Formula 1 One-Shots (II) REQUESTS CLOSED!

Daniel Ricciardo [Crash]

"Is he okay?" I ask with a bit of worry in my voice, trying to focus on the road and not think too much about Daniel who will be just fine. It didn't look like a big crash, but you never know if he was able to take his hands of the steering wheel for example.

"Already out of the car. He is fine, his car just got stuck in the gravel." My engineer reassures me, knowing exactly that he needs to calm me down because of my relationship with Daniel. I sight in relieve and focus back on my own race. Daniel has to wait now, and I will comfort him when I am out of the car at the end of the race, hopefully with a good number of points.

It takes a bit of time before all the debris is cleaned up and Daniels car is brought away from the track. I try to keep my focus up, watching closely the car in front, not wanting to crash in the back of it when it is breaking but I do not want the gap to get too big.

"Safety car is coming in; concentrate we want to finish this race on a personal best." A slight smile comes onto my lips because with P5 I am already on a personal best, but I am hungry for more and who knows, maybe I could gain another one or two positions. The race is still long, and we will see where it leads to.

I have a good restart, not getting a too wide gap between myself and Sergio who is in the car in front of mine. It does take me a lot of effort to get past Sergio because he has the stronger car, but I manage to do it when his tires are not good enough anymore and he slightly slides to the side, giving me, an advantage and I can drive past him. My pitstop was phenomenal and now I am in fourth position, already grinning like an idiot.

"Push if you can, Hamilton in front has a five second penalty." My engineer suddenly says and my heart beats faster for a second. I want to catch Hamilton, but I still have to be careful because I don't want to crash out. Starting to drive faster already, eyes glued to the track and ready to get myself and the team a podium.

"Tyres are good, give me a target time." The tires still feel good enough to push for a bit and after the team gave me a target time the hunt begins. I do see Lewis in front of me, but I don't know how big the gap is until I cross the line and wait for my engineer to speak up.

"That's P3, phenomenal job!" When he says these words a wave of happiness brushes over my body and a bright smile spread on my lips. This is my first podium ever and I can't express how I feel right now because my emotions are like a rollercoaster.

"Thank you, guys." I sniff and need to blink a few times because some tears welled up in my eyes. Who would have thought that I end up on the podium today?

In a kind of trance, I return to the pitlane, park my car behind the sign with the number three before I climb out of the car and jump into the arms of my team. Let them pat on my helmet while they scream in joy. The wide smile on my lips will stay there for a while and I do not want to leave everyone, but I have to follow the after-race procedure.

Before the podium ceremony begins, I have a few quiet moments with the other two podium sitters. I will share this moment with Lando and George who are both beaming with proudness and happiness over their podium.

"Hopefully, Daniel isn't too mad at you for taking him out." Lando says, knowing that his teammate is frustrated when he finished behind Lando and to make it even worse don't finish at all and my heart stops for a second. Daniel crashed out because of me?

"I took him out?" I ask in disbelieve and look from Lando to George, trying to figure out what happened. Yes, I had a little accident in the first lap but I though we all managed to escape it without crashing out. I though Daniel was out because of a different accident.

"Well, I watched the replay and you where sandwiched, there wasn't any space for you and because of this you clipped Daniels car and he crashed." Georges explains to me and even though this and the fact that the stewards did not punish me means that it was not my fault it still means that I am the one who ended Daniels race.

"He is going to be furious." I sight and suddenly the euphoric feeling disappears completely. Fighting with Daniel is always but fighting with him about something that happened at work is even worse. We always say we don't bring these things home, but I know how difficult it is to divide these things.

"Hey, put your smile back on, it is your first podium after all, and accidents happen." Lando tries to reassure me, and I try to put the smile back on my face even though it is not as bright as before. We enter the podium, and the British anthem is playing for George who just secured his first win with Mercedes, him being over the moon with his feelings while my happiness comes back while standing on the steps of the podium.

After the ceremony I want to go to Daniel and apologize to him, hoping he isn't too mad at me. I find Daniel it the paddock, walking around with his eyes glued to the ground, not willing to look at anyone while he is probably on his way back to his motorhome.

"Daniel!" I shout after him and luckily, he stops, allowing me to close the distance between us. Daniel already looks annoyed when he sees me walking up to him, dampen my mood again but I am determined to apologize to him not matter if it was my fault or not.

"Coming to shove your trophy up my face?" He growls, making me flinch. Great, he is mad at me. Simply ignoring his tone, I speak up again, finally wanting to apologize but my words are cut short.

"No, I wanted to..."

"I don't care you ended my race." Daniel huffs and starts walking again. I follow him, needing to make much bigger steps than he does to keep up with his pace. This is not how I wanted this day to end, I want to end this day with a slightly happier Daniel who is not mad at me.

"I had nowhere to go." I try to explain to him, but Daniel does not want to listen to my excuse or explanation or probably anything I could say right now.

"My teammate is getting a podium and I DNF the race because of you." His eyes would shoot daggers at me if they could, and I gulp. It was probably not the best idea to talk with Daniel right after the race while carrying my trophy with me.

"I came to apologize even though it wasn't my fault but seems like you don't care anyways." I mumble, no longer wanting to talk to him and I simply turn around and start walking away from Daniel. Normally we can talk trough something like this, but Daniel doesn't want to talk, and I don't want to get yelled at anymore.

"Love..." Daniel follows me, now with guilt in his voice but I do not want to hear him trying to be all sweet again. I ignore his attempts to look into my eyes and just hiss some words at him.

"Don't call me like that."

"I am sorry." Daniel apologizes for his behaviour, but I am not going to make it easy for him, so I simply say nothing. He snapped at me even though I had no fault in his crash and I do not want to be treated like that.

"I am the asshole in this situation." He continues but I stay silent and wait if he is going to say more.

"Congrats on your podium you did amazing." Daniel tries to catch my gaze and I allow him to look into my eyes when I say the next sentence.

"It is getting better."

"I love you?" Daniel tilts his head slightly to the side, hoping he finally found the right words. Now I can't suppress a smile anymore, I could never resist him saying I love you, no matter how mad I am at him.

"Perfect." Before I even manage to finish the word, Daniel pulled me into his arms, holding me close by his chest and continues to mumble how sorry he is.

On this evening we talked a lot. Talked about the race, the incident we had and after watching it for several times Daniel admits that I had no fault at all, and he apologized again. We talked about my first podium and celebrated it until it was really late.