Work Text:
Logan Sergeant - 2016 - Formula 4 UAE
Oscar Piastri had just finished reviewing telemetry with his engineer when Logan Sargeant flopped down beside him on a folding chair like he’d been personally wronged by the concept of humidity in Abu Dhabi.
“You guys always this sweaty in Melbourne?” Logan asked, swiping at his forehead with a water bottle and missing.
Oscar smirked. “Not unless you’re karting uphill in January.”
Logan leaned back, rocking the chair onto two legs. “You’re weirdly calm for someone who just overtook half the grid on turn three.”
Oscar shrugged. “Had to. The inside line was open.”
Logan whistled low. “You Aussies are built different.”
There was a beat of silence, filled with the clatter of wheel guns and distant shouting from a team manager on the other side of the paddock.
Then Logan nudged him. “You bringing anyone to the next round? Girlfriend? Family?”
Oscar blinked. “Uh, no, she’s in school.”
Logan perked up. “So you do have a girlfriend.”
Oscar nodded. “Her name’s Felicity.”
“Oh, fancy,” Logan said, smirking.
Oscar just shrugged again, but this time it’s a little more self-conscious. “She’s smarter than anyone I’ve ever met. Like… scary smart.”
Logan laughed. “Dude. You’re literally doing physics problems between sessions.”
“Yeah, and she’s the one who checks them.”
That got a double take.
“Wait, how old is she?”
“Fifteen. Same year as me.”
“And she checks your work?”
Oscar looked at him, deadpan. “She once rewrote my entire MATLAB script for a school project because the code was inefficient.”
“...I don’t even know what a MATLAB is.”
Oscar finally cracked a grin. “Exactly.”
Logan leant back on his palms, looking vaguely awed. “Damn. Is she into racing too?”
Oscar’s face softened. “She watches every livestream. Even the janky ones that lag and buffer every five seconds. Says she likes seeing how I figure things out under pressure.”
“Supportive and a genius?” Logan whistled. “You’re punching, man.”
“I know,” Oscar said without hesitation.
And that’s the thing — he said it without irony, without doubt, like it’s just fact.
Like Felicity was a fixture in his life the same way racing is.
Like even here, on the other side of the world, in a sport designed to chew you up, she was still his anchor.
Logan watched him for a moment, then grinned. “Alright then, Piastri. Guess I gotta step up. You’re out here with a rocket science girlfriend and a podium finish.”
Oscar shrugged again, but there’s a glint of pride in his eyes. “She’s not into big shows. Just… likes when I try hard.”
Logan nodded slowly. “Sounds like she keeps you grounded.”
“She does,” Oscar said. “She’s the reason I remember to eat lunch most days.”
“Bro,” Logan said, mock serious. “Marry her.”
Oscar didn’t laugh.
He just sips his water, quiet for a beat.
Then: “I might.”
Logan blinks. “You’re fifteen.”
Oscar shrugs. “Still might.”
***
Max Fewtrell - 2018 - Formula Renault Eurocup
Max Fewtrell had exactly three things in his race day ritual:
- Complain about the weather, regardless of what it was actually doing.
- Eat like he hadn’t seen a carb since Wednesday.
- Steal food off anyone who had a better lunch than he did.
So when something absolutely divine — chili, soy, sesame, and maybe the faintest whiff of wok hei — drifted across the Renault Eurocup paddock, Max paused mid-wrap-unfurl, frowned at the damp tortilla in his hands, and began scanning the area like a bloodhound on a mission.
He didn’t have to look far.
Under one of the team canopies, Oscar Piastri was seated like a picture of tranquility. Legs crossed, back straight, Tupperware open on his lap. And, insult to injury, the kid was using actual chopsticks, not a spork like the rest of the peasants.
Max narrowed his eyes. He knew that smell.
“…Is that char kway teow?” he asked, tone already accusatory.
Oscar didn’t look up. Just plucked another glistening noodle from the box like this was a tea ceremony and not a war crime.
“Yes,” he replied, bone dry.
Max was already halfway to him. “Where did you even get that? We’re in France. I’ve had nothing but beige food for a week. A week, Oscar.”
Oscar finally glanced up, entirely serene. “My girlfriend made it. Sent it with me.”
“Wait, you have a girlfriend?”
