While Arthur was on the track, warming up for a race in Belgium, I saw this little blonde girl who was my age. Her blonde hair was in braids and she had a white mickey mouse t-shirt on. She held onto this older boy who was in a race suit and it made me grab onto Jules hand tightly. He thought I was nervous or something so that sucker picked me up and put me on his shoulders which made me so embarrassed because I thought that she wouldn't want to play with me when I can't even walk by myself.
I was six years old at the time... I couldn't be carried around at that age.
We followed Charles around, watched Arthur race and get a podium so I cheered like a mad man as always. I hugged him and then he went to change while the older boys, Charles and apparently also the boy the girl was holding onto, went to get ready for their own race. Apparently they were in the same group. She was standing alone next to this older man who was glaring onto the track.
I was sitting alone on a bench. Well... Lorenzo and our dads were only a few meters away, but I had no one sitting with me. So the next time she looked over I waved her over. I saw her ask the big angry man if she could go over to me and he agreed. She ran up to me and sat next to me as she said something that to my ears was complete gibberish.
"Wat is je naam?" she said and I just shrugged before holding out my hand
"Céline Bianchi," I introduced myself, she took my hand and shook it before smiling wide.
"Evelina Verstappen," she replied with her sweet and light happy voice. But I think that was all we understood that day. We still played though. We ran around playing catch, we played hide and seek and soon Arthur joined us. We decided to not talk because it would be unfair that me and Arthur understood each other but she couldn't. So we played in silence.
Her brother won that race. Him and Charles were friends too but they both knew english and could actually understand each other. Max and Charles translated the basics for us before we went home. But that was Arthur and I's only other friend. So I remembered her for the whole year until I saw her again. We were seven and we had learnt some english so that we could speak to each other a little bit. This particular time we found Max and Charles's go-karts and we thought it would be a wonderful idea to take them for a spin, which got us into massive trouble. I wasn't allowed at a race for two months after that, but great memories.
Max and Charles raced more and more together which meant me and Evelina could play even more. We didn't calm down though. We played golf with everything other than golf equipment, tennis with anything other than tennis equipment and we ran from all the boys, because this was the only time we weren't drowning in testosterone.
Her father was good friends with the famous formula 1 championship winner Michael Schumacher and sometimes his son Mick was there. He was blonde with blue eyes and just looked like a puppy. He was the sweetest little boy and he always tried to get us out of trouble but it was a lost cause. Instead he would go hang out with Arthur.
We simply needed our girl time. After some time, Max moved up to higher leagues and after that he and Charles didn't race together. I didn't see Evelina for years, but we kept in touch on Instagram as soon as we were old enough to even be on it.
Then we were drowning in testosterone again.