Amber & Honey ~ [DR3]

3. Reintroduction

Season Testing: Bahrain, March 2022
6 Months Later

"So what is it?" The words leave my mouth as my eyes dart around the garage with the buzzing and wherring of tools. My brother smiles at me, his eyes narrowing at me in disbelief. He's always found my slight cynicism boring, probably because he'd never really known anything but positivity in his life.

"What's what?" He asks for clarity, knowing fine well what my question is.

"The catch?" I add with an eye roll. This time Lando rolls his eyes at me. "There's no way you've signed another four years here and there's no catch to it." I hum as we walk through the garage of people up to the drivers room. It's almost like his office, I guess.

No longer looking as nervous now that I'm critiquing his workplace in private Lando's shoulders relax a little. "There's no catch. I love it here. " He tries, smiling at me. I raise my eyebrow at him. I suppose when the moneys as good as it is in F1 there's no real catch. "I mean," there's a scratch to the back of his head and I can almost sense his discomfort. I'm fighting a laugh at the sudden admission. After a moments silence he quietly hums, "The cars possibly a bit shit right now." I snort quietly at the admission, he'd never say anything like this outside of his room. Actually no, last season with Charlotte here to control outbursts he'd have never say anything outside his room. This season without her? Who knows.

"I thought it was going well?" I ask in confusion.

"It was." He mumbles, sifting through his backpack to find something inside, I'm guessing his phone. He hadn't text his new girlfriend in about 20 minutes, so it would make sense. "It is. It's not comfortable yet though, and the other cars could be better than they're showing right now." I nod in consideration of his points. I remembered the term he had used before this conversation on the phone to our dad, sandbagging I think it was, and it had happened before.

Neither Lando or his teammate Daniel were completely happy with the car yet. They didn't look comfortable and there were some...teething problems to say the least. Brakes were overheating, buttons weren't in the place they expected. There's differences between the simulator times and actual times for laps too apparently. It's a whole other world to me and I'm mostly receiving the information by overhearing it which can make everything more confusing. In saying this,whilst I didn't fully understand, I knew it mattered to Lando, which meant it did (in some way) matter to me as his older sister.

Also, he was just awful when he was stressed out so I'm trying to keep him as level headed as possible.

"We can get it going. It'll get better." He says in a semi-confident tone. I'm not sure if he's trying to convince me or himself but the positivity is always a good sign, I guess, so I nod my head in agreement. There's always the opportunity to work on the car throughout the season.

"Don't you wanna go to another team? Try it out?" Lando hums at the question, I'm sure it's something he's spoke with at length with his agent and manager before negotiating this new deal. I just want to hear it from him. I haven't seen him for two months.

"I like it here." Lando replies simply, tapping his away on his phone. "There's no space for me in the other top teams right now, and won't be probably for the next few years." He shrugs as I nod listening, this is kind of true. "Trust me Ambs, it's a good deal." Lando huffs again, sliding his eyes away from the screen and over to me on the chair just to the left of where he's sat on the massage bed in his room.

The thing with Formula 1 is, it's all glitz and glamour is that it's all where people will see it. Even with my little brothers new hundred million pound deal with Mclaren, his designated room in the Mclaren area of the racing compound was simple to say the least. There was a massage table, which Lando was currently leaning against, a sofa tucked in the corner, an office desk and table and 2 white fold out chairs for guests, one of which I'm sat on, making up the room. Its not fancy and least of all is it glamorous, but it's the one place Lando can find peace and quiet in all the chaos around him on race days.