Oscar nodded. “Felicity. She’s in school back in Britain. Singaporean-Chinese. Makes the best food I’ve ever had.”
Max stood there in silence for a beat, the betrayal setting in.
Oscar, sensing it, took another elegant bite.
Max’s mouth opened. “Does she—”
“No,” Oscar cut in, flat as a carbon fiber board. “I’m not sharing.”
Max stared. “That’s not very sportsmanlike of you.”
Oscar didn’t even blink. “Neither was that last overtake into Turn 4, but here we are.”
Max scowled, reached into his sad lunch wrap, and hurled a bit of limp lettuce at him.
Oscar dodged it with the kind of slow ease that made it worse. “Also,” he added, “she packed chili crisp and garlic oil in the bottom layer. You’d cry.”
“I’m already crying,” Max muttered, slumping into the folding chair next to him. “Mate’s got a literal food goddess and refuses to share. Unbelievable.”
Oscar, not even looking up from his noodles: “Get your own Felicity.”
***
Frederik Vesti - 2020 - Formula 3
Frederik blinked blearily across the team truck as Oscar Piastri walked in looking like the ghost of someone who used to sleep.
His hair was sticking up at odd angles, his hoodie was inside out, and there was a faint stain on his jeans that looked suspiciously like dried milk. He held a coffee cup like it was an IV drip.
“You okay, mate?” Frederik asked cautiously, watching as Oscar shuffled toward the breakfast table and missed the toaster by a good six inches.
Oscar made a sound that might have been “fine” or might have been “fire,” but either way it came out in a low rasp and was not convincing.
“You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
“Six days,” Oscar muttered, blinking like he was trying to reboot.
Frederik laughed — and then froze.
Oscar didn’t laugh back. He just stood there, buttering toast in slow motion, like a man trying to remember what gravity was.
“…Wait. Are you actually serious?”
Oscar nodded faintly. “She sleeps during the day. But at night she just…screams. And if she’s not screaming, I keep checking to see if she’s breathing.”
“She?”
Oscar blinked again and finally looked at him. “Bee.”
Frederik stared.
Oscar seemed to realize something. “Oh. Right. You didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what, exactly?” Frederik said very slowly, like he was trying to diffuse a bomb.
Oscar sipped his coffee. “That I’m married. Or that I have a baby now. Probably both.”
Frederik dropped his spoon. “YOU’RE WHAT?”
Oscar looked vaguely apologetic. “Yeah. Sorry. It wasn’t exactly a press release moment.”
Frederik gaped. “How do you have a wife? We’ve been teammates all year. You’ve literally never mentioned her.”
Oscar shrugged. “We’ve been married since I was 18. Felicity. She’s private. Doesn’t like attention.”
Frederik opened his mouth. Closed it again. “Okay. Wow. But… a baby? When? How?”
“She was born two weeks ago. Her name’s Bee. Emergency C-section. Heart surgery twenty-three minutes after birth. NICU for a bit. My wife nearly died. They’re home now. I’m… here.”
Frederik stared.
“You’re telling me that over break, you became a dad, your baby had surgery, your wife almost died, and you just—what? Came back to work like it was fine?”
Oscar ran a hand through his hair and yawned so hard it looked painful. “Felicity told me to. Said she wanted something to feel normal again.“
Frederik sat down heavily next to him. “And you’re just here. Like it’s nothing.”
Oscar stared blankly at the table. “It’s not nothing. But if I stop moving, I think I’ll fall apart.”
Frederik nodded slowly. Then slid the entire plate of toast in front of Oscar and said, “Alright. First of all, you’re eating. Second, I’m buying you a real coffee. And third—what the hell do you mean your baby had open heart surgery?”
Oscar’s voice was quiet, but steady. “She has a congenital defect. Total anomalous pulmonary venous return. They caught it late. If they’d waited ten more minutes, she wouldn’t have made it.”
Frederik swallowed. “Jesus.”
Oscar looked down at his hands. “She’s so small. But she’s alive.”
And for the first time that morning, Oscar smiled—just a little. Not smug, not tired. Just real.
Frederik exhaled hard, then clapped a hand on his teammate’s shoulder. “Okay. That’s a lot. But… Bee, huh?”
Oscar nodded. “Yeah.”
