Cold As Ice

Foreword

If drivers have kids, theyre held to impossible standards. They cant even help us in peace at amateur karting races. Just ask Mick, Max, Kevin or Carlos. I can't quite fit my family in that category. Well I cant fit my dad in that category. Most people are far too afraid to approach him. So instead of dealing with bothersome fans, I just had to deal with the high standards.

So most of the time my dad made me hide my hair in my helmet and race like a boy. To most of my competitors for the first few years of my career, I was a boy. It was probably the best well kept secret. Kimi Räikkönen was mentoring the next upcoming driver. Thats all they thought. Until I crashed and busted my lip open. The medics made me take my helmet off. Everyone thought I cracked my head open with all the blood. We just threw some super glue on it and I was racing in the next heat.

I think thats the day my dad started to hate the media. After the race they wouldn't leave me alone. No one believed a girl could race at the level I had and be successful. They seemed to shut the fuck up finally when I won my first world championship. Instead of telling me I couldn't do it, they told me they expected me to win. Everything. There was a interview from my 16 year old season that grew quite infamous.

The reporter asked why I slid off the track in a downpour. I took the honor in explaining even though I making the racing look good and easy but its not.

The reporter didnt like my answer and asked me why I wasn't winning like Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc and Pierre Gasly.

I went into great detail rudely critiquing how Max and Charles drove, reminded the reporter they also slid off the track multiple times.

I had to ask who Pierre Gasly was. Little did I know that his name would follow me throughout my racing career. Apparently he had won that race in the rain. I told the reporter to congratulate him on a lucky race. Max, Charles and I wouldn't have let him win.

We three had quite a love hate relationship. I gravitated towards Max, perhaps because he was as blunt as me. Or that I could give Jos a good laugh from time to time. Or that my dad and I had given Max plenty of rides home from the track during the circuit season. Charles was fun to hang out on occasion with he wasn't drooling over Jules and how he raced in the divisions above us.

The only thing that makes my family special is that I'm my family's first born by accident. Being unplanned has it perks though. I'm the only child of a racer to have a seat on the grid with my dad also on the grid.

Oh yeah I'm the first and girl on the grid.

I raced in the Ferrari Academy with Charles. Meanwhile Max was flirting with Red Bull in their junior program.

He was sure to rub it in our faces when he got called up to race for Toro Rosso.
I had to "politely" remind Max that I had out driven him in F2 and that Red Bull had been struggling enough to need him.

A few world championships later in F2, Charles and I both got called up into F1. Im not going to deny that Charles had got the better rookie deal. I was going to get stuck in a Williams my first year and possibly longer but Alfa Romeo was in need of a driver as of 2020, courtesy of Leclerc. I was going to lose my seat in 2021 but signed on as a reserve for Haas. Kevin pissed Guther off and I was back into the fray by the first race of 2021.

After a long chain of events, Kevin and I where teammates going into the 2022. The assholes of the grid, both with serious rivalrys.

Kevin's was with the infamous Nico Hulkenburg.

Mine was with Pierre fucking Gasly.