letters [max verstappen]

4

April 2015 - Aragon, Spain

"When's the next race you think you'll be at?" Max asked. We had been on FaceTime for the last few hours, my Formula Renault debut was tomorrow and I was telling him about all the preparations. He was over a month into his first season of F1 and had a pretty miserable start, DNFs in 3 of his first 4 races, which meant he didn't want to talk much about his own career.

A small smile crept onto my face. "Well actually, there was something I wanted to tell you about." He perked up, sensing my excitement. "Campos has a last-minute opening in GP3, something about some VISA or legal problems with a driver, I don't know."

Max's eyes widened and his mouth curled into a smile. "And they want you to take the spot? Look at you, you haven't even started in single-seaters and you're already getting promoted." He chuckled.

I giggled. "Yeah, I don't know. I'll get to stay in the Eurocup too, there's only one overlapping race." I smiled. "Which means every weekend that there's a GP3 race-"

"You'll be there for the F1 race too." He grinned, finishing my sentence again. "Becks, this is really amazing." He said, his tone changed to become a bit softer and there was a comfortable silence between us as we smiled. Then his eyes widened with excitement. "What if I talk to Franz and Helmut? Maybe they can get you a role in the team and so whenever you're not busy with GP3 stuff, you can be in the F1 garage learning!"

I sighed, "That would be amazing. God, I don't know what I would owe you."

"How about dinner? Thursday night, in Spain?" He asked bluntly. I blinked, processing what he had just said. We had gone out together plenty of times, to dinner or parties or whatever, but we never really made plans at all, we preferred to just go with the flow, so the fact that he was asking me to dinner made it seem so formal. "Or not, if you don't want to, I just thought it'd be nice to get dressed up, take you out..." He started to trail off when he noticed I wasn't responding.

"Take me out? So like a date?" I asked boldly, swallowing the butterflies rising in my stomach.

Even from behind the screen, I could see his face turn red. "Yeah...like a date. Unless you don't want it to be of course."

I smiled lightly. I didn't have a crush on Max, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about us romantically, my mind going back to that conversation with Anthoine and Hugo. Either way, if he wanted to have an evening out together and treat me nice I wasn't going to say no. "That would be wonderful, Maxi. But since I owe you, I'm technically taking you out." I quipped.

He grinned. "Yeah, ok."

—————

As I was getting the straps tightened on my seat harness, I was surprised to see Anthoine come over to my car.

"Bon chance, Becca! Good luck with your debut." He had his helmet on, but I could see him grinning behind it.

"Thanks, Anthoine! Good luck to you as well." I smiled back, and we fist-bumped before he ran back to his car.

"Radio check." I heard Enzo in my ear as I pulled out of the pitlane to take the car to the starting grid.

"Loud and clear, let's do this." I replied. I pulled up to P10, my qualification for the day. The lights went red one by one, and I could hear the faint roar of the cars around me. Then the lights went out, and I pushed off.

——

The race went well, I kept it clean and managed to cross the line in what I thought was a good position.

"Excellent job, Becca, that's P7, in the points! Can't ask for much more on your debut." I heard Enzo's voice crackle in my ear.

"Thank you, Enzo, Louis, everyone. This is a dream come true, I can't wait for more." I chuckled. It was true, driving that Eurocup car was the happiest I had ever been.