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Oscar’s first teammate in F1 doesn’t really work out. That is, they get along fine, but when they’re on the track, Oscar can’t connect to him at all. He never knows what the hell Lando’s thinking or what his next move will be, so they end up colliding a few times. End up just out of sync with each other.
That car is good enough that they can win the constructor’s, though. Twice in a row.
The driver’s title is another beast, and they don’t talk about it. It lurks in the corner of every room they’re both in, casts a shadow on every wall they stand in front of that is shaped suspiciously like Seb and Mark. Mark, who Oscar can get a read on (like the staticky signal from a waiting walkie-talkie, with blips of encouragement and care — over and out), is losing his goddamn mind.
Mark’s on a mission to find him a team that’ll support him and a teammate he can communicate with, at least slightly.
And he notices something that Oscar has never really clocked before: Oscar gets along with Max. They talk a lot at races, whenever they’re both in the top 3 in qualifying or on the podium together; they tend to put their heads together. And there’s also this narrative during the 2025 season that Oscar’s only vaguely aware of: that Max races him differently than he races Lando — seriously, with more respect, something. And he talks about Oscar differently than he does Lando, almost praising him for moves he pulls off. And Max doesn’t praise.
So, despite all of the talk about the cursed second seat and the way the Verstappens have Red Bull on a tight leash, Mark entertains it. And Oscar entertains it. They entertain it all the way into a contract.
The first test at Red Bull in 2026 is not in the car, not in the sim, but in a random meeting room at Milton Keynes with Max Verstappen. They’re to see if they’re compatible.
They’d done this test at McLaren too, during which Oscar and Lando had just talked the whole time. Out loud, since they couldn’t seem to do it any other way. And the team had decided that it was good enough for them, to have two verbally (if not neurally) communicative young men with friendly chemistry. It had worked until it hadn’t.
Anyway, Max is sat on the other side of the table from him, his eyes icy blue and his hair cropped close as ever, and they’re not talking. Like, they hadn’t even said ‘hi’ to each other. They had just nodded once. It’s not that Oscar minds not talking (in fact he prefers it) but Max has always unsettled him slightly. It’s not the man’s intensity that bothers Oscar, because he’s similarly intense, but just the legend of him; he’s got a lion on his helmet and five championships under his belt, and he can drive from the pit lane to the podium in under sixty laps.
So they just sit there in the quiet for a while.
Something prods at Oscar’s brain about ten minutes in. Poking curiosity. Like someone’s asking him how he feels, genuinely, not the press-ready answer, thanks. He looks at Max, who raises an eyebrow. It feels natural to send Max his feelings. ‘I feel’: apprehensive, excited, competitive, nervous, trusting (that’s a new one).
Max nods once and sends back his own: also competitive, excited, admiring, protective. Oscar shifts in his chair, and his stomach swirls and drops.
He’s just realised there’s no static between them. None, whatsoever. Even with his mum and sisters there’s a high whine sometimes, times when they don’t quite click. He and Mark are close as can be, and there’s still that Gaussian noise behind their thoughts to each other.
He opens his mouth to say something, but Max puts a finger to his own lips. He’s smiling, but there’s ice behind his eyes. It’s technically not allowed, to work on the same team as your soulmate — the competitive advantage is thought to be too much.
Afterwards, everyone’s asking them how it was.
“Yeah, good,” Max says. His hand brushes against the small of Oscar’s back, getting his attention. “I think we have sufficient communication. What do you think, Oscar?”
He says Oscar’s name funny — in two distinct parts and a long “o”: Ohs-car.
“Ehm, yeah,” Oscar agrees. “It was good.”
That’s as much as the team can get out of either of them, so they let them go, satisfied in part by Oscar’s telling blush and Max’s easy camaraderie with him.
Max catches up to Oscar in the parking lot on their way out.
“Hey,” he says with a little lopsided smile, as casual as if he hadn’t just followed Oscar to his car. Oscar can hear his feelings loud and clear, and it makes him shiver.
“Yeah,” he replies out loud to those feelings. “This is— why haven’t we noticed this before?”
“I dunno,” Max shrugs easily, “Maybe we never were close enough, but we are noticing it now. I did not say anything because I wanted to ask what you want to do about it.”
“Oh,” Oscar says. He’s surprised at Max’s compassion, at his willingness to break the rules for Oscar. Because if they lie and are caught, his seat is at risk. He also doesn’t know quite what Max wants from him in this moment, if they’re supposed to hug or kiss or just let it sit, the fact that they’re soulmates.
“Max, I—,” Oscar starts, and stares into Max’s eyes, stormy and blue. “I want this seat more than anything.”
