Chapter Text
The windows in George Russell’s Monaco apartment faced east, so the sun would inevitably blast him in the face from five in the morning. It used to piss him off terribly – he’d pull the duvet over his head, curse, and kick Max to close the curtains they always forgot to pull shut the night before because “you’re closer, dammit.” Max would always grumble, mutter curses in Dutch, but he’d close the curtains anyway.
Now, George couldn’t give a flying fuck about the sun. He didn’t even try to get up – just lay there, watching the beam of light slowly crawl across the wall, reach the empty pillow, and freeze there, as if mocking him. Look, here’s where he’s supposed to be. But he’s not.
George rolls over to the other side and gropes for the emptiness with his hand. His hand, the traitor, still hasn’t learned its lesson. It makes this move automatically – to check if you’re there, if you’ve fallen off, if you’re cold. It pats the cold sheet like a blind kitten, and every time it hits nothing.
Emptiness is perfectly normal, he tells himself for the three hundredth time. This emptiness has lasted eight months, twenty-three days, and, to be precise, about four hours. He stopped marking days on the calendar when he realized the calendar was just days of the week, and Max wasn’t coming back on a Monday, Wednesday, or Sunday.
He learned not to check his phone first thing in the morning because his mind would immediately jump to the thought that since Max wasn’t there, he had to text him.
“I should text him that the neighbors had another party and that moron blasted his stinky rap at three in the morning,” and then – “Oh, right, he fucked off.” Or: “I wonder if Max saw that insane overtake Leclerc pulled off this weekend?” – “Oh, right, he doesn’t give a shit.” Or: “God, I just want to complain to him about this stupid FIA decision” – “Oh, right. There’s no one to complain to.”
And that “oh, right” hit harder than any barrier at three hundred kilometers an hour.
Habits are a total bitch. It only takes twenty-one days to form one, but you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to get rid of the damn thing. They dig into you like tire rubber into asphalt at the braking point. You can change your trajectory, sure, but the mark is already there.
For example, George still brushes his teeth with his left hand only, because Max used to stand on the right, and they’d elbow each other and grunt, making faces in the mirror. Now there’s no one on the right. He could brush with both, but his hand still reaches to the left. Idiotic.
Or he catches himself making coffee for two, then just stands there, watching the second cup cool down. It cools down deliberately slowly, just to spite him. And he stands there, like an idiot, waiting for the last wisp of steam to disappear, because only after that can he pour out the damn cup without feeling like a traitor.
“I don’t need him,” George thinks, pouring the coffee down the sink. He watches the brown funnel swirl down the drain. “It’s just a habit. Biochemistry. Serotonin, dopamine. My body just misses the chemicals, but I am not my body. I’m above that, I can handle it.”
He’s handling it, by the way, like absolute shit.
He turns on the TV and instinctively searches for the bright blue car with VER on the left. His heart freezes for a second when he finds it, but then he realizes: no, it’s an archive. 2025. And he already knows how this race ends, he knows it by heart, every overtake, every radio curse, but he still watches. Because he is there. Because he’s still his.
Almost a year had passed since Max Verstappen announced his departure from Formula 1. The statement was dry – Max simply said the new era and regulations were, to put it very mildly, “not his story,” and he wanted to develop his own racing team.
George remembered the first time he read those regulations, all 178 pages of legal jargon designed to explain why the fastest cars in the world would now sound like angry vacuum cleaners and weigh like cows on a diet. There were many smart words about “sustainable development,” “spectacle,” and “the future of motorsport.”
Max, however, was far more succinct:
“The future sucks.”
“Oh, come on! It’s not that bad.”
“Nothing personal, I just want a decent car,” he mimicked the sound with his hand, drawing the trajectory of a mosquito. “Not this piece-of-shit-ambus that just goes jzhzhzhzh, shshshsh, and pew-pew.”
“You might as well just snap your fingers,” George snorted, watching the pantomime.
“What, it’s suspiciously similar, right?” Max snapped his fingers for emphasis. “We’re fucking racing to the accompaniment of something between a drone buzzing and an asthmatic coughing.”
“You’re just nostalgic for the old V6s,” George noted. “You’re like an old geezer who sighs longingly at the sight of a carburetor.”
“And you’re like a guy who’d race anything, even a washing machine, if it had ‘Formula 1’ written on it.”
“At least a washing machine would be quieter than your new car.”
“Yeah, and it would be faster, too!”
