The Limit (Sebastian Vettel)

123. True Grit

A/N: so those of you that are extra observant might have noticed what appears to be a mistake in my points calculations. I admit it. I cocked up somewhere but I can't for the life of me find out where.   I said in the previous chapter Daniel was 25 points ahead of Lily but somehow I got Lily's points wrong and she actually was only 23 behind him after Mexico so I've changed that now. 

Seb sat nursing a cup of hot chocolate as he waited for Lily to emerge from her meeting with the engineers. He looked out of the window at the rain falling in sheets. What a gloomy, miserable day! Was Lily's day about to become even more miserable?

It was Saturday evening in Brazil, and although Lily had qualified third fastest she'd had a loss of power just after she'd finished her fastest lap. The team had investigated and they would have told Lily in the meeting if the problem had been rectified or not. 

Seb desperately hoped that the issue had been fixable. He didn't know how Lily would cope with yet another setback.

He took a sip out of his hot chocolate. The best thing about not having to stick to a diet was being able to drink as much hot chocolate as he liked, and boy did he need it on a day like today. It wasn't warm like it usually was here. It was wet, windy and miserable.

He looked around as he heard several voices growing louder. A group of engineers had just left the meeting room, as had Mike Krack.

Lily was nowhere to be seen, neither was Joel. Lance walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

"Lance!" Seb called. The darkhaired Canadian headed over to him. "Where's Lily?"

"She's still talking to Joel and Peter." Peter was the team's head strategist.

"Her power unit?"

"Fucked." Seb's heart sank. How much more bad luck could she take? She'd need a new power unit for the race, which meant she'd take a grid penalty. She'd be starting from the back.

Lance excused himself and headed out into the rain, pulling the hood of his raincoat up.

Seb took another sip of his drink, wondering what mood Lily would be in.

Five minutes later he found out. The meeting room door opened and she walked out with Peter and Joel. Peter headed straight outside. Joel and Lily came to join him at the table.

"Have you heard?" Lily asked him. He took a good look at her, trying to get an inkling of how she was feeling. She looked very pale, but her expression was stonelike and hard to read.

"Yes," he told her. "Lance said."

"I'll be starting near the back. Not dead last as Zhou and Yuki have penalties, but as good as. I guess that's my championship fucked. I'm not going down without a fight though."

Fighting talk. That was good right? Seb thought.

"Can we get out of here?" Lily said. "I don't want to be around when the news breaks."

"Of course baby." He drained the rest of his hot chocolate and stood up. He took the empty cup to the recycling bin and dropped it into it. "Do you need a lift Joel?"

"Yes please Seb."

"I'll just grab my stuff," Lily told them. "And I need to tell Holly we're leaving."

Five minutes later Lily returned, Holly with her. The four of them headed outside. Thankfully the rain seemed to have stopped. They made their way to the car park.

They all climbed into the car. Seb started it up and reversed out of the parking space.

As they began the drive back to the hotel Joel spoke, breaking the heavy silence.