Chapter 22
Max
“How did it feel after switching to the soft tires?” one of my engineers asks as we stand in the team’s spacious facility.
I’m in the building where our cars are stored in between races. After hours of analyzing numbers and giving the engineers and mechanics feedback from this weekend’s race, they continue to ask more questions that the numbers can’t always account for.
Once I’m done here, I’ll spend an hour in the team’s simulator implementing a few of the tweaks and changes we’ve gone over to strategize for our next race in Montreal.
“Soft tires always feel best. Especially in Miami,” I tell him.
He nods and writes something down on the clipboard in his hands.
I watch, amused, as he mumbles something to himself as if asking and answering his own question. Staring at him, something my father used to say comes to mind.
He would tell me that while it’s the drivers who get the most recognition, it’s the engineers, mechanics, and members of the pit crew who deserve just as much if not more of the screen time.
“That’s why the Constructor’s Championship is as important as the Driver’s Championship,” he’d told me.
Though I respected my father’s words, I always placed more importance on the Driver’s Championship. My very first memories with my father were of watching past Formula 1 heroes raise the championship trophy over their heads in triumph as champagne was sprayed over them.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched my father’s winning races and celebrations. It’s been years since I rewatched.
“I worked with your father.” The engineer’s words pull me out of my memories.
I look down at him, not saying anything.
“For a short time,” he says. “I was a young apprentice. Thought I wanted to be a mechanic.” He smiles, nodding.
I don’t talk about my father with anyone. It was a rule I established early on in my career. The last thing I wanted was to be inundated with the constant comparisons. I’d spent most of my time in the lower levels of my sport, hearing it.
“Severino only spent one year in Formula 2 before finding a Formula 1 team. Is that your goal, Max?”
“Severino used to walk the track before every race and memorize it in one go. What is your pre-race strategy, Max?”
“Max, what do you think your father would say about your performance in that race?”
And those were only the questions and comparisons from the journalists. Since my father’s death, I’ve been hearing from my mother that I never would match his level of expertise and impact on the sport I love.
It became so much of a broken record for her that by the time I signed with my first F1 team, her words no longer had much of an impact over me.
I learned how to school my features and harden my emotions in the way that the helmet I wear is forged out of carbon and kevlar, offering me the protection needed in case of crashing into a wall at two hundred kilometers an hour while also being lightweight.
It allows me the ability to smile for the cameras and public and maintain the fortitude to keep her words bouncing off of me, inflicting the least amount of damage.
Or, at least, that’s what I tell myself.
For no reason at all, Annalise’s face appears in my mind.
This isn’t anything new. I often have visions of her roaming around the streets of my mind.
Yet, this particular image is of that day in Bahrain.
Where my mother insisted on speaking with me before qualifying because she was still pissed that I hadn’t personally handled her travel arrangements to the race, leaving her to have to fly economy, of all things, for the final leg of her journey.
Her outrage over the slight led her to telling me how much of a disappointment I am and how happy she is that my father isn’t alive to see it. Her words struck my carbon-kevlar emotional veneer with minimal bruising, until I peered over her shoulder to see Annalise standing there, watching.
With her perfect mouth agape, shock reigned in her gaze before reality sunk in. The surprise morphed to disbelief right before changing to something darker.
Anger.
Outrage.
Offense.
On my behalf.
Once I had that realization, the inside of my chest lit up like the Las Vegas Strip on race night.
“It was Severino who convinced me to give engineering a shot,” the engineer says, drawing my attention his way.
I’d forgotten he stood in front of me.
Annoyance races down my spine because he’s shifted my attention away from the only person I want to think about right now. But then I take in the way his eyes have lit up, the upward turn of the corners of his mouth, and the way his hand slowly runs across the clipboard in his hand.
As if he’s in reverie.
My father’s reminder that everyone on a team is as important … if not more so than the person behind the wheel.
“We don’t build these cars alone,” he’d once told me after he snuck me into Amato’s facilities when I was just five years old.
No one except essential personnel is allowed to see the cars before their debut.
Even back then, drivers had very limited access to the team cars before the start of the race.
But I’d asked my dad dozens of questions about the car after his first test drive of the season. He must’ve gotten so sick of me that he relented and brought me in to see the car for myself, a secret between the two of us, and one of the engineers who’d let us into the facility.
It was then that he stressed the importance of everyone on the team after I’d told him what a great car he’d built.
“I didn’t build the car,” he corrected me, and then took me over to the wall to show me the names of all fifty members of the Amato team at the time. He knew the names of everyone without looking. Knew their wives and children’s names if they had them, as well.
“How so?” I ask the engineer.
The lift of his eyebrows and gleam in his eyes tells me he wanted me to ask this question.
“When I mentioned that I didn’t think I was smart enough to get a degree in engineering, he told me the story of the Formula 1 team owner who’d publicly announced that this sport had no place for people like him.”
I swallowed down the anger that rises in my throat.
Nearly three decades ago, my father was a Brazilian man working his arse off to break into a sport dominated mainly by Europeans. For many of them, his skin was a little too sun-kissed and his accent when speaking English was too thick for their liking.
“Then he pointed to the picture on the wall taken the first time he won the Driver’s Championship.” His smile widens. “He’d said that the owner and his team were no longer in Formula 1 but that he was still standing.”
Many teams have come and gone in F1 over the decades.
“That’s my favorite picture of him,” I confess before I can stop myself. What I don’t say is that I still have that signed photo on the wall of my bedroom. One of my most prized possessions.
“What’s your name?” I ask the engineer.
“Samuel.”
I extend my hand out to shake his. “Pleasure to work with you, Samuel,” I say, although we’ve met before.
He gives me a puzzled expression at first but eventually shakes my hand.
“I have to admit, I was surprised when I heard you were joining the team,” Samuel says. “I mean, many of the rumors claimed you had no interest in joining Amato.”
I almost tell him that those weren’t just rumors. It’s true that I had zero interest in being a driver for the team sporting fire engine red as their signature color. But it’s a partial truth.
“There’s another rumor going around,” I comment.
That piques his interest.
“That Amato is in contention to win our first Constructor’s Championship in over three decades,” I say.
He runs a hand through his hair as if he hasn’t allowed himself to even consider such a thought.
“What do you say, Samuel?” I ask. “Should we make it happen?”
Samuel glances around, eyes roaming over to the various car parts in the facilities before his gaze lands on the simulator.
“I think I’d like that,” he answers, voice low but distinct.
I squeeze his shoulder. “Then why don’t you show me a couple of things before I jump into the simulator one final time before heading out.”
Samuel eagerly answers my questions about the car and a few issues I had in my last race before I get into the simulator.
After a couple of practice simulations, I decide I’m not done for the day. By the time I reach my flat, I’ll have enough time to use the gym in the building to get in a good workout before the day is over.