They laughed then. Russell thought Verstappen was just huffing and messing around, as usual. The Dutchman was, in fact, incredibly conservative when it came to racing and always grumbled about new rules: the increase in the number of Grands Prix, the introduction of sprints, the new tracks. And yet, he always ended up being the best despite every limitation. Max would get used to it eventually, he had to.
But in the end, he never did.
Verstappen’s first season under the new regulations was a failure. Well, not a complete failure – he finished fourth, fifth, third – for any other driver, it would have been a decent season. But not for Max Verstappen, the four-time champion who had dominated the track for years.
The internet exploded back then.
“Verstappen’s washed up,” “Without Newey, he’s a total zero,” “The new regulations show who’s a real driver and who was just riding the coattails of a rocketship.”
George knew it wasn’t true. He saw how Max piloted that new, heavy, clumsy blue saucepan that the engineers called a “car.” He saw him extract the impossible from it, fighting a machine that wouldn’t obey, trying to adapt his aggressive style to the new rules – and it just wasn’t working.
George remembered how Max, after one of the qualifying sessions, sat in their motorhome, staring at the wall. He had set the fifth fastest time, which by the standards of that season was considered almost heroic, but his face looked like he hadn’t even made it out of Q1.
“What’s up?” George asked, sitting down next to him. “Not bad for that…”
“You know what the most annoying part is?” Max interrupted, not looking at him. His voice was even, but without his usual fire. “I just did a lap where I didn’t make a single mistake. Perfect trajectory, perfect apex, perfect exit – just like clockwork.”
“And?”
“And this…” Max tapped his finger on the table, as if trying to punch a hole through it. “This car told me, ‘Thanks, Max, the trajectory is fucking perfect, of course, but you forgot to brake for energy harvesting at Turn Three, so your perfection is just plus zero point three to your lap time.’” He paused, then added more quietly: “I’m not a driver anymore. I’m some fucking call center dispatcher.”
Verstappen fell silent, staring into the distance. And Russell suddenly saw something in his profile he hadn’t noticed before: fatigue. Not physical – the deep kind, when a person stops recognizing themselves in what they do.
George thought then: “He’s being dramatic.” Because in this new world, he himself felt even better – his neat, calculated style fit perfectly with the hybrid algorithms. He was collecting points, racking up podiums, and genuinely didn’t understand why Max was so pissed off about it.
Russell remembered brushing him off, saying something like “you’ll get used to it,” that “it’s like this for everyone.” But unlike Max, no one expected wins from everyone else. The world didn’t want to hear about “style not fitting”; it didn’t care that “the car won’t listen.” The world wanted blood on the asphalt, and Max was the one who had always given it the most.
The stands booed him – not with a roar, but with a vile whistle. The sound of a disappointed crowd feeling cheated: “You promised us greatness, and you’re bringing us seventh place…?”
George stood in the team area and heard it with his own ears. Thousands of people who had worn orange shirts with his name just yesterday were now expressing their contempt. He looked at the patches of orange in the stands and thought: “Traitors. Herd animals. You’re not even worthy to tie his shoelaces.”
But Max walked past without looking back. His helmet hid his face.
Later, in the motorhome, George asked:
“How do you put up with it?”
Max pulled off his balaclava and tossed it on the table.
“What am I supposed to do? Go out and tell them, ‘Guys, I hate myself more than you do right now’?” He looked at George, and his eyes held fatigue – not from the booing, but from something much deeper. “I don’t give a shit about them, George. I do give a shit that I can’t drive like I used to. Because I don’t understand why I even go out on the track if I can’t get any pleasure from it.”
By the next season, the hate wasn’t just background noise – it had become a familiar part of the scenery. Max won sometimes, but it never seemed enough. Every mistake he made was turned into a meme. Every spin, every imperfect lap, every sharp word on the radio – all of it became fodder for discussion.
And George understood that there was only a grain of humor in each joke; the rest was the truth that sat inside Max, gnawing away at him like rust. He had absolutely stopped liking what he was doing. With each race, his eyes grew dimmer, as if someone was turning off a light bulb inside him every day. First, there was a whole city of lights, then a residential area, then a lone streetlight in a field, and finally, only the dim glow of the dashboard remained.
And then came the race in Monza. George still couldn’t think about it without a lump in his throat. They were nose to nose at the start, and for a moment Russell thought, now, now, here it comes – the comeback – now Verstappen would pull off that signature overtake around the outside that no one else would dare try, and everything would fall into place.