“…Short for anything?”
Oscar finally laughed. “Beatrice Nicole. I call her Bumblebee.”
“And your wife? Is she okay? ”
“She’s… alive. Still recovering. Scared the shit out of me.” Oscar’s voice cracked a little, not enough to draw attention unless you were really listening. “Bee’s okay too. She’s so small. Looks like her, though. Stronger than both of us.”
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward — it was heavy, with the weight of things too big to say.
Finally, Frederik said quietly, “You could’ve told someone.”
Oscar just shook his head. “Didn’t want anyone to look at me different. Didn’t want it to be a thing. I just… wanted to drive. And go home to them.”
Frederik swallowed. “You’re completely mental.”
Oscar let out a soft, tired laugh. “Yeah.”
Another pause.
Frederik: “Do you… have pictures?”
Oscar blinked at him, surprised. Then, slowly, he reached for his phone. “Yeah. I do.”
He opened the gallery and held it out.
Frederik stared at the screen. A baby, impossibly small, swaddled in tubes and wires, and then later — the same baby, wide-eyed and soft-cheeked, curled up against a woman who looked tired but alive. Felicity.
Bee.
“Holy shit,” Frederik said softly. “She’s beautiful.”
Oscar smiled — faint but real. “Yeah. She is.”
Later that night, Frederik found an unopened tin of Danish butter cookies in his suitcase — his mum’s habit. He wrapped it in a tea towel, walked down the hotel hall, and left it outside Oscar’s door.
There was a note on top:
For Bee’s dad. You’re doing great. Also: eat something that isn’t caffeine and stress.
– F.
He didn’t expect a reply.
But the next morning, Oscar showed up to the track with a new glint of determination — and crumbs on his race suit.
***
Robert Shwarztman - 2021 - Formula 2
Robert was halfway through complaining about the catering — again — when Oscar, staring down at his phone with the vaguely amused look of someone reading a text that was either romantic or absurd, said casually:
“I’ve gotta head off soon. I’m having dinner with my wife.”
Silence.
Not dramatic silence. Not shocked silence. Just the stunned, mechanical silence of Robert’s brain hitting the brakes so hard it metaphorically flew through the windshield.
“…your what?” Robert said, voice slightly higher than normal.
Oscar glanced up, blinking innocently. “My wife. Felicity. She flew in this morning.”
Robert stared at him like he’d grown a second head. “You’re married.”
“Yeah.”
“Since when?”
Oscar just shrugged. “2019.”
Robert’s brain promptly short-circuited. “You’ve been married for two years and you’re telling me now? After how many plane rides? How many post-race meals? You didn’t think to mention, ‘Hey by the way, I have a wife?’”
Oscar shrugged, annoyingly calm. “Didn’t come up.”
“Didn’t come up,” Robert echoed, scandalized. “You once spent forty-five minutes explaining tire degradation to a hotel receptionist, but telling me you’re married ‘didn’t come up’?”
Oscar made a mild face. “She doesn’t like the attention. We keep it private.”
“And what? One day you’ll just casually mention a kid and expect me not to die on the spot?”
Oscar, very blandly: “I have a daughter too.”
Robert actually choked on his water. “YOU WHAT—”
Oscar patted him on the back like he wasn’t the cause of the sudden respiratory emergency. “Bee. She’s a few months old.”
Robert’s eye twitched. “You’re twenty. You have a wife. A baby. You’re leading the championship. What the hell, are you trying to speedrun adulthood?!”
Oscar shrugged again. “I like being married.”
Robert stood, flailing slightly. “I’m going to dinner alone with my phone and my disappointment. And you’re going to dinner with your secret wife. Which is apparently a normal Tuesday.”
Oscar smiled faintly. “You want to meet her tomorrow? She bakes.”
Robert froze.
“…What kind of bakes?”
Oscar’s smile deepened. “Everything. Banana Bread. Muffins. Cookies. Sometimes Russian tea cakes, too. She made kuih lapis once.”
“…Okay,” Robert muttered, sitting down again like he wasn’t suddenly plotting to steal baked goods from this phantom wife. “But I’m still mad.”
Oscar nodded, texting again. “She says hi, by the way.”
Robert groaned.
