In the Spotlight (Max Verstappen - Book Two)

Chapter Six

The next day I'm much better. After almost fifteen hours straight of sleep I feel human again which is good because I had a load of media commitments to fulfil today having postponed everything else from yesterday and so although I wasn't driving today, I still arrived at the track at 9.30 am to try and make sure I could get everything done early and get another good night of rest before my day of driving tomorrow.

Nick was also with me at the track today which was good. I once again felt like I had my own personal family within the team to help me when everyone and everything else still felt alien to me. "Alright, so RB are keen for you to do some sort of gymnastics challenge video with GB athletes at some point with Max and maybe the Alpha boys but want to know when your preference for that would be? Also the photos of you guys from the Valentino party in Milan last year have gone slightly viral because of the RB driver lineup being the exact same and so there are some conspiracy theories that you all knew about Daniel." Olivia explains as we sit in the hospitality for a moment between all the interviews. I nod as she talks, barely taking any of it in as I read through some of the data RB sent me with a frown on my face as I concentrated more on understanding it. "Hey, are you listening?" To me, Olivia asks annoyed and I shake my head.

"Honestly, not really, after months of media things I don't care," I told her flatly. "It was fine then because there was no driving or racing. It was just training and media and that was fine. But right now I have stuff for driving to focus on so I'm sorry but I don't care - I trust you to sort all of that out. And no I didn't know about Danny in Monza, I found out a day before everyone else in Abu Dhabi but it's nice that we are genuinely all friends outside of the sport, so that's what I'll say if they ask." I say answering her question but my eyes are still trained on the data in front of me as I type out some code, squinting at the screen. I hear her huff and so I roll my eyes before continuing. "I don't mind when we do the gymnastics thing but ideally when I have a week or two to recover in case I pick up an injury," I tell her and I don't hear anything else from her so I just returned from the zone I was in before, this time pulling my headphones over my ears to focus more thoroughly as I type away on the computer so I can do comparison stats between the RB19 and Ferrari and Mercedes cars. Both of them were pulling out faster times in the first session of testing than Max.

I'm doing this along with going over some of the RB19-specific data that was sent to me trying to squeeze all the use out of the free time that I had before heading out for more interviews. I still hadn't seen Max let alone spoken to him as he was driving all day today. About forty-five minutes later I receive a nudge from Nick signalling a five-minute warning before my next media commitment. I nodded, saved all my work and sent some of the graphs I had produced to Daniella before closing my laptop and taking my headphones off. Nick quickly picked both of them up and slipped them into a bag which he promptly put on his back before slipping his hand on my lower back to help guide me through the paddock towards where I needed to be.

Filming TikTok's time, which to be honest, I didn't hate. I just followed the directions Sydney gave me as I tried to get a couple of the dance routines down before doing a few simple filters and reacting to what I got - including which F1 driver are you?  Where I got Max much to the amusement of everyone. After an hour of that Nick was joined by Olivia and we headed to a Sky TV interview which was meant to be a feature interview they would play between testing sessions tomorrow, I was surprised when we got there to see Max and Christian both sat relaxed and talking to Natalie Pinkham. I look confused at Olivia and she just shrugs.

"This was one of the things I tried to tell you about earlier." She says glaring lightly at me and I nod in realisation.

"Look, Liv - I love you but please can we start streamlining stuff? Like most important first then?" I ask and she sighs before nodding. "I need you to do more, manage more. Because I will have no time, I need all my energy on driving which means decisions like that and small stories...I mean we can go over them but let's pick our moments?" I ask her calmly as I study her face and see the realisation come over it.