Max did go for the overtake, but the car wouldn’t obey – it was a heavy, clumsy lump that, instead of maneuvering, simply… didn’t make the corner. The contact was light, almost weightless, but it was enough to dump Max into the gravel.
George drove past. Of course, he couldn’t stop in the middle of a race. But he saw in his rearview mirror how Max got out of the cockpit and, without taking off his helmet, just sat down on the barrier. He didn’t kick anything, didn’t curse on the radio, didn’t throw his gloves. He just sat and stared at his car. At that blue coffin that had once been his wings.
After that race, it was as if something finally broke. A couple of weeks later, Max officially announced the end of his journey in Formula 1.
When Verstappen finally left for another racing series, Russell was happy for him at first. Honestly.
He caught himself opening photos of Max in his new team a hundred times. There they were, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Dutchman stands on the podium, spraying his teammates with champagne, and his face doesn’t have that perpetual crease between his brows that had appeared in his final F1 season. There he is in Monza, on that same ill-fated track where he was showered with gravel, now standing on the top step, and the Italian tifosi are chanting his name as if he were one of their own.
And George felt immense pride. It was so sharp, almost physical, swelling in his chest. Look at him. That’s my Max. The best! He found himself. He didn’t break, didn’t fade into obscurity, he just found a new path. He’s just as fast, just as good. How could anyone have doubted him?
Pride inflates his chest until his ribs ache. It’s hot, almost burning. Max deserved this. He worked his ass off for years, put up with all that shit, the press, the hate – and now, he’s free.
And then the pride cools down sharply, as if water was poured on it, and an icy chill takes its place. Because George didn’t get to share that trophy, that smile, that champagne-drenched foolishness. He watched the photos like a spectator in the front row – close, but behind an invisible wall.
“He’s happy. Without me. So I really was part of the problem, not the solution.”
George tried to push that thought out of his head, replacing it with pride for his loved one, but he couldn’t. Pride and pain now just came in a single package. A two-layered cocktail: on top, sincere, pure joy for him; on the bottom, sticky, black despair because you’re not part of that happiness.
A drink called “I’m proud of you, you idiot. And I hate you for not being here.”
And after a couple of races in the new season, George realized that Max, with his departure, hadn’t just taken their morning coffee and the habit of elbowing each other in the bathroom – he had taken the war.
The war they had both grown up in. The one where the world shrank to the size of their cars and their rival’s, to the screech of rubber and the frantic thumping of a heart trying to escape a fireproof suit. The one where every maneuver was a conversation, where every “I’ll let you pass” meant “I love you,” and “I’m not letting you pass” meant “fuck you.”
George didn’t just lose his loved one – he lost his only worthy opponent. The person next to whom every victory had weight because you had beaten him. And every defeat was a lesson because you had lost to him.
And racing without that became… just racing. Circling and earning points. A methodical office job from nine to five.
George was winning – he adapted to the new regulations better than anyone, the engineers praised him, the media adored him. “Russell is the new champion,” “George shows how to drive these cars,” “Finally, we’ve found the successor.”
He would stand on the top step of the podium, raise yet another trophy above his head, and inside him… nothing. Emptiness. Because the sweetest part of victory is turning to your rival and seeing both rage and respect in his eyes. And where Max should have been, there was now a yawning void.
He tried to explain it to his friends: “You see, it’s like playing padel against a wall. You can perfect your shot, but it’s so boring, dammit! Because the wall doesn’t celebrate when it wins, and it doesn’t rage when it loses. A wall is just a wall.”
His friends didn’t understand at all. They said: “You’re an F1 driver, you have tons of rivals. There are twenty-one other drivers on the grid!”
Yes, there are many rivals. There really are twenty-one other drivers on the grid.
But Max Verstappen is one of a kind. And he’s not on the starting grid. Without Max, it’s just asphalt with painted squares.
In every driver, he only saw him.
When Oscar Piastri pulled off a risky overtake around the outside, George’s heart skipped a beat – Max. When Lando Norris grumbled at his engineer on the radio, his voice cracking into that familiar rasp – Verstappen. When Charles Leclerc, furious with his team’s strategy, clenched the steering wheel in rage – George looked away, because that gesture was perfected by someone else.
There were twenty-one drivers on the grid. But for George, they were just a collection of silhouettes that weren’t Max.
He tried to imagine what would come next. Another five years in F1, maybe. Five years of fighting a wall. Five years of victories that meant nothing, or defeats that didn’t burn. As many years of loneliness in a crowd of mechanics who called him “champion” but would never call him “you idiot” the way he used to.
