Australian Grand Prix #3
Shut up. Julien knows he isn’t special. He’s a stranger. “Sorry for leaving this here.” Julien lays the water bottle on his tray and lifts the whole thing, but another hand stops him.
“Hey, don’t leave so quick. This will be your team for the next two months.” Rafael doesn’t loosen his grip around Julien’s forearm until the younger driver sits again.
“You’ve driven with my race engineer, Davide, before? In Free Practice?”
“Right.” Julien nods to the heavyset Italian man Rafael usually sits next to in meetings. “Good to see you.”
“Ray, my number one mechanic, and Pit, my controls engineer.”
“Pit?” Julien leans forward, shaking hands across the table. “Like stop?”
“Like arm,” the gruff man answers.
“And, of course, Jill.” Rafael nods to the last man. “He doesn’t belong to me, though. He’s the front jack for both cars.”
Ray fake-coughs into his fist with a sneaky, “Slut.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Julien’s pretty sure he sat next to Jill on the egregiously long flight from Italy to Australia, but neither man mentions it when they shake hands.
“Glad you’re finally getting a chance to drive. I was in Form 2 the year you won the championship.”
“Really?” Then again, it was four years ago. Of course a front jack could be promoted in four years. Time only stops for Julien Dubois. “Who were you with?”
“Invictus.”
“Oh.” On Hugo’s team. That must’ve been disappointing. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine—we’re on the same side now.”
Pit clears his throat. “So… Thomas’s little brother?”
Great. “Yeah, that’s me.” Again.
“Cut it out with the little brother shit. He’s his own man.” Rafael reaches for Julien’s water, but stops. After a silent moment, he curses. “Any chance you’d be willing to grab one of those for me?”
“Nope.” Julien pointedly lifts the bottle and cracks the seal. “You’ve got one hand for one water. Figure it out.”
“Fast fuckin’ learner, you are.” Despite his lower tone, Rafael chuckles before he stands as dramatically as possible. He moans and groans, but Julien ignores him to work on his first plate of mushrooms.
“Hey, grab me one too.”
“How the fuck would I carry it?!”
With Rafael gone, Julien expects the other four men to talk amongst themselves. When they’re silent, he looks up, meeting their gaze. “What?”
“You’re not like Thomas.”
“We’re different people.” Julien pushes his empty mushroom plate away and starts on the flavorless melon. Why do they even have melon as an option? No one likes it.
Probably because idiots like him keep taking it.
“Are you… British?”
“My boarding school was.”
“This might be a stupid question,” Ray says. “But do you stream eRacing?”
Julien stops, his fork still stabbed through a chunk of melon. “What?”
“Your voice—it sounds familiar. I watch a couple of eRacers—”
The other men scoff. “You watch fake racing?!”
“When do you have the time?”
“Shut up, I like the commentary.”
“I sound like my brother,” Julien finally says. “If he had been bullied about his accent for too many years.”
Rafael returns as the table laughs. “You guys aren’t making fun of my reserve driver, right?” He drops his burden and hands out the water bottles he managed to tuck into his arm. “Look at him, he’s all red.”
Rafael taps Julien’s cheek with a smirk, and the reserve driver immediately turns away.
eRacing isn’t stupid. Julien is good in the car, so he’s good on the sim. And he’s good on the fancy sim at Ferraro, so he’s good on his home console. It’s all connected.
There are only twenty Formation 1 seats in the world. That’s it. Without a seat, it makes sense for Julien to continue racing however he can.
There’s the added bonus that, hidden away behind his shitty graphic profile picture, nobody brings up Thomas when Julien streams. Not once has his alter ego ever been compared to the famous Thomas Dubois. The same can’t be said about racing in person.
Multiple alarms ring out at the same time, and the men silence their phones in unison.
“C’mon.” Rafael nudges Julien with his free elbow. Is he always so touchy? “We need to get to the meeting.”
“Yeah, sure. Lemme just—”
The crew stands, abandoning their trays at the table. They’re not paid to pick up after themselves, but Julien can’t leave a mess in good conscience. He scrapes the table’s wasted food all onto one plate and stacks everything together.
Tray, tray, tray, plate, plate, plate, smaller plates, napkins, plate waste. The process is engrained in him, and he hauls the load to the corner of the room.
“I heard you’re racing this year.” Chef rarely leaves the kitchen, but he hovers as Julien sorts the dishes into the bucket on top of the trash can.
“Not the whole year—just six races.”
“We’ll all be watching from here.”
