Lone Wolff | Charles Leclerc

14 - champagne showers

The rumor quickly died down again before the next race weekend in Baku as we paid no attention to it and we both just joked about it over text messages. After that, he was suddenly dating Taylor Swift and I told him that I'd love to have a rumor like that as well. During this time, I noticed how I reacted differently from last time a dumb rumor had started and figured that I was also growing into my place in F1 and in the limelight. I was still annoyed, but my head was dealing with it better. I had tried to find Charles after the race, but he was nowhere to be seen after he DNF'ed. I had seen him entering the garages again from a distance, but that was it. We had texted a little bit during the race, where I mostly tried to put him at ease. It broke my heart to read his messages where he was clearly mad and frustrated about himself.

I almost cried when I had to leave Willow again on Tuesday to go back home and catch the horribly long flights, but she promised that she'd make sure to come to England again soon. I had missed her so much and the week I got to spend with her, getting a small glimpse of her life in Australia and giving her a taste of mine in F1 was just the best thing that had happened to me in a long time. It had been way too long. Willow told me she'd try to come to the GP in Silverstone in a couple of weeks. She loved the atmosphere of F1. I teased her about her wanting to see Daniel again and she tickled me in return, I screamed, but knew enough and left it there.

In the three weeks between Australia and Baku I worked quite often at the office in Brackley. I took the train to a city close to the office that had a direct connection to London by train and took the company car that I had parked there to take me to Brackley. As I lived in London and I had no place to park the expensive car that I got anywhere near my shady studio, I took the first part of my journey by train and drove the last part myself. I loved public transport, as it was a place where I could ground myself and just disappear and basically read my book in peace. The car was a little present from Toto, but he said it was just a company car, paid for by the company to accommodate my journey, but I knew that not everyone got this treatment, but I was grateful because otherwise, my journey to work would've been so much longer. And the car was also quite cool, as I was used to driving in my friend's very old crappy cars and this was a brand new one, not even that fancy but to me, it was the most fancy thing I had ever possessed. Maybe this was one of the pros of having a rich father?

 "No pressure, if you don't want to, you don't have to. Only the drivers and your father need to do a certain amount of press, you don't, so lucky you." Olivia grinned on my computer screen and I chuckled. I often had lunch with Mick when we both were around the factory, who was working the simulator quite often, and it was very nice to see a friendly face around, as Olivia had been working from home during the break. I had a lot to do, and Olivia had told me that many people wanted to interview me and wanted to know if I was ready, but I wasn't sure.

 "Yes, lucky me." I joked and adjusted my headphones. "But, I'll think about it. I just think that I'm not trained enough to not embarrass myself I think when they ask weird questions, you know. I'd love to be part of some videos or something, ones that we edit later on though, just to get less camera shy and practice that first? I don't know if that's possible, if people want to see and hear more of me that way they get something..." Olivia nodded excitedly on screen. She had told me earlier that she was working on some challenges and questions for our drivers to put online for entertainment purposes for our fans.

 "I'll see what I can do. Maybe we can do some TikTok content in the future, they loved the video of you singing. You have no trouble in presenting yourself in a good way, so it will mostly be helping you with what to say and what to avoid when being interviewed. I think something casual to put you more out there on our social media, as people want to see more of you and that way they'll get more and we can completely mold it to our liking." Olivia explained and I had nodded. "And maybe if you get to meet more people, you can just find some interviewer or a podcast that you feel comfortable having a conversation with eventually, because again, you don't have to if you don't want to."