In the Spotlight (Max Verstappen - Book Two)

Chapter Forty-Five

The rest of the summer break was pure bliss. Despite staying in Monaco, Max and I both managed to stay out of the papers and avoided all fan and paparazzi photos of us getting released. The only mystery surrounding us as far as we could tell was people speculating about the fact that we were both MIA, on our stories and in the press which led to some speculation but we could ignore that. People always speculated.

Max even surprised me with a week in the Swiss Alps to end our trip, inviting JC, Cameron, and Emilia with us as well as Nick and Liv which worked well for Bradley because he was able to spend an extra week at home while Nick trained the both of us and reported back to him instead. That was an awesome week, especially when Pierre left his family trip to join us, as did Lando for the last three days. The little training camp of dreams in the Swiss Alps before we all went back to the pen the following weekend, picking up the second half of the season with Max's home race in Zandvoort.

That weekend was not particularly good, not only did Mercedes come with practically a brand-new car that won the race by a good twelve seconds, but I had an engine failure after the ICE exploded on me four laps from the end, taking what would have been a ten point drop in points, instead making it a whole 25 loss to Lewis and 15 to Max. Monza was not good either, I had to take a full engine replacement which took me past the four that were legally allowed and I took a back-of-the-grid engine penalty. The only benefit to me here was that I wasn't the only one, with Lewis strategically taking it here as well as George and Carlos. I managed to fight my way through the traffic and bring the car home in third, Max on the top step and Charles in second but good lord was that race difficult because I had Lewis on my rear wing the whole time, however, he was smart enough to not properly try and challenge me until we were at the front once again. I possibly could have pushed for second, but with his relentless pace and our car still waiting for its upgrade I was stuck in third in the end.

Singapore remained one of Lewis' strongest circuits when he took poll with an impressive lap that Max and I were nowhere near matching. The balance of the car had been wrong all weekend and we both went into the weekend knowing what the result was likely to be, with Mercedes dominance being back on form and our next and final set of upgrades not being expected until the following race in Suzuka. Leaving the track that weekend the mood was low despite the double podium, everyone in the team could feel Mercedes breathing down our necks and if our next upgrade didn't bring in the expected performance there was a very good chance that we would see Mercedes take both the constructors and the drivers championship. Max and I exchanged very few words on the flight to Japan both feeling the pressure, not only from the team but our own personal expectations of ourselves and the season. My lead in the table had dwindled significantly and Max was right back in the fight with me and Lewis which put more pressure on the team as no one seemed to know who the priority was anymore.

However, despite all this we managed rather successfully not to let racing affect our personal relationship, taking small breaks of time between races to reconnect and both of us being frank about whether or not we were struggling and what specifically we were struggling with.
Tokyo was a nice reset, we spent the first two days there just filming videos for the media team and as Yuki was a reserve driver and getting his free practice session done in my car in front of his home crowd which made me anxious as it was our long-awaited upgrades but Yuki had been on the simulator nonstop and I figured that he was as good a person as anyone else to do the session and get me some data, plus it was nice for him to race in front of his home crowd.
"Are you okay?" the Japanese driver who was an inch taller than me asks as we stand in the back of the garage. I chew my lip as I look nervously at the car. It looks quite different and while the simulator had suggested up to an extra half a second of performance I was still sceptical. It was only going to be one more bad race for me and a good one for Lewis or Max and I would lose my lead in the championship, something I had held ever since Imola after my first race win.