REAL LIFE

SAKHIR, BAHRAIN

BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX

FRIDAY: FREE PRACTICE

The midday sun filtered through the sheer hotel room curtains, multiple portable fans churning cold air into the room, where the two AlphaTauri's were curled up next to each other in the double bed. Dakota McManus stirred, shifting away from her boyfriend as her phone began to rapidly vibrate on the nightstand.

REMINDER: HELP SET UP AT PADDOCK IN SAKHIR

Sighing, the Aussie dropped her phone and stumbled to her feet, pale pink panties visible underneath the Under Armour tee she had worn to bed.

It was too hot for pants.

She dressed quickly and quietly before checking her phone, anxious for updates about the season before she got to the Sakhir track. Dakota had always been one to worry, and her grandfather had once told her that it was something she'd thank herself for later, especially in the pit lane.

Four years ago, her life could have gone differently. When Graham McManus, pit crew chief for Toro Rosso Honda, had brought his granddaughter into the paddock at the Melbourne Grand Prix in 2018, she still had a stack of unsent college applications sitting at the dining room table.

His granddaughter was going to work at a 9-1-1 call center. OR the Australian equivalent.

But Dakota had always wanted to see the world, and at eighteen, a few weeks shy of her nineteenth birthday, the glitz and glamour of Formula 1 racing had seemed liek the best way. She was just supposed to fill in for one of the mechanics at Melbourne, and had ended up staying on for the 2018 season before being officially hired ahead of the 2019 season.

And then her grandfather had a stroke, and her world was flipped upside down. Suddenly Dakota was thrust into the spotlight, media attention that she never wanted suddenly focussed on the youngest- and so far only- female assistant crew chief in the sport. 

Soft snores disturbed her from her reverie. Still lying on his hown in the large bed, swaddled in blankets like a child, lay Yuki Tsunoda, AlphTauri's rookie driver.

Another thing that Dakota had never counted on was finding love. At least, not with one of her team's own drivers. But from the moment Yuki joined the team in 2021, she was enamoured by the man. At just twenty-one, he was the youngest driver on the grid, and twenty-two year old Dakota wasn;t ready to deal with the stress of her new position. 

But Yuki made her feel like everything was going to be okay again.

"Babyyyyy..." Yuki grumbled, dragging out the last letters of the word. "Come back to bed."

Dakota chuckled, tucking her phone into the back pocket of her denim cutoff shorts before kneeling on the bed next to her boyfriend, using her arms to prop herself up as she hovered over top of Yuki, giggling as she kissed him.

"I promised Franz that I'd help out at the paddock this morning. You know the team would fall apart without me."

Yuki fully opened his eyes, still dazed and jetlagged. Even with all the world travel he had done before, both with Carlin when he was in F2 and when he moved up to race with AlphaTauri, he thought that he'd be used to it by now.

He wasn't.

"Why do you have to be there so early?"

Dakota chuckled, kissing Yuki again. "Because they need me, and I'm a good person. "

"Sometimes I wish you weren't." Yuki sighed, covering his eyes with his forearm in an attempt to fend off the light seeping in from the window. "Does that make me selfish?"

The Aussie giggled, extracting herself from the queen-sized bed before grabbing her tote bag form the floor. "Get some rest, Yuki. Free practice doesn't start for another few hours, I'll send Liam to come and get you so you aren't late." Wandering back over to the bed, stepping over the clothes she had worn on the plane and shed so that she could cocoon herself within the plush hotel blankets, Dakota leaned down to give her lover one last kiss before she knew she needed to go to work.

Drivers always had all the fun. And all the rest.

Grabbing a plastic container form the minibar fridge, Dakota rushed downstairs to the hotel lobby, hastily wrapping a lemon-printed scarf around her hair like a bandanna, out of a direct order from Franz Tost, team principal himself, after an unfortunate incident in Singapore a few seasons prior.

The Formula 1 Paddock had always been a source of wonder for Dakota McManus, ever since she was ten years old and her grandfather would take her the see the Melbourne Grand Prix, before she even knew the names 'Michael Schumacher' and 'Jules Bianchi'. She always knew she wanted to be a part of it somehow.

"Hey Mac!" A deep, yet still young voice carried across the paddock, originating from the Aston Martin garage as a blur of black and green came darting towards the technician, throwing its arms around her

"Nice to see you too, Lancelot." Dakota Laughed, pulling away from the Canadian driver.

"Not my name." Lance Strulovitch, known professionally as Lance Stroll, sighed as he looked at his best friend. "Where's the food?"

Lance and Dakota had been best friends for ages, a friendship leading back to the third race fo the 2018 season, the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai, when Daniel Ricciardo had enough of watching the only other Australian on the track mope about being lonely. It was Lance's second season with Williams-Martini, mere months before his father would by Racing Point Force India. Lance was nineteen years old, older than Dakota by less than a year. The teeangers were glad to have each other around, someone to talk to about the pressures of the sport, but also someone they could act like dumb high schoolers around, because some people on the circuit forgot that they were still just kids.

