"I read an article from F1 official app. You want to read it?"
"Yeah." She handed him her phone after she re-opened the article. He sighed heavily after reading the last paragraph. "Thank you."
"Erm, will you say something to the media about this?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. I think that I'm not ready to talk anything for today."
"Okay."
"After qualifying, I'll bring you to meet Christian, Helmut, and probably some other people there," he told her his plan to visit his former team's hospitality.
"Yeah, we'll go there after the interview." She then held both of his hands. "Will you be okay?"
He smiled at her. "I'll be okay. This won't affect me during the qualifying."
"I'm sorry that I told you this now. I should've waited, probably after the qualifying ends."
"Please don't worry about me. I'm glad that you told me now rather than later. I'll be fine, I promise."
He leaned forward to kiss her forehead. Then, both of them left the room and went down to the first floor of the hospitality. She would watch the qualifying from there, while he and Antti walked together to the team's garage.
On the qualifying session, he failed to go through to Q3 as his time was only 12th fastest. But he would start from P10 on the following day as some drivers were awarded with grid penalties for engine changes.
During the interview, as Clara expected, some reporters would ask him about Dietrich's passing. Seb only mentioned that it was a big shock, but he refused to speak further as he wasn't ready to share any thoughts about his former colleague.
---
All the teams had been in Mexico only some days after the US Grand Prix. A strong P8 on Sunday's race meant that Seb scored points for three consecutive races. He felt better a day after he found out the news of Dietrich's passing and was finally ready to speak some words about the Austrian businessman to the media.
He had planned something as a tribute to Didi. He had informed Jens, his helmet designer, to create a special helmet with Red Bull design. It was based on his karting helmet back in 1999. Of course, he had had an approval to use the design as he wasn't a part of Red Bull family anymore since he moved to Ferrari in 2015. The helmet itself was quickly sent from Germany to Mexico.
Seb was in the driver's room, opening the box that contained his new helmet. Clara was also there to see it for the first time. They both smiled when he lifted the helmet. It was obviously dominated with blue and silver colour. There were Red Bull logo, "Danke Didi!", and "S. Vettel" on both sides.
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"So, what do you think?" he asked while looking around the helmet.
"It's beautiful, Seb. It really reminds me of our time in Red Bull."
"I agree. Without him, I would probably never be here in Formula 1 and... I would never know you."
She smiled shyly. "Yeah, you're right. Now I'm more grateful than ever that he was the person who interviewed me back then."
"I'm grateful that you could impress him, so that he appointed you to replace Britta." He could her laugh a little. "Didi was an important person to me. It was an honor for me to get to know him."
"He was very humble. If I'm not mistaken, when you won your first title, he held a camera and took some photos of you and other guys in the garage. Do you still remember it?"
"Erm yeah, he was there but I don't think I remember it."
"Wait. Let me find the photo first." She took her phone out of the pocket of her trousers and searched for that photo on a website. She smiled as she found it. "Here it is. Vladimir took the photo."
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He chuckled. "Ah yeah. It was such an amazing moment. What I remember is that he hugged me so tight and told me how proud he was of what I achieved."
"Of course he was."
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation. She walked away from him as she wanted to know who that was. "Jimmy?"
"Clara, I've heard that Seb has a special helmet for this weekend. I have to take pictures of it to be posted on our social media," Jimmy, one of Aston Martin's photographers, explained.
"Oh, sure. Where do you want it to be photographed?"
"Garage will be fine."
She nodded. "Okay. There's something I still want to talk about with Seb. He'll catch up with you later in 10 minutes, if you don't mind."
"Sure, no problem. Thanks, Clara!"
As Jimmy had left, Clara walked back into the driver's room. She told Seb about it, so he quickly put his special helmet into a drawstring bag. After that, they continued reminiscing some of their moments when they still worked in Red Bull.
He finally walked to the garage a few minutes later with bringing his helmet. When he found Jimmy, he handed him his helmet as he left it all to him where he wanted to take pictures of the helmet. A couple of crews approached him and they were interested to know that he would wear a Red Bull helmet once again.
Half an hour later, Clara looked at Aston Martin's latest post. She guessed that most fans would be surprised to see it, remembering that Seb wasn't sponsored by them anymore. But she was grateful that he didn't forget where he came from and who had helped him realizing his dream. Danke Didi.
