That's Racing Baby | Lando Norris

Chapter 1

Driving, it should be easy. Push the peddles and turn the steering wheel. That's all it is. But if there are twenty cars on a narrow track. These twenty people are not ordinary, they fast and very competitive. They want to win just as much as each other and the cars they drive, they're no ordinary cars. They go from over two hundred miles an hour to fifty miles an hour in a hundred metres. Suddenly, driving isn't so easy. Not to mention the pit stops and the strategy games and all the rules, it was complicated. But that's Formula 1 and Emilia was racing in it.

Emilia was sat in her car watching the cars in the pitlane fly past her. It was all very real now. Different colours blurred past with green, white and red in the mix so she was only just able to tell who were driving the cars.

It was almost her go. In a few moments she would be speeding around the Melbourne track at speeds over 200 miles per hour and feeling forces at braking zones beyond a normal person's capacity. With all that said, Emilia was not nervous. At least, that's what she told herself. Her quick heartbeat and fast breathing disagreed with that.

Suddenly, the covers of her tyre blanket were off revealing shiny softs, the quickest tyre, and the signal came for her to come out the garage. Smoothly, Emilia slipped into a chain of cars and was soon out on the track.

The feel of the car became more familiar with every corner of her warm up lap pumping life in the form of heat into her tyres. Emilia became more adventurous with each lap. The track was dry but warm due to the blistering sun that would eat up tyres faster than usual meaning her stint on these tyres would be shorter than normal. But that was okay, it was only free practice one so Emilia would get the rest of that session and another two practice sessions before qualifying on Saturday.

Nevertheless, she kept pushing the limits trying to gain a fraction of a second around each corner. Braking later to improve her time by tiny amounts which might pay off later on. Though mostly, that session was just to get her comfortable and at one with the car.

After winning the Formula 2 championship in 2020, the first female to do so, Williams offered her a seat to temporarily replace Nicholas Latifi for the season and be alongside her fellow British driver George Russell who was in his third season at Williams. Emilia knew she was lucky to get the seat as there were only twenty on the grid so she would take the opportunity and work as hard as possible to keep it.

Emilia completed around ten laps before her engineer instructed her to come in. There was still over half an hour to go in the session so it would be likely that she would go out again. Without having to look at the stats, she knew that her confidence had grown with each lap meaning her lap time shortened. During the practices, teams tended not to go full throttle for a variety of reasons but Emilia was instructed to because of her lack of experience with the car.

Emilia stayed in the car for the rest of the session and completed ten more laps giving her a total of twenty laps and a time of 1:23.2 which was impressive earning her P12. She was in a new car with new settings and was substantially faster around the track compared to an F2 car. George was only 0.4 seconds ahead which wasn't bad considering his experience compared to the new rookie.

This year's Williams car had proven itself immensely faster in pre-season testing and George and Emilia's practice one times had confirmed that. Yes, it was still soon to tell, but maybe this year they had a chance at getting regular points and possibly a podium. It was a lot to dream for but there was hope.

After the chequered flag was shown, Emilia got out of her car and took off her helmet which she carried back to her driver room. She had about three hours before the next practice and would probably be called back to the garage in an hour to discuss where she could improve. But before that she'd probably speak to her trainer, Christine, about a massage then return to her garage.