The heat in Austin wasn't forgiving. Dry, heavy, sunlit until it burned. The kind of weather that made everything feel slower and faster at once.Isack sat on the edge of the pit wall, boots untied, race suit peeled halfway down. The F1 weekend was already pulsing through its rhythms, but his head was somewhere else. Somewhere humid, sticky with memory. Singapore.
He hadn't driven badly there, but the race had slipped through his fingers anyway. Strategy call, tyre drop-off, traffic—take your pick. Pepe had been watching from the paddock hospitality, cooling towel still wrapped around his neck from his own long day.
No race. F2 was done, for a few months. And still, he was here.Now in Texas, the circus had shifted, but the weight stayed.
_____
Pepe arrived on Friday.It wasn't official.
No F2, no driving. But Campos and Red Bull had sorted an invite, and apparently someone thought it made good PR to keep him in the orbit. He showed up in jeans and a white team polo, lanyard swinging as he walked through the paddock like he'd always belonged there.
He found Isack leaning against the Red Bull hospitality wall, sipping a hydration drink that tasted like watered-down regret.
"You look like you hate it here," Pepe said.
"I love it here. It's a sauna with asphalt."
Pepe chuckled. "Nice tan, by the way."
"Thanks. It's just exhaustion."
They stood for a second, shoulders angled toward each other but not touching. The kind of almost that felt intentional.
"How long are you staying?" Isack asked.
"All weekend. PR day tomorrow, some sim stuff. Mainly spectating. I figured... might as well."
"Yeah," Isack said. "Might as well."
He didn't say more, didn't need to. The smile was already tugging at the corner of his mouth.
_____
Free practice had been... fine. Not spectacular. The Friday morning sun had hit the tarmac with a kind of slow vengeance, making the car feel heavier than it should have. Grip came and went depending on the gusts. On the long back straight, Isack felt like he was driving through soup—hot, dragging, full of invisible weight.
He put in the laps. Adjusted front wing settings. Listened. Replied. Listened more. The team chattered through the headset like usual, but even they sounded half-melted by the heat. It wasn't the worst FP1 he'd had all season, but it didn't click either.
FP2 felt better. A little more control, a little more understanding of how the tyres were behaving. Long runs, fuel loads, all the prep they'd usually do but this time under a sun that felt like punishment.
He clocked a solid stint on the mediums, ran some aero tests Red Bull had slipped into his program, and finally came back into the garage sweating through his base layer. He peeled his gloves off finger by finger and watched the data scroll on the screen beside his engineer.
Not bad. Not amazing. But better.
Pepe wasn't there yet.
Isack thought he wouldn't notice. He was wrong.
_____
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Between the lines | CAMBROS
FanfictionF1/F2 | Isack Hadjar & Pepe Martí | post-teammate tension + soft reconnection | soft reconnection energy | super slow burn Isack's moved on to F1. Pepe's still in F2. Their careers are no longer aligned, their garages are worlds apart, and their fri...