“Okay,” Max nods. “And I of course want you in this seat. But I think that means we shouldn’t act on anything.”
“Right,” says Oscar, and he’s trying not to choke up, trying not to feel like Max doesn’t want him or doesn’t want their connection. It’s obvious he does.
But all Max does is reach out and squeeze his shoulder, the muscle where it meets his neck, and start to walk to his own car.
“See you tomorrow, teammate,” he winks to Oscar on his way.
Part of their training as drivers is to tune out the thoughts and feelings of other drivers that they have a connection with when they’re going wheel-to-wheel. Because they do tend to be in range quite often.
But Max, honestly, is impossible to ignore.
Chasing him down from P4 in the second race of the season, their car not quite the rocket ship that the Merc is, but still pretty good so far, he can hear Max directly in front of him. He’s singularly focused on Kimi in front of him, getting ready to make a move.
The moment Max decides to dive, Oscar feels it in his mind and like a swoop in his stomach, and his body takes over, following Max past Kimi in a move that’s too close on all sides, but he doesn’t crash. Instinct carries him through braking and gearshifting as though he’s suddenly gained years of experience and grit.
And he’s past Antonelli.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Oscar!” his engineer yells in his ear, elated. He’s back in his own head, Max having released him from whatever the hell that was.
That’s how they finish — P2 and P3, barely a second apart, and Max pulls him into a full hug in parc fermé and sends him stuff over their line, awe and gratitude and pride, and whispers in his ear: “That was great. Thanks for trusting me,” and Oscar nods into his shoulder and clings to his waist. He feels so much more connected to Max than he ever did to Lando, like this.
GP corners them as soon as he can after the podium, though.
“What the hell was that?” he asks, looking between them firmly. “Oscar, was that just a risk on your part, or did Max somehow… communicate to you that that’s what you should do?”
Oscar feels Max sigh next to him.
“I did communicate, yes,” he tells GP. “We were racing so close I could reach Oscar and tell him to follow me.”
Oscar nods along, and GP narrows his eyes at them.
“You must’ve been very persuasive,” he says to Max.
“He didn’t have to be,” Oscar says, quietly but firmly. “I trust him.”
GP just stares for a second like he knows exactly what’s going on, but he lets them go. They head off towards their driver’s rooms, and Oscar’s so ready to get out of his race suit, soaked in champagne and sweat as he is.
He and Max are walking so close that their hands brush. Max glances behind them, then does that thing again— the thing where he pushes his fingers against the small of Oscar’s back to get his attention. Oscar looks up at him, and lets himself be steered into Max’s driver’s room. He closes the door quietly behind them.
Oscar can feel the tension gathering in his belly like a coil of rope wound too tight. He can feel the heat, can feel that Max wants him like he wants Max. Oscar puts his back against the thin door, and Max steps close, leaving Oscar to tip his head back to look up at him. His eyes go between Max’s lips and his stormy blue eyes, and Oscar wants like he’s never wanted before.
“This okay?” Max asks him out loud, and Oscar’s nodding before he’s even finished the question.
Max puts a hand on his waist and leans down to kiss him.
He makes a sound against Max’s mouth against his will, because this doesn’t feel like any kiss he’s ever had before. He likes kissing, but with previous partners, it had usually been a means to an end — people are in such a rush all the time. Not content to just kiss and sit in their connection as it crackles between them (or in this case, doesn’t crackle at all). It hums, it squeaks, it finds words like “good”, “warm”, “feel”, but not much more. It’s kind of nice, actually, to have it be relatively quiet between them where it hasn’t been since they got closer.
And the kiss itself is, well.
Max’s big hand is on his waist, holding him, and he has the lead of the kiss. Oscar usually takes the lead in these kinds of things, but he doesn’t mind. And as Max moves their lips together gently, he’s finding he might like it, even, to have Max take the lead.
They have to pull apart for air eventually. Oscar leans against Max’s chest, looks up into his eyes. Max is looking back down at him fondly, if with a rather complex expression. Oscar tilts his head.
They’re teammates. And soulmates. And no one can know.
After that first race, that kiss, they only get stronger. Oscar and Max.
People start to see them not as first driver and second driver at Red Bull, but as true equals, both contributing to the team’s effort to win another constructor’s title. By the fourth race of the season, Oscar has consistently placed only one behind Max in all qualifying sessions and races, and sometimes in practices he’s faster than Max. And when he’s one place back, he’s nipping at Max’s heels, enjoying the way their doggedness and competitive natures clash against each other, coming together like two sheets of ice.
