Swerve | 𝑷.𝑮.

Part 35

As she closed the door behind her, Max grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze, catching her attention as she looked up towards him. Although Max looked down at the hand he'd grabbed only to frown at the red patches and small cuts across her knuckles, seeing the look on his face, Francesca pulled her hand from his and made her way towards her seat, not casting a glance to her team principal as she sat down and pulled the headphones onto her head.

Christian smiled at his drivers, not expecting for Francesca to not even look in his direction or for Max to just shake his head and turn away. There was an awkward silence in the air, interrupted by Christian clearing his throat and sitting forwards.

The entire time that her team principal was talking, Francesca never looked up.

Instead she stared at her hand, flexing it in and out of a fist and wincing at the small amounts of pain emitting from her knuckles with every movement.

"And well done on your win, Max." Christian smiles towards the Dutch driver.

"Don't congratulate me for something that shouldn't have been mine." Max snaps back.

Francesca raises her eyebrows, letting a whistle echo into the room. Max glanced up towards his teammate, struggling to hide his grin as Francesca smirked at him.

"Right." Christian pauses, confusion lacing across his face. "And Fran,"

"Francesca." She cuts him off. "You lost Fran privileges."

Her voice was cold, but still, she refused to glance up at him. Christian cleared his throat at the awkwardness as both of his drivers refused to look over at him.

"I'm sorry for how your race played out - the Mercedes' were just to quick."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night." She mutters back, flexing her hand again. "Fucking hell."

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Christian staring at her hand and quickly let it fall into her lap, turning her head towards him and raising an eyebrow which caused him to look away.

"Its something for us to take in for the next race." Christian continues. "Any input?"

"Yeah, how about we don't switch the faster car for the slower one." Francesca says.

"We're not getting into this again." Christian snaps. "Its bad enough that both of you have been in the media causing an uprising."

"No, we are getting into this." Francesca sits forwards, bringing her elbows onto the table.

"Fran." Max says in a warning tone. "Don't."

She rolls her eyes at him, turning her full attention to her team principal as the pit in her stomach turned to anger, slowly going from embers to a full on raging fire that travelled through every single vein in her body until everything was alight inside of her. Max only stared at his teammate, hoping that she wouldn't say something stupid but it was probably to late considering she had constantly been quoting Sebastian Vettel's words in the media since the end of the race.

And to be fair, he hadn't exactly been quiet about how annoyed he was himself.

"Why'd you swap us?" Francesca asks, ignoring the engineers getting uncomfortable.

"We already told you, Max was faster." Christian replies.

"So it wasn't the fact he was being beaten by Lewis Hamilton?"

"Max set a faster lap time."

"No I didn't." Max cuts in. "I was slower, I had Lewis and George right up my backside."