You decide to listen to your engineer this time around. He advises you to put down some fast laps first, to see where your pace for qualifying lies.
Five minutes into the session, you take place behind the wheel for the second time today. As you roll out of the garage, you notice others leaving their pitbox as well. Among them is your teammate, Daniels. While on your outlap, you decide to have some fun with him.
You slow down on the straight, letting him pass. You quickly warm your tires by wildly steering left to right, careful to stay on Daniels’ tail. When you approach start finish, you put the pedal to the proverbial metal. Approaching turn one, you dive on his inside and quickly overtake him.
As you speed off, putting distance between you and Daniels, you hear the sound of the radio popping up:
“Please, don’t do that again,” you hear. You smirk. “Sorry,” you reply without actually meaning it.
You put down a few fast laps, putting you second on the rankings. You return to the garage. As you approach your pitbox, you see Daniels glaring at you, his usually wide smile ever so slightly less wide. As you jump out of the car, Daniels approaches.
“Hey man, not cool,” he starts. “We could’ve crashed.”
“Yes, we could. But we didn’t. I saw the gap and I went for it. You shouldn’t have overtaken me on the straight,” you say accusingly, knowing full well you let him past.
“For fuck’s sake man, you let me past. What else was I to do? Park the car?!” he cries out. Feeling caught, you mumble something about needing to get back out there as you jump back into your car for your second stint.
The rest of the session is fairly uneventful. You put down some more fast laps before you head back in for one last time with five minutes left on the clock.
As the flag falls, you find yourself fourth on the leaderboard, with Daniels in sixth.
You head out to the press circle in order to fulfil your obligations. Once you’ve repeated the same story (“yes, the car feels alright, you feel happy about its performance, you seem some opportunities for qualifying and the race”), you head back in for the debriefing with your mechanics.
You have your dinner, and arrive back at the hotel. Before you go to sleep, you browse your social media. You find that the largest F1 forum is furious over your move on Daniels’. You smile at the flamewars that ensued between your fans and Daniels’.
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