Once after a race, he sat in his motorhome, clutching a bottle of champagne, and watched Charles embrace his wife, Alexandra. And George suddenly realized: he wasn’t jealous of the win itself, but of the fact that Leclerc had someone to celebrate with, that his victory wasn’t just a number on a results sheet, but a moment in life shared with another person. Whereas George’s wins were now just lines in a contract.
He tried to negotiate with Max for even a little.
“Listen, maybe you could come to the paddock sometimes?” George asked once. His voice sounded carefree, but his fingers were fidgeting with the edge of the table.
Max glanced away from his monitor, where GT3 simulations were running.
“Why would I come to your paddock?”
“Not ‘your,’ ‘our.’” George moved closer, trying to speak lightly, as if it didn’t matter. “Have some coffee, watch me drive these irons, get mad about it, whatever.”
“Oh, so you want me to come watch you suffer in those troughs?” A familiar teasing tone crept into Max’s voice.
“I want you to come watch me win.”
“I’m not going to be your WAG,” Max said sharply.
George froze.
“What?”
“I’m not going to sit in the garage, look at you with adoration, and wait for my boy to come back with a win. No, thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, I just asked if you wanted to be, like, my moral support.”
A pause. Max finally looked away from the screen.
“Moral support that sits in the garage and waits for her boyfriend to finish lapping is a WAG. I didn’t do that when I was racing, and I’m not about to start now.”
“So you’re too cool to sit in my garage?”
Max paused. He looked at George as if he wanted to say something important, but in the end, just shook his head.
“Yeah, too cool to sit in anyone’s garage. Even yours.”
“Especially mine,” George corrected.
“Especially yours.”
They were silent. The silence was awkward, but not hostile. More the kind where one person was waiting for the other to say: “It was a joke. Of course I’ll come.”
George was the first to crack.
“I’ll even give you a cap so no one recognizes you.”
“Are you an idiot?” Max asked without malice. “I’m not wearing your cap.”
“I didn’t offer it. I said I’d give it to you. You’ll be begging for it later when five guys with cameras chase you down to catch the ‘sensation of the return.’”
Max turned back to his monitor. But the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Stupid idea.”
“Well, you could just support me,” George said quietly.
“I do support you,” Max turned back again, and this time his gaze was serious. “I watch every one of your broadcasts. But sitting in your garage pretending I don’t want to rip that steering wheel out of your hands and show you how it’s done?” He shook his head. “That wouldn’t be fair to you or to these…” he twirled his finger in the air, searching for the word. “…assclowns who came up with these regulations.”
“No, seriously,” George persisted. “At least think about my proposal.”
“Why the hell would I go there, George? To stand in your motorhome with a sign saying ‘Ex-champion, now a happy retiree,’ so you can feel cool?”
“So I can feel loved, you idiot!” George exclaimed, and silence fell.
The words hung between them. Verstappen turned to the window. Russell saw him tense up.
“…Sorry,” the Dutchman said dully after a minute. “I can’t. Not yet. Maybe later. But not now.”
That’s when George understood that for Max, “later” was a concept he didn’t have. Or maybe it just didn’t include George.
And then came the stupid fight.
George watched Max calmly packing his bag for another trip with his new team, and felt lava boiling inside him.
“You don’t even ask,” he began then, trying to keep his voice from shaking and sound calm.
Max paused, not turning around.
“What was I supposed to ask?”
“Not ‘what,’ ‘how.’ How I am without you? Do I want you to leave? You don’t ask if I want to race with you over there.”
“George, you have your own career. You can’t just…”
“Oh, so you’ve decided for me, have you?” he asked, his voice turning angry. “You always decide for me. You think you know what’s best, but what would be best is to ask. Just, fucking, ask!”
“I don’t want you to sacrifice…”
“And I don’t want you to decide what I sacrifice!” George was already shouting. “You’re a fucking egomaniac, Max. You’re used to the whole world revolving around your track, but I am not your track. I’m a person, and I have the right to choose for myself: go with you or stay.”
Max put down the bag and turned to face him.
“Fine, I’ll ask differently. Are you ready to leave Formula 1? Now, at your peak?” he asked seriously. “Because I didn’t leave out of boredom, George.”
“Oh yeah, he was so bored. Only five wins that season.”
“I don’t give a shit about the wins!” Max raised his voice for the first time in the whole conversation. “You understand? I don’t care about the trophies, the points, the records. But I want to feel the car shaking under me at the limit. I want my fingers to go numb from braking. I want to take risks, dammit! And now, if I take a risk, I just lose ten percent of the battery and become a turtle on the straight. Where’s the fun in that?”
