malicious | max verstappen

eight.

ELYSE's POV

It was finally time for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Despite my enthusiasm towards the weekend, it seems luck wasn't on my side. Apparently the engineers wanted to test new additions to the car and they ended us with a P16 for me and a P11 for Lewis for race day.

For some reason, I felt distracted the whole weekend even though the whole Me and Neymar dating had calmed down a large amount, I just wasn't in the zone.

It was 34°C for the race and was expected to increase as the race went on and I was instantly missing night races where it was a little more chilly and a lot less sunny.

I had already finished two water bottles before getting in the car since the engineers had informed me that they decreased the amount of water I'd have access to during the race to help me go faster considering how far back I'd be starting. Even though both Lewis and I protested against it, they had already decided.

So here I was, waiting for the formation lap to start while I was 16 places away from pole. Once the green light appeared in front of me, I released the clutch and pushed on the accelerator harder than I ever had, while successfully passing 2 Haas's and a Mclaren into turn 1.

22 laps into the race and I had already gone up 7 places, now in P9. Lewis was already in the podium places and I was hoping to catch up with him soon.

After ten laps , I pitted for soft tyres and came out P10 but it was easy to overtake Sergio Perez's dead tyres and the two Alphatauri's. I made sure to wave at both Yuki and Pierre as I passed in between them and continued to chase more people ahead.

A few laps later, I was starting to feel fatigued after my water had finished when I was trying extra hard to reserve it and drink in controlled amounts so that I wouldn't dehydrate myself in this blistering hot weather.

"What the hell? You guys said you would reduce the amount of water I'd have by a little not drain the whole damn tank!" I expressed my frustration on the radio. "Do you know how hot it is out here?"

"We know, Ellie. Just keep pushing, there's not long left."

"Fucking unacceptable, man." I muttered before attempting to focus on driving.

By lap 49, my vision was starting to create black patterns in front of me and it was getting really hard to focus. But at least I was up to P4.

The person next up was the Mclaren of Daniel Ricciardo. As we neared a turn, I squeezed myself through, making our tyres just barely touch.

"Be careful, El, the FIA might give you a penalty if you continue driving this way." my engineer warned me.

"Yeah well maybe they should give you guys a penalty for my dehydration." My voice was nothing more than a mere whisper. My throat was drier than the Sahara Desert and it physically hurt to talk so I kept my mouth shut as I kept trying to get my head back in the game.

With 5 more laps left and and Lewis in first and Max in second, I could feel my driving getting sloppier and slower.

"Focus, keep pushing. 5 laps remaining. Let's get that 1-2." I heard Toto's voice echo through my ears— at least I thought it was Toto. Everything sounded extremely distorted and I could only press the confirmation button on my wheel to let them know I heard them.

As I neared the final lap it almost felt like I was driving from a third point of view and felt disconnected to the real world. I think that was where I started to slow down and dropped down to P6 by the time I passed the checkered flag. I could already imagine the commentators wondering what the hell happened but I was so scared that I'd loose consciousness before parking the car...until...