Australian Grand Prix #4
As the car is turned, Julien’s eyeline travels across pit lane and lands on Rafael. He stands at the pit wall with his large headphones on, looking back at the garage with his free hand on his hip. Unimpressed.
It shouldn’t feel threatening, but it does.
After the screens are placed over his halo, Julien checks his telemetry. It’s about what he expects—he needs to do better. His attention slides from numbers and graphs to a close up of his own eyes on the broadcast screen.
That’s weird. They must be talking about him. Julien tries to avoid the leaderboard, but his curiosity is too much, and he scans the names for his own.
He’s fifth.
Holy shit, he’s in fifth place!
Well, he’s running with low fuel and the other teams are probably sandbagging like Thomas is, but it’s still proof Julien belongs here. Even after three years, he still has it. He can pick up exactly where he left off.
After some minor adjustments, he’ll be winning in no time.
A tap to his helmet and Julien looks up. Why is Thomas out of his car? Isn’t he driving this session?
“It’ll get easier, frérot.”
Easier? P5 is phenomenal for a guy who drives his computer more often than a real car. A guy who—
Wait.
Thomas.
Dubois.
With a sinking feeling, Julien checks the timing chart again. Shit.
He’s not the “DUB” Ferraro—he’s the “DUO” Ferraro. The one in seventeenth. The one who would be last place if both Sobbers weren’t reading as “IN PIT” and the Andes hadn’t lost his time to track limits.
Thomas is the Dubois who dragged a sandbagged car up into fifth place.
He leans over the halo and points at the telemetry. “This is where you’re having the most problems. You don’t trust your brake enough, so you slow too early.”
The Andes finishes his second lap and leapfrogs Julien on the timing chart. Eighteenth now. If there was a podium for last place, he’d receive a trophy.
The broadcast switches from the track to inside the Ferraro garage, to the image of Thomas teaching his baby brother how to drive.
His baby brother is nearly last place in a top field car. Because his baby brother doesn’t know anything about racing. He’s only on the team because Thomas is so good he can make anybody—even a nobody like his baby brother—a better driver just by gracing them with his presence.
Pathetic. Insulting.
This is the absolute worst-case scenario.
“Thomas.” Julien interrupts his brother’s rant about everything he failed at. “Could you please leave? I can take it from here.”
“Quoi?” Thankfully, Thomas pulls back. “I am just trying to help.”
“I know, but could we do this after practice? I wanna try and figure it out myself first.”
I didn’t ask for help. I’m still an athlete.
Shut up, Rafael.
“Of course, mon chou.” Thomas kisses the top of Julien’s bug and dirt-splattered helmet before he leaves and the entire embarrassing interaction is caught and broadcasted out to the world.
Julien wants to grab his brother and shake him. To yell that he’s twenty-four now—that he’s an adult who doesn’t need forehead kisses.
Before that, he needs to finish better than eighteenth.
Julien checks the telemetry again and mimes pressing on the brakes as he imagines each turn.
“Free Practice is just for practice. The real test will begin tomorrow afternoon.”
That’s easy for Thomas to say. He isn’t the one who barely reached P14 by FP2.
How he managed to drag a sandbagged car all the way up to P3, second only to the Red Boars, should be investigated.
“Right.” Julien couldn’t escape the stares and glares of everyone in Ferraro hospitality during team dinner. Thomas tried to cover for him, but the fact is Julien wasn’t good enough in the car today.
After everything, he really is just some nepo-sibling.
How pathetic.
“Hey, Julien!” Rafael’s voice cuts through the crowd of red shirts shuffling towards the back parking lot. Both brothers turn as he jogs up to them. “Could I talk to you real quick?”
Julien doesn’t need another person to tell him he sucks at driving. He sees it in the eyes of the mechanics and engineers. He hears it in the thinly veiled questions from reporters, in the whispers that quiet when he turns. “If it’s about Free Practice—”
“No, no, it’s about—” Rafael points to his collarbone with his free hand. “I need help. And you offered your help, so here I am. Asking for it.”
“For help?” Julien repeats. “From me?”
Rafael is surrounded by people who know the Brazilian driver much better than Julien does. People he feels more comfortable around, who he’d allow to open a door for him or carry his tray.
Julien’s just a stranger, remember?
“Is it something I can help with?” Thomas asks.
“Nah, it’s something Julien offered his expertise in.” Expertise? He can’t mean—
Let me know.
Rafael raises his eyebrows and Julien’s cheeks flame.