"Hold your horses, Stroll. Where's everybody else?" Dakota laughed, pulling the plastic container out of her tote bag.

"Oi, don't start the party without us!" Another heavily accented voice joined the fray. A group of young men were laughing boisterously, heading towards the Aston Martin Garage from the opposite direction, closer to where Williams had set up.

Alexander Albon was the one who had called out, a bit of a legend within the Williams camp for being a member of the Twitch Quartet, comprised of McLaren's Lando Norris, Mercedes driver George Russell, Albon himself and Ferrari's Charles Leclerc. With Alex, was Mick Schumacher, legacy driver and son of Michael Schumacher, the greatest driver ever signed to Ferrari, Lando Norris, and Alpine's Esteban Ocon, who had recently made a triumphant return to the sport following his replacement at Force India with Lance after Lawrence Stroll bought the team in 2018.

"Dakota!" Esteban grinned, pulling the mechanic in for what Urban Dictionary would refer to as a bro-hug.

"She brought food!" Lando proclaimed excitedly, making a mad grab for the plastic container.

"In Dakota we trust!" Alex joked, grabbing a small handful of cookies.

Mick laughed, shaking his head before muttering something in German. "Leave some for everybody else, Albon!"

Dakota giggled, taking a cookie for herself. "They're no-bake. Airport authority frowns upon having a fully functioning kitchen onboard your private plane, so no ovens."

"Can't tell the difference." Lance shook his head, devouring one of the small cookie's in one bite.

"What's up with the uh, scarf?" Lando asked gently, pointing his finger in the direction of the white and yellow cloth over Dakota's hair. His eyes went wide. "The migraines didn't get worse did they? There's no tumor, right?"

Dakota sighed. Her migraines hadn't gotten better, but at least they hadn't gotten worse. The Aussie had suffered from the chronic headaches and pains since she was fifteen, and her job working for AlphaTauri wasn't the most accommodating to that pain. 

She wasn't even going to tell the team principal that the migraines were an issue until Lewis Hamilton saw her at a party, pale as snow with a pounding headache. 

"I'm fine, Lando. But thanks for the concern." She smiled at the British driver, pulling him in for a side hug. She'd always liked Lando, and with more younger drivers breaking into the sport, she had more friends than she ever thought possible. Of course, they weren't always the brightest, but she didn't mind. The older drivers, on the other hand, they were probably done with everybody's bullshit. "No, it's orders from Franz Tost himself, he doesn't want a repeat of Singapore."

A nod of understanding circled around the group, everybody remembering Singapore 2019, when Dakota had fainted from heatstroke in the Toro Rosso team  garage. 2022 would be the first season since the COVID-19 pandemic that Formula 1 racing would be returning to the famed Marina Bay Circuit. George Russell, who had retired from the race following a collision had rushed over almost immediately. Pierre Gasly, who had been talking to Dakota on the headset, was ready to leave the race then and there to make sure she was okay, and had to be talked down by one of the other team members. 

Of course, Dakota thought everybody was overreacting, having fainted before due to her migraines. But Franz didn't think it was very funny, demanding that the mechanic take better care of her personal well-being when they raced in countries with a warmer climate.

"Who's planning the pre-season party tonight?" Esteban asked offhandedly, scrolling through his phone while looking around nervously. Camera crews working on Drive to Survive were always around, and some of the drivers were almost manic about trying to look their best on camera, not a hair out of place.

Alexander grinned. "Williams, baby!"

"Oh dear God." Dakota snorted. "Williams?"

"I fear you underestimate us, Mac." Alexander grinned. A Williams racer himself, the season was usually a struggle. Williams had definitely had a few bad years, but Albon was determined to change that. "It's gonna be great, they're letting us use the entire high-rise, you know the one out front of the track."

Dakota chuckled lowly, her phone buzzing with messages from member sof the AlphTauri team wondering where she was. "I should get going before Volkov has a conniption fit." Of course, Dakota was referring to the one person on the pit crew with a higher rank than her, Jake Volkov, who insisted that everything had to be picture perfect, even when the job got messy. He had been her grandfather's protege, and then her mentor.

The junior drivers bid her goodbye, but not before Lance had to kick Esteban in the shin in order to get his attention.

It wasn't just the cameras that Esteban Ocon got shy around, but one of the beautiful girls that helped film the entire docuseries: Carla Laing, a film student from Arizona. And Esteban Ocon was down bad.

"If I don't see you guys before practice is done, I'll see you tonight!" Dakota called, crossing to the AlphaTauri garage.

"The party's at nine o'clock sharp, Mac!" Alexander called "Don't be fucking late!"

NOTES!!

prepare for total insanity, writing this shit is too much fun.