But they haven’t kissed again. They look at each other and want.
Max must be thinking (because Oscar isn’t privy to all of Max’s thoughts and feelings all the time) that it’s a risk for them to fully acknowledge the soulmate thing when they’ve been performing so well just like this. Hell, Oscar’s thinking about it too (constantly). It’s a thing in racing, to not mess with one’s luck.
But really all Oscar can think about when he’s near Max is being even closer, what it was like to kiss him, what it might be like to cuddle with him and talk or sit in their companionable silence.
The only way that Oscar knows how to deal with their relationship (or lack thereof) is by showing no emotion whatsoever and focusing on the racing itself— so, doing what he does best. But despite the media’s interpretation of him, he’s not actually an ice princess. And Mark notices, because how could he not with the level of communication they have. Oscar’s been kind of avoiding him because of that, but he can’t do it forever (nor does he want to).
They fly to Miami together in early May, which means Oscar is trapped in a small space with him for about thirteen hours. They last twenty minutes before Mark pipes up.
“So,” Mark starts, “There’s obviously something going on with you and Max. Tell me.”
“No, there’s nothing—,” Oscar says, but Mark cuts him off.
“Bullshit,” he says. “Tell me the truth. When I say you can tell me anything, I mean it. Anything at all.”
Oscar fights with it for a minute; it’s a secret he’s been keeping for a couple of months, and only by virtue of the scant time he and Mark get to spend together in person anymore has he kept it from him. But in person, Mark can pretty much hear and feel everything he’s thinking and feeling, albeit with some interference. At least the gist of it.
“Yeah, okay,” he says, shifting in his seat. “Um. We — me and Max — may have underplayed the strength of our signal.”
One of Mark’s eyebrows climbs up his forehead.
“By how much?” he asks.
Oscar’s sweating. He feels hot.
“We’re soulmates,” he whispers. There are only a few other people on the jet with them, and they’re sitting further up the plane, Mark and Oscar sitting across from each other at one of the small tables even though they don’t need to; but planes are one of the places they discuss important things, huddled together like this. Oscar’s quiet two-word admission is absorbed by the carpeting and the cushiony insulation, almost like it was never spoken at all.
The only indication that it was spoken is the look on Mark’s face, which is nearly comical in his surprise. If anyone has ever embodied ‘what the fuck?’, it would be Mark in this moment.
“Are you bloody serious?” he says. Oscar gives him a look in return, like ‘why would I ever joke about this?’.
“Oscar, the season’s a quarter done,” he hisses. “I’m assuming no one else knows. Has Max told anyone?”
“Doubt it.”
Mark pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Can we please leave it for now?” Oscar begs him. “I love the Red Bull, I love this seat. And Max and I haven’t done anything about it. Well, hardly. We kissed once,” Mark makes a strangled sort of noise, “but we haven’t done it again!”
He gives Mark his best puppy eyes, and they have a stare-off. Sure, it’s against the rules for soulmates to drive on the same team, but no one’s really ever tested that before. It’s never actually been a problem that teams or the FIA had to address. And it’s unclear to Oscar what the unfair advantage would be; the only time he and Max have communicated was in that one pass-follow thing they did in China, and they surely could have done that without communicating.
“Okay, fine,” Mark says. “God. But if you’re caught, I didn’t know about it.”
Oscar shakes his head frantically.
“And no paper trail,” Mark adds. Unnecessarily, because Oscar already knew that.
F1TV Interview, Austria, 25 June 2026
[ L BARRETTO ]
How’s your relationship with Max? Do you two like each other?
[ O PIASTRI ]
Um, yeah, we like each other. We work really well together.
[ L BARRETTO ]
Do you ever hang out outside of work?
[ O PIASTRI ]
Mm, sometimes. Not too often.
[ L BARRETTO ]
[Pause] It’s being speculated that you and Max are actually a lot closer than you let on. That your connection is really quite strong. Do you have any comment on that?
[ O PIASTRI ]
Well, we do have strong communication. I don’t think it’s an intentional thing, to not talk about it, or overexaggerate, or whatever. We’re both just quiet people.
As with everything, there’s a breaking point. There’s a point at which Max and Oscar are undeniable. And that point comes at Spa, halfway through the season.
The kind of racing they did in Australia is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, or at least once-in-a-season stuff for teammates — even teammates with a strong connection — to pull off. So no one expects them to do it, or anything like it, again.
But they’re starting fifth and sixth this time, behind both Mercs, a Ferrari, and a VCARB, and that isn’t acceptable to either of them.
