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Everything else fell away.
The lights of Jeddah blurred into ribbons of white and blue. Somewhere, distantly, he knew there were fifty thousand people watching, millions more on television, the entire paddock holding its breath. But they didn't exist in here. Nothing existed but the perfect hum of the engine and the wind rushing past and the silence.
The car was perfect tonight. He could feel it in the way it responded to his inputs, the front end biting into each apex with precision, that perfect balance between grip and speed that drivers spent their whole careers chasing.
Sector one, purple.
Turn 13, the fast left-hander where yesterday he’d been dizzy from the strobe effect of the lights. Now it was just another corner, taken without thought, without consideration, his hands making micro-adjustments that his conscious mind wouldn't register until he saw the data. His brain — his broken, concussed, betraying brain — was bypassed entirely.
He could feel the edge, that knife's edge between grip and catastrophe, and he was riding it perfectly. He was flying. Actually flying. The way he'd dreamed it as a child, before he understood that flight required wings.
Well, he had wings now.
Turn 22, beginning the final sector. Two-tenths up on Lewis. But Lewis was just a number now, an abstraction. No room for fear. No room for Max Verstappen, son of Jos, rival to Lewis, boy who just wanted his first championship. There was only the next apex, the next brake marker, the next millimetre of throttle application.
The track unfurled before him like a ribbon, carrying him toward destiny.
Turn 27.
The final corner before the glory of pole position. Third gear, brake marker approaching, that familiar sensation of weight transferring forward, his left foot finding the perfect brake pressure—
The left front locked.
The shriek of rubber against asphalt ripped through the silence. In an instant, all the noise rushed back in – the lights burning his retinas, the headache exploding behind his eyes, the vertigo as the car refused to rotate. He yanked the wheel harder left — pointless, he was already at full lock, had been since the apex — and still the car pushed wide. The wall approached with terrible certainty.
Impact.
The carbon fibre crunched against the barriers, the perfect lap destroyed in an instant. And in that moment of pure frustration, of dreams collapsing, his right foot stayed planted on the throttle. Not to go anywhere — there was nowhere to go — but in sheer desperation, as if somehow will alone could reverse time. The engine screamed against the wall, the rear wheels spinning uselessly, and he felt more than heard the suspension components giving way. The gearbox possibly compromised.
He numbly shifted the gear back to neutral.
The engine died. The world was silent again.
He sat there, hands sliding off the wheel, staring at the wall inches from his visor. The team would be checking the data, seeing the impact, calculating the damage.
Finally, GP's voice, carefully bright: "All okay Max?"
Max should have been angry. Everyone expected it. The volcanic eruption, the stream of expletives that would be bleeped for the broadcast. The rage that had defined him, that always bubbled up from beneath the surface when things went wrong.
But there was nothing. Just... emptiness.
"Yep." he said.
No anger, no explanations, no excuses about the lock-up or the track conditions or the pressure. Just that single word, to the hundreds of people who had worked impossible hours to give him this car, this chance, this moment he'd just destroyed.
He climbed out slowly, his body remembering weight and gravity and all the things that didn't exist when he was flying. The marshall was there, checking if he was hurt, but Max was already walking to the back of the car. He crouched by the right rear wheel, running his fingers along the damaged suspension where he had hammered it on both sides. The driveshaft had likely punched straight into the gearbox casing.
Five-place grid penalty, probably, given how his luck had been all year.
The walk back was interminable.
The lights, so irrelevant during those flying laps, now blazed with renewed intensity. Each LED board sent fresh spikes through his skull. The ground seemed to tilt with each step, though whether from the post-concussion effects or the crushing disappointment, he couldn't tell.
In parc fermé, Lewis had taken pole, Valtteri second. They were talking to the media, animated, alive with the satisfaction of a job well done. Max stood on the side, watching his car being pushed back, seeing the mechanics already swarming over the damage. None of them would be able to sleep that night until news about the gearbox.
Not that he would be able to anyway.
Back in his driver room, finally alone, Max lay on the physio table and closed his eyes.
The perfect lap had been there. For twenty-six corners, he had flown, higher than ever before and found that place of pure speed where nothing else existed. One, fucking, lock-up. And it was all over.
Someone knocked on the door. Checo, probably. Checo had known something was wrong since Austin, when they’d both almost passed out on track – Checo from being unable to drink water all race while also being sick. Max had never explained what "it's not the stomach bug" meant. And Checo was a racer too, so he didn't ask questions, just offered silent support and trusted his teammate to know his limits.
"You okay for tomorrow?" He asked simply.
Max opened his eyes, the room swimming briefly before settling. "Yep."
It was the truth. He would be okay because he had to be. Twenty-one years had led to this moment.
The championship was still alive. He still led by eight points.
The lights would blaze again tomorrow night. He would thread his Red Bull through them at speeds that defied comprehension, trusting in instinct and experience to carry him through. He would fight Lewis with everything he had.
Lewis had the faster car. He could barely fucking see straight while driving at 300kph. And it was because of Lewis that—
No.
Jos had raised him to be a champion, not to make excuses. Everything else was just noise.
He would endure.