Just Him ❤

82. Silverstone. Pt 2

"Years of experience I guess, and I'm not in love with him." He smiled, finding himself funny.

"Aren't you worried he could retire from the race and take a potential penalty to Germany?"

"No, he'll have already thought of that, the damage to the car is actually not too bad." He replied, noticing that she'd ignored his previous comment.

"It was his mistake wasn't it?" She leant on her elbows and then leant her head on her hands, she looked as miserable as she felt.

"I hate to agree with you, but yeah."

"The press will have a fucking field day with it and the trolls on social media will love it." She glanced at the screen again. "I'm dreading taking him to the media pen already, he's going to be in a foul mood."

"He won't be as bad as he was in Canada, he'll be a bit down but he'll soon bounce back and you know he doesn't look at any press about himself or look on things like Instagram for reasons such as today. It'll bother you alot more than it'll bother him. You should do what he does and not have any social media accounts."

"I have to keep an eye on press and social media, it's part of my job." She let out a deep breath and sat back in her seat. "How's our guests in the garage? Is Isaak ok?" She thought of Eva and Steef's little boy, imagining that he must be devastated. She'd met him on Thursday for the first time, with dark brown hair and brown eyes he was the image of his mother but already had a confident streak like his father. He worshipped Seb and had taken every chance he had to be with him. A highlight of the weekend for her had been when Seb had lifted Isaak into his race car, something that the eight year old had been desperate to do and they spent half an hour together with Seb patiently going through all the buttons and dials on the steering wheel and answering every question that Isaak had asked him.

"He got a little upset, but he's ok now and your mum is more worried about you than she is Seb."

"Fuck." Chloe gestured to the screen with her hand and Antti turned to look.

"Well Seb might as well stay where he is now, no point in fighting through the cars when a ten second time penalty will put him right back again." He stood up. "Get his things and we'll make our way slowly to Parc Fermé. I'll meet you outside."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seb made his way to the media pen, flanked by Antti and Chloe, as he took sips of his drink through his straw he was aware of her taking quick glances at him. She was a little wary of him, not that he could blame her, especially with what happened after the race in Canada, he doubted very much that she would offer herself as an outlet for his anger and frustration again even though she had said she would. Antti left them to go back to the garage and they entered the media pen, as usual he felt her hand on his back and she wordlessly pointed him in the direction of Natalie from Sky Sports. "You can talk to me, I won't bite." He said as he removed his sunglasses.

"Yeah, erm, sorry." Chloe mumbled as they stopped in front of Natalie who immediately launched into saying how good his race pace had been up until he hit the back of Max's car and then asked for his take on what happened. Chloe could see that as Seb spoke he looked understandably agitated so his words had done little to make her less wary.

"It was my mistake." He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at Chloe before continuing. "He passed me into Stowe, he ran a bit wide which gave me the chance to run back, then it looked for a second that he was going to the right and I went to the left, but the gap didn't open and it was already too late and I crashed." With that he stepped away and Chloe had to quickly spring into action and direct to him to the next person, she had not been expecting him to finish with Natalie so quickly. In fact he spent very little time with everyone he spoke to and they exited the pen with her thinking that this was the quickest they'd ever been in there. He walked one step ahead of her on the way back to hospitality and was unexpectedly joined by pitlane reporters from RTL who launched into asking him about the incident, his time penalty and apologising to Max in Parc Fermé. He tried not to roll his eyes as a microphone that was thrust into his hands and he answered their questions, then as quickly as they had appeared, they'd gone.