“Don’t make me nervous!” There’s a mysterious substance drying on Julien’s hand, but he’s already running late. He pumps some hand sanitizer over it, but the mess just spreads.
“Use the sink. Quickly—I don’t want other people thinking they can waltz back here.”
There isn’t a crowd of people desperate to get behind the counter, but Julien is grateful for warm water and harsh soap as he scrubs at his skin. Once everything’s dry, he dashes through the room and out the door.
He’s going to be late to his first meeting as a driver. That doesn’t bode well for the finish line.
“Thought I lost you.” Rafael greets Julien outside of hospitality, but he immediately takes off towards the garage. “If you suck at driving, you could always wash dishes.”
“Ha ha.”
Of course Rafael wouldn’t know the difference between a busser and a dishwasher. He doesn’t seem like the type of guy who has ever worked a job that paid minimum wage.
“Seriously, we’re gonna be late.”
“I didn’t ask you to wait for me!”
“Tough shit.”
They’re several minutes late when they slide into the meeting room. At least they made it before Lorenzo.
Thomas has an empty seat next to him that Julien grabs, while Rafael finds a spot further down the table, near Davide and Ray.
“Welcome to the first race of the year, everyone.” The door slams shut behind the team principal with finality, and Julien is relieved to be on the correct side of it.
His eyes find Rafael’s, and they share a small, knowing smile.
“I’m sure you all have noticed by now, but Rafael will be absent for six races while he heals from his injury. In his place, we have the younger Mr. Dubois.”
Through a sprinkling of applause, Thomas wraps an arm around his little brother and shakes him with excitement.
It’s so fucking embarrassing. Julien is a serious driver, not his brother’s show-and-tell project.
Their plan for Free Practice 1 is to gather as much information as possible. Both cars will run different wings, tires, fuel loads, and ride heights. The only consistency will be the green flow vis paint splattered across both front wings.
They’ll sandbag Thomas, hiding the true pace of the new Ferraro, but run Julien as normal to keep his confidence up.
Julien doesn’t need an advantage against his brother, but whatever helps the team gather data. At least the reporters will finally take him seriously.
When the engine fires up, the roar of the car vibrates Julien through to the bone.
Simulators can’t recreate this. Their speakers can’t capture that first jolt when Julien eases the car forward. The anticipation in his veins when he parks in pit lane behind an Ashton Marvin. The thud of his heartbeat as he counts to three and starts his out lap.
Even at a slower speed, the g-forces through the turns are significant. Julien isn’t a lazy reserve driver—he keeps up with his neck training—but he might’ve slacked off a couple of times when he wasn’t exactly in the mood.
He’ll pay for that this weekend. He can already tell.
There isn’t an out lap speed limit, but when the car in his mirrors starts inching closer, Julien pushes a little harder.
“Fast over the line,” Davide’s voice crackles in his earpiece. “We want a good base lap.”
That’s right—Julien is here to win races, not to marvel at the wonders of being back in the cockpit. “Copy.”
He accelerates through the finish line and pushes harder and faster than he feels comfortable with. As he shifts gears, his adrenaline urges him to do more, to be better, faster, harder.
The walls of Melbourne are strong and unyielding, and they butt up to the very edge of the track. Maybe even over the track? They look like they’re looming closer.
Julien knows this circuit, he runs it on the simulator, but he hasn’t ever driven the Australian GP in person.
On his console, if he hits the wall, he can just restart. On the track, the difference of an inch is the difference between finishing the lap and picking up pieces of his car from all over the road.
Better to play it safe for now.
Julien overshoots and hits the gravel in turn six, kicking rocks up onto the race line and further validating his fear of hitting the wall. He curses before pressing the mic button. “Sorry.”
“Practice is for finding the limit. This is supposed to be your push lap. Please push now.”
Supposed to? But Julien is pushing.
Once he crosses the finish line again, he slows and the reality of his situation sinks in.
Julien didn’t do well. He pushed as hard as he could, but it wasn’t enough. His time isn’t nearly as competitive as the rest of the grid. He could tell even before the Wilhelms passed him.
Well, Julien is nervous—anyone would be—and a little rusty. He’s allowed to be a little off the pace.
—For one lap.
Julien only has six races to prove himself. Every single lap matters. If he can’t stomach the speed, then he’ll never compete with the full-time drivers. Never be anything more than Thomas’s little brother.
Julien goes again.
After a second, much better, push lap, Davide calls him back into the pits. The mechanics hike up the car and wheel him back into the garage, disappointment evident on their faces.