***
Arthur Leclerc - 2021 - Prema Racing
Arthur was late.
Not by much — just ten minutes — but enough that René had already scolded him and a camera guy gave him the “we’ve been waiting” look as he jogged into the main corridor. He adjusted his team jacket, made a face at his reflection in the nearest window, and was mid-yawn when he nearly collided with someone in the hallway.
“Oh—sorry—"
Then he stopped.
Because Oscar Piastri — reigning Formula 3 champion, king of emotional neutrality, man who once did an entire sim race in silence — was standing in front of a wall of sponsor boards, holding a baby.
A real, actual baby.
A little girl with soft wispy curls, round cheeks, and a pale pink hoodie with a cartoon duck on the front. She had one hand gripping Oscar’s suit collar and the other stuffed into her mouth, wide eyes peeking curiously over his shoulder.
Arthur blinked. “Uhh… Oscar?”
Oscar looked up like this was entirely normal. “Hey.”
Arthur pointed at the baby. “Is that… Are you… Is that yours?”
The little girl turned her head toward the sound of Arthur’s voice, then immediately buried her face in Oscar’s neck like she’d seen enough. Oscar just patted her back gently and said, “Yeah. This is Bee.”
“Bee,” Arthur echoed, stunned. “You have a secret kid?”
Oscar blinked. “She’s not a secret. I just don’t usually bring her to work.”
“Right,” Arthur said faintly. “Of course. Naturally. And the mother?”
“My wife,” Oscar said casually. “Felicity. She’s finishing her finals this week. We couldn’t find a sitter. Bee’s very well-behaved, don’t worry.”
Arthur blinked so hard he lost a second of vision. “Your wife. You have a wife and a child. At twenty.”
Oscar glanced down at Bee, who had gone back to watching Arthur like he was a strange bird. She was perfectly quiet. Just blinking with wide dark eyes, cuddled into her father’s chest like she’d been born there.
Arthur lowered his voice. “She’s… really cute.”
Oscar’s whole face softened. “Yeah. She’s the best.”
Bee made a little hum and patted Oscar’s jaw with one tiny hand. Then Bee let out a soft, babbly coo, and Arthur’s heart actually melted.
Like. Melted.
He wasn’t even a baby person, but this one? This tiny, polite, shy creature who clung to Oscar like a koala and looked like she might cry if anyone but her dad so much as waved? She was precious. Immaculate. Possibly the best-behaved human he’d ever seen.
“Can I say hi?” Arthur asked, voice softening instinctively.
Oscar glanced at Bee. “Bee, you wanna say hi?”
Bee peeked at Arthur again from the safety of Oscar’s shoulder. Considered him. Then blinked, solemn, and shook her head no.
Arthur laughed. “Okay, that’s fair.”
“She’s just shy,” Oscar said. “She’s been great all day. Napped during media briefings. Didn’t touch anything. I think she thinks she’s undercover.”
“Mate,” Arthur said, stunned, “if I ever brought a baby into this building, she’d be on the pit wall with a wrench in her mouth in five minutes.”
Oscar just smiled faintly, brushing a hand over Bee’s curls. “She’s used to being around cars. I think the engine noises soothe her.”
Arthur had so many questions. So many.
But instead, he stayed a respectful distance away, and said, “Hi Bee. I’m Arthur. I drive too.”
Bee blinked at him. Then, very quietly, said, “Papa drives fast.”
Arthur’s jaw dropped. “She talks?”
Oscar nodded, utterly casual. “She’s started picking up words. Mostly about food and racing. Priorities.”
Arthur put a hand to his chest. “I’m gonna cry. Why is your kid so perfect?”
Oscar just bounced Bee gently in his arms and said, “Because she’s her mother’s daughter.”
Bee gave a soft coo, and when Oscar shifted her gently into a little carrier wrap on his chest, she snuggled in like this was her natural state of being: attached to Papa and silently judging anyone else in the room.
Arthur just shook his head and muttered, “I’m still not over this. You’re not allowed to be this good at racing and parenting. It’s unfair.”
Oscar looked down at his daughter, kissed the top of her head, and said simply, “She’s the only trophy that matters.”
And Arthur, who had come to media day ready to talk about tyre degradation, now had to pretend he wasn’t this close to tearing up in front of the marketing team.
***