That's Racing Baby | Lando Norris

Chapter 53: Race Thirteen

this one is a long one but be patient with it, i think it's worth it.

Race day in Spa. Usually Emilia's favourite day of the week, yet not today. She still lacked that enthusiasm she usually had for her job. Though, she didn't let that bother her. Emilia was focused and put all thoughts aside as lights out approached.

"You ready?" John asked through the radio as she settled into her car.

"Definitely." Emilia replied confidently. She wasn't confident at all. She was actually scared. After Anthoine, she feared the first couple of laps at Spa. A crash could easily happen and she really couldn't deal with one today. Especially here.

"Okay good. Thirty seconds." John warned. Emilia gripped her steering wheel tighter as she prepared herself for the formation lap. No one spun on the formation and everyone made it safely to the grid. Red replaced the black space on the lights that slowly turned on then pausing before the black resurfaced. The race was underway.

George, beside Emilia, got a better than her so he was edging ahead into the first corner. She left him plenty of room not wanting a repeat of Canada. Emilia had Charles' rear tyre in line with her front wing. She was wary of both cars as she turned into the first corner. A Red Bull and Mercedes colliding and spitting debris all over the track distracted her so how she made it without any damage she would never know.

George was one side of Charles and Emilia was on the other. The Ferrari was in a Williams sandwich as they headed towards the bottom of the hill. Emilia didn't like the look of this. There were not room for three cars though she would not be the one to pull out of it. Yellow flags were waved presumably for the crash at turn one and then a full safety car was brought out starving the audience of this battle.

Emilia would have enjoyed that battle but she couldn't help worrying about crashing at the top of Eau Rouge. The safety car only lasted a few laps before the race restart. She was behind George but ahead of Charles. Williams had instructed George to keep relatively close until Emilia could build a gap to the Charles otherwise she would be vulnerable at the restart.

George's slipstream helped massively as the power of Charles' Ferrari combined with the slipstream would have meant he'd overtaken her if her teammate wasn't there. However, she did have to do some hard defending on the first lap to make sure she stayed in P6. She'd lost one place to George but gained two positions due to Max and Lewis crashing at the first corner. That meant two major point stealers were out gifting more points to everyone else. Williams had to take advantage of that.

Eventually, she grew a gap to Charles and kept relatively close to George. However, being in George's dirty air was ruining her tyres. Emilia had to pit earlier so her and George would potentially be on different strategies. The car in front of her was Lando who was three seconds ahead and with a good pit stop and brilliant out lap, she would get out in front of him. Of course, it didn't go to plan. Her front left tyre was painfully slow to come off and she watched the mechanics struggle. It felt a lot longer than six seconds she was stationary for.

"Sorry about that. Pace needs to make up for it." John said as she came out the pitlane. There was a bit of traffic because of her slow stop but she sailed past it on the Kemmel straight.

Usually, you spend around eighty percent of the time at full throttle and Emilia was really trying to increase that to make sure she got out ahead of Lando. Although, Emilia had to be careful not to take too much out of her tyres as that would disadvantage her towards the end.

To no one's surprise after her slow pit stop, Emilia came out further behind Lando. George still hadn't pitted and was going longer to see if that would help him have fresher tyres to excel on at the end. Essentially, Emilia was in P4. She had George, who hadn't pitted, ahead of her, then Lando, Checo and Valtteri. She was catching George so if he pitted now, he would be behind her. Williams were just waiting for the perfect time to pit him. The gap between him and Lando was decreasing but he would have better pace on fresher tyres.