Off the line they don’t get anything done except holding position, and the Mercs stretch out ahead. But in lap 15, there’s a safety car (Bearman off and into the barrier), leaving the field evenly stacked again, and Charles passes George in lap 20. Oscar starts to think about how they can pull off a podium.
“Stay close to Max,” his engineer tells him, “Hold off Hamilton and Lindblad, okay?”
He’s being appointed to the ministry of defense, which he’s usually okay with because they’ve so far only given him an instruction like this when he’s directly behind Max in a race and they’re trying to make their way up the order. It’s not like McLaren was, sacrificing him for Lando all the time.
But as much as he wants to listen to his engineer, he can feel Max pulling at his consciousness, like he did in China.
Follow me, the call conveys, clear as day. So he follows Max into Blanchimont like a soldier given an order. They go around the outside of the Merc (George) and the VCARB (Liam), and Max uses Overtake Mode (or whatever the hell they call it now) on the exit to complete the pass.
It’s not just that Max is giving him a tow, because he is a bit, but it’s completely on Oscar to follow him, to navigate around Liam and George less than half a second behind to claim 4th place. His engineer is screaming again.
“Not overly helpful feedback,” Oscar intones flatly, and lets loose into the straight.
After they’ve snagged second and third (having passed Charles on the straight around lap 40) he leaps into Max’s arms again, the same way they’d done in China, but this time he wraps his legs around Max’s waist. Max laughs in his ear.
“You’re brilliant,” Max says out loud, unbidden. He doesn’t say that kind of thing, Oscar knows, to anyone. From his end of their connection it feels like a confession of love, or something very much like it.
Oscar pulls back, Max still holding him up off the ground. They’re still wearing their helmets — thank God, or Oscar would have kissed him right there. Instead, he knocks their helmets together, which in racing is a bit of a proxy.
Image description: Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen after Spa, placed P2 and P3, hugging. Piastri’s legs are around Verstappen’s waist, and they’re knocking their helmets together head-on.
It’s Mekies who calls them on it. So Oscar has to go in, having sent a rather frantic text to Mark, and he meets Max in the parking lot.
“They know?” is all he says, and Max does a tilt of his head back-and-forth and frowns, a very Dutch mannerism that suggests ‘they must, and we’re kind of fucked’.
“Mark knows, too,” Oscar tells Max as they walk in, and Max does a double-take at him.
“What, this whole time?”
“Yeah, basically,” Oscar says, “But he’s got plausible deniability. We never put anything in writing about it.”
Max snorts.
“You hang out with him too much. You’re starting to sound like him,” he says, which makes Oscar blush.
“But that’s okay that he knew,” Max continues, “I told GP as well.”
Well, at least Oscar isn’t the only one spilling his secrets to his favourite older man.
When they get to the scheduled meeting room, Mekies is there with their PR coordinator and GP — not really the group you want to see as a racing driver. They sit next to each other silently, and there’s no static in Oscar’s head; Max reaches out through their signal, a warm string of connection, and it feels like a hand held.
“You’re soulmates,” Mekies says, beating about no bushes at all. Max frowns at him.
“Did GP tell you?”
“No,” says Mekies, shooting GP a glare. “Who the hell else knew?”
“Just Mark,” Oscar pipes up. “I’m sorry. I told Max to keep it between us; I just wanted to keep my seat.”
Mekies sighs.
“You two have known since the first test, haven’t you?”
They nod. Oscar knows it’s weirdly in sync even though they aren’t looking at each other.
“I’m at a loss, honestly,” Mekies says. “It’s against the rules to have soulmates on the same team, but… Oscar, we don’t want to lose you. You’re the best second driver we’ve had in years. You’re hardly even a second driver, except by seniority. I think you could win a championship in this car.”
He looks around the table, at the four others present.
“We’re going to fight the FIA on this one,” he continues. “No team has ever had this happen before, so no one has questioned it. But the fact that we didn’t catch on until now has to count for something — and you two haven’t done anything unfair, anything regular teammates couldn’t have done.”
Oscar’s getting choked up, a little bit. If this had happened the same time last year, McLaren never would have taken action, never would have fought for him in this way. Never would have challenged a rule, not even an old, defunct rule that has had no bearing on the sport.
“Are you serious?” Oscar asks.
Mekies and GP nod. GP’s expression is serious, determined.
“We see no reason to rip your seat from under you for such an innocent thing,” he says. “Nor to separate you two.”
Oscar can’t talk anymore, but Max speaks in his stead.
“Thank you,” Max tells Mekies and GP, heartfelt.
Their pinkies touch under the table, and when they first make contact, there’s a static shock.