George fell silent. He didn’t know what to answer.
“You don’t understand,” Max said more quietly. “You’ll never understand, because for you racing is about the result, but for me, it’s a state of being.”
“And that’s why you’re throwing everything away? Throwing me away?”
“You don’t understand that I’m not leaving you. I’m leaving what’s killing me. Every time I went out on the track, I felt something inside me dying. The part of me that loved racing. And if I hadn’t left, there would be nothing left. Nothing at all. Every morning I woke up and thought: ‘Why am I doing this?’ And I couldn’t find the answer.”
“And what about me?” George stepped closer to him, almost nose to nose. “Aren’t I the answer?”
Max looked at him for a long moment.
“You can’t be the answer to everything for me, George. That’s too heavy a burden, even for you,” he tried to put an arm around Russell. “I don’t want you to hate me. If you drop everything and come with me, and then regret it…”
George pushed him away.
“And right now, do you think I don’t hate you?”
And it started. They said things to each other that they normally didn’t say. George about Max being a fucking asshole who only thinks about the steering wheel and his own ego. Max about George being too hung up on feelings and belonging in a theater club, not in racing.
The words were like shards of glass. They flew at each other with the speed of a drag race. George was talking and knew he was saying the wrong things, but he couldn’t stop. His tongue had a life of its own, while his brain sat in the corner, quietly whining: shut up, shut up, you’ll regret this later.
“You’re just a fucking coward!” George spat out. “You actually ran away from F1 because you couldn’t keep winning and dominating! Because suddenly it turned out you’re not a god, but just… just…”
“Go on.” Max’s voice was quiet and dangerous.
“You’re just a mediocre driver who bailed in time to save his stats! Because you’re afraid your legend will crumble to dust! A has-been!”
Russell wanted to add something else, but the words got stuck in his throat. He suddenly realized that something irreversible was happening. Not a fight, not a quarrel – but the end.
Verstappen nodded indifferently, as if he had heard everything he needed. Silently, he picked up the already packed bag and headed for the door.
“Max…” George stepped after him, his voice suddenly losing all its anger, becoming thin and strange. “Max, wait…”
“You’re right, I’m a coward. And I bailed,” Max said, without turning around. “Now do whatever you want with your career. But without me.”
It was a cry for help that they both, as usual, ignored. Max was crying: “I’m suffocating in this life, I want another!” And George was crying: “But I’m in this life, why am I not enough for you?”
George thought then: It’ll pass. He’ll cool down and come back.
Nothing fucking passed. He didn’t come back.
Russell replayed everything he’d said in his head, trying to find an excuse, some angle he could cling to so he could tell himself: “I was wrong, but it was just a regular fight.” But the last phrase knocked that angle out completely.
“Just a mediocre driver.”
God, did he really say that? He’s not an idiot, he knows that’s a blatant lie. He saw how that “mediocre” driver extracted more from that blue saucepan than it was capable of giving. He remembers losing to him on track when Max was driving a tractor and he had a decent car, and he still lost.
“A has-been.”
He called him that because he wanted to hurt him. And he did. Well done, George. Good job. You chose the word that made his face fall as if you’d told him racing wasn’t for him. And for him, that’s worse than telling him his mother doesn’t love him. And you knew that. You fucking knew it, and you still said it.
George waited for a call for three days. Then a week. Then a month. He wrote messages that he later deleted because they seemed either too pathetic or too angry. He hoped that Max, like that one time at the beginning of their relationship, would be the first to send a text saying “I’m an idiot, sorry.” But the phone was silent. The phone was as empty as the pillow on the right.
He thought then: “It’s fine, he’ll get over it, that’s how we always are.” But it wasn’t like that. It was like that for the first and last time. Because he had never called him a has-been before.
And now George hated himself for that arrogance. For the fact that he, like a complete fool, thought he could say nasty things to someone, and that person, like a loyal dog, would come back because he was used to it.
At first, Russell even tried to be angry. Honestly, he tried. He’d make lists in his head: here’s why Max Verstappen is a selfish asshole.
Point one: left without explanation.
Point two: didn’t even say goodbye properly.
Point three: chose those fucking GT3s over even talking.
The more he thought, the more impressive the list became. George even felt something like righteous anger. He felt the fury pumping his blood, his fists clenching on their own.
