though. It didn’t have to be McLaren, but it was. It doesn’t have to be Red Bull, but it is.

Sitting in the cockpit in his garage, the mechanics’ hands firm on his beautiful beast of a car, about to be released into the pitlane for qualifying, it finally hits him: how, somewhere along the line, Red Bull has become home.

And the bright, blinding, and hunting lights of Yas Marina come on under the setting sun.

On Sunday: coming back from the national anthem, Oscar feels like he might throw up. He’s never felt this way before, not in F3, not in F2, and not at any time in F1. It had felt better, yesterday, when he was in the car. He won pole, but Lando’s starting in second. It’s Oscar’s race to lose, and he can’t lose it on the line.

The momentum of the pitlane is unstoppable.

Ten minutes to go before lights out. Ten minutes, and he steps into his garage, and freezes.

“Max?”

Max, who had been speaking to GP by the monitors, turns his head. His eyes meet Oscar’s, and he grins widely, beautifully and beatifically, finishes his conversation with GP, then walks toward Oscar.

“Oscar,” Max greets.

Oscar splutters. “What are you doing here?”

Max shrugs, slips his hands in his pockets, and leans against the wall behind him. “I’m retired,” he says. “I have a lot of free time.”

Oscar chokes out a disbelieving, incredulous, awestruck laugh. Max’s eyes are so bright. Even though he isn’t wearing Red Bull gear, only jeans and a white shirt that might be Oscar’s—it’s hard to tell, it could go either way—he looks right at home. He looks alive.

He rests against the wall, shoulder-to-shoulder with Max, and lowers his head, smiling to himself. Max hadn’t told him he was coming to Abu Dhabi, and Oscar hadn’t heard any rumors in the garage about it. Seb, he’d heard about. Seb, who’s talking to Mark off in the corner. Max and Seb. Red Bull’s champions and boy kings.

Nine championships between them.

Nine minutes now, maybe. Nine minutes, then eight. Oscar watches the clock. Sky’s cameras are fixed on them outside the garage. He and Max stay leaning against the wall, in silence.

The dull roar of the pit lane groans around them.

“So,” Max says, at minute seven, “I hear we’re in a relationship now?”

Oscar’s eyes widen, and his head whips toward Max. His cheeks flush, and he glowers. “Okay, who told you that?”

Max chuckles. “Charles congratulated me earlier,” he answers. “On our relationship.”

Oscar throws his face into his palms. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters.

Charles wasn’t even there that night, but the next day in the paddock, Oscar heard him whisper-yelling with Pierre in French, his head whipping toward Oscar, cheeks flushing in understanding.

He can understand how, maybe, one would come to that conclusion.

He takes a deep breath, removes his hands from his cheeks, and explains, “Maybe, uh. Maybe Lando and I got into a fight. And, uh, maybe your name came up, and, uh, people overheard.”

“Yeah?” Max asks.

Oscar lets out a breath. “Yeah.”

Max is still smiling. He nudges Oscar’s shoulder and reveals, “I already know. Christian told me most of what was said.”

Oscar purses his lips, tries to think of something to say, but falls flat. He stares at his feet.

In the thundering silence, Max says, “You better win tonight.”

Oscar’s brows furrow together, and he looks towards Max. “Huh?”

“After all that,” Max says, grin widening, “it would be embarrassing for me, as your boyfriend, if you lose.”

Oscar, for the first time all weekend, respirates, exhales, breathes out, and—

A bright, startling laugh is punched out of his lungs. Another and another and he’s clutching his stomach with one hand and holding onto Max’s shoulder with the other, half-bent over, hysterical. The noises are ripped out of him, and he’s vaguely cognizant of it, how it sounds like he’s laughing and screaming and sobbing.

It’s ridiculous. It really is.

“Oh my god,” Oscar chokes out, between howls, “I can’t breathe—”

Max is trying and failing to pull Oscar upright. He’s laughing amusedly, breathy little things. He looks, Oscar thinks, very happy. “Mate, alright,” he says, “people are looking, and there are cameras—”

Oscar can’t stop laughing. Can’t stop grinning. He doesn’t think he’s even had a single smile on his face all weekend. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t need to understand it.

“You have to get into the car—”

Oscar manages to get himself upright. He’s still shaking, and there might be tears in his eyes. “Yeah,” he says, voice cracking. “I know.”

Max really doesn’t care. None of them do. Not the ones that matter.

He slides his hand up from Max’s shoulder to his neck. It burns. There’s a look in his eyes: dark, maybe hungry. Oscar, severely and suddenly, is struck with the urge to kiss him. But he won’t. That’ll wait for after the race, when the cameras are all gone and the lights have all gone out, and it’s just the two of them, champion-to-champion, eye-to-eye.

Oscar rushes to put his earphones on, then his balaclava, the HANS, his helmet, his gloves. The beautiful old ritual. He grins as he climbs into the cockpit, shaking with excitement and emotion.

He trembles and he shudders as the great wings of Yas Marina open up above, his monster of a car beneath, his incomprehensible feat of engineering, his technological miracle, his behemoth of a machine made divine, his peer, his equal, above all else, his friend—

He cut his teeth in McLaren, and now he’s got them out. In the car, he comes alive. His RB22 does too. He roars.

There is no fear anymore. He has nothing to be afraid of.

Oscar lets the feeling fill him—the gut-deep hunger, the awe and its enormity—it’s too big to hold, but he digs his claws in. He’s let go of so many things in his life, but he’s not letting go of this.

As he’s about to pull his visor down, he feels a pat on his helmet. Oscar turns his head.

Max is leaning over the halo, grinning wide, his eyes wild. Through the carbon fibre, Oscar hears him say:

“Eat them alive.”