“Go on without me, Thomas. I did tell him I’d help.” Though that particular offer is disappearing with every moment they discuss it in front of his brother.
“I can also—”
“No!” The last thing Julien needs is for Thomas to insert himself into this stupid situation. “It’s alright, I’ve got it.”
Rafael just grins like an idiot. “Don’t worry, we’ll take my car back to the team hotel. See you tomorrow.”
Thomas studies the two of them, worry and confusion evident in his brow, but he finally turns away and follows the crowd out to the parking lot.
Before Rafael can say anything incriminating, Julien drags him off the pedestrian pathway, towards a large tree. “Why would you talk about your dick in front of my brother?!”
Julien would punch the guy, but Lorenzo would probably fire him if he further-injures their already-injured driver. Especially if he can’t do any better than fourteenth.
He really needs to do better than fourteenth.
“I wanted to float an idea by you before we got to the hotel, but our drivers are nosey bastards.” Rafael watches the team pass by, but no one notices the duo hidden behind the tree.
“So jerking off didn’t go well?”
Rafael shrugs. “It was what it always is. At least with my left hand it could almost feel like someone else.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“It wasn’t actually someone else.” Well, yeah. That’s how it works. “My… friend found an answer that works for him. Do you know the phrase ‘fuck buddy’?”
Julien snorts. “Yeah, I’m familiar.” Too familiar, but that’s embarrassing to admit out loud.
“Maybe you can help me with this—” Rafael attempts to move his arm, but the sling keeps it strapped to his body. “And I can help you with something as well.”
With racing. He’s talking about racing. Because every single person in the entire fucking paddock wants to give Julien advice about racing. “I don’t need help with anything.”
“Not even your hair?”
“What?!” Julien pats his curly locks, looking for any pieces that might be out of place. Sure, he could use a trim, but he didn’t think it looked bad. “What’s wrong with my hair?!”
“I can help you if you ask for it.” Rafael’s head tilts forward, and he looks up through his thick eyelashes, a teasing smile playing on his lips.
It’s hard to resist that look from an advertisement for one of his many brands, much less in person.
“No.” But Julien can’t be distracted by attractive men who use their bedroom eyes against him. “Don’t you have groupies for this sorta thing?”
“I get by, but I don’t think I should be clubbing in my condition.” Rafael wiggles the fingers of his bound arm again. “Besides, it’s convenient to have something ready to go.”
Some-thing. Like a willing hand, no matter who it’s attached to.
Julien gets around well enough, and no-ties is how he prefers to work anyway, but with Rafael so bad at jerking off, it doesn’t seem like Julien would get much out of a potential arrangement.
Not unless he can suck up his pride. “What did you think of Free Practice?”
“That sounds like you’re asking for help.”
“I’m asking for your opinion. It’s different.”
Rafael hums. It feels like he isn’t going to say anything else, but he finally relents. “You run a different line.”
“A different race line? Even in FP2?”
Julien was hesitant about the walls at first, but he definitely kept closer to the race line once he was more comfortable. At the very least, he would’ve noticed if he was on the wrong side of the road as everyone else.
“Not the walls thing, your apexes. I thought it was a fluke, but you did it every single time, like you’ve run the same lap hundreds of times.”
Julien has run the track hundreds of times—on simulators. “So… what? If I stick to your race line, I’ll drive faster?”
Rafael’s eyebrows raise. “Sounds like help.”
“Fine! Yes, I’ll jerk you off. What’s wrong with my apexes?!”
The older driver shifts his weight, leaning back and standing tall with an air of victory. “They’re good. I want to try and recreate your laps once I’m healed.”
Julien tries to find the harsh critique buried in the comment. Good? Is that sarcasm? If not, that almost sounded like… a compliment? “What?”
“You lose time in braking. Our brakes are stronger than Form 2 cars, so you need to trust them more.”
“Trust—?” That’s just the same advice Julien has received all day. “No, what about my race line? The thing you liked? My apexes?”
“Yeah, it’s interesting. You position the car in a weird way over some of the curves.
You’re still slow, but I checked the data and you shave a couple of meters off the entire lap.
If you get your braking under control, you could do some serious damage during Qualifying—cut out a few hundredths, even. ”
But Julien does the same racing line all eRacers do. It’s nothing special.
Then again, there are thousands of eRacers all over the world who try new things, learn from each other, and evolve.
If other, real, drivers aren’t adapting their driving style to match, maybe it could give Julien an actual advantage in Qualifying.
An advantage.