Yes, he had a right to be angry! He had the right to scream and the right to throw all of Max’s shit out the window so it would smash onto the Monaco waterfront in front of the rich slackers.
And then his brain, that eternally analyzing fucking mechanism, would activate the next step in the program: “Understand the reason” – he was tired and said so a hundred times, he said F1 was sucking the life out of him, he said he wanted peace and quiet, and you always brushed him off. “Oh, come on, you’ll get used to it.”
Max wouldn’t want you to sacrifice your career for him. “He’s right,” the inner voice whispered. “You would blame him. Every time you watch a race. Every time an old acquaintance gets a contract. You would blame him, and he knows it. He knows you better than you know yourself.”
And that was it. The anger deflated like a punctured balloon. With a pathetic wheeze, like that asthmatic cough they used to mock together.
He can list a hundred reasons to hate a person. Write them down on paper, learn them by heart, carry them like a bulletproof vest. But if the bullet doesn’t hit the vest – if it hits the heart – it doesn’t matter what you have in your pocket, you’re still going down.
His whole problem is that he hates with the same passionate intensity with which he loves.
He’ll analyze everything to the point where he finally understands why that person acts the way they do. He’ll piece together the facts, solve the puzzle, and end up not with an enemy, but just with a person.
Whom he still loves.
And he can’t be angry with him. Even though he wants to, wants to until his teeth grind. Until his fists ache, until he wants to smash that fucking second cup against the wall, so the shards would stick into the drywall and stay there forever like a meteor crater. But he can’t. Because if he breaks it, he’ll just look for it again tomorrow. And he’ll buy another one. And he’ll make coffee for two again. Idiot. Sentimental fool.
He’d imagined many times how Max was doing. How he wakes up alone on his white yacht and stares at the sea in the distance. The sea is big, blue, and very beautiful. And George is not in that sea. And apparently, he never will be again.
I wonder, does he also reach for a stranger’s hand in the dark? Or has he already unlearned it? Maybe he’s already forgotten what it’s like to elbow someone in the bathroom so they move over. Maybe he now brushes his teeth calmly, like a normal person, and doesn’t even notice the emptiness beside him.
In the first week of the summer break of the Max-less season, George got drunk. Alcohol, of course, didn’t help, but it at least created the illusion that his pain had a reason. That he was drinking because he was sad, not because he just didn’t know what to do with himself in this apartment where everything screamed that someone was missing. Even the walls seemed to be grieving. They remembered him laughing, him shouting in Dutch while playing video games, him walking barefoot on the parquet, his every step a metronome setting the rhythm of life in this house.
Currently, George was in the “eating ice cream straight from the tub and watching old race highlights” phase. Right now – 2016, the Spanish Grand Prix. Two guys in Mercedes take each other out in the first corner, and the commentator is screaming about young Verstappen, who just won his first race.
The youngest Grand Prix winner in Formula 1 history…
“He was eighteen,” George whispered into the void, licking the spoon. “God, he was eighteen, and he was already a fucking genius. When I was eighteen, I thought being able to parallel park was cool.”
The screen went dark, but the face of young Max on the podium was still before his eyes. The same as George remembered him in the early years of their acquaintance – reckless, daring, confident that the whole world belonged to him.
“A mediocre driver who bailed in time.”
The words surfaced from nowhere, as always in moments when his brain decided George wasn’t in enough pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, but they didn’t disappear – they echoed in his own voice, with that very intonation he hated in himself: poisonous, petty, designed to hit the bullseye.
His ears were ringing – either from exhaustion, or from not blinking while staring at the screen, or from the third tub of Ben & Jerry’s salted caramel that day.
The Brit suddenly remembered his last win at Silverstone, his home track – the dense noise from his tribune, the Union Jack on his shoulders, the loud “God Save the King.” And there he was, George Russell, lifting the heavy trophy above his head – and in that moment, he didn’t just feel like a driver – he felt like a god. He had proved to all those haters who wrote “Russell is overrated” that he could win on his home track. He could win any race, any championship. He didn’t need…
The swing paused for a second at the top.
He didn’t need Max.
He repeated it to himself like a mantra. Didn’t. Need. Max. When he was pouring ice-cold champagne down his collar and yelling something at the camera, he almost believed it. He felt whole. Filled to the brim. An absolutely self-sufficient piece of winner.
But memory – the bitch with eidetic memory – doesn’t ask for permission.
It tosses him, uninvited, not the checkered flag and not the roar of the crowd. It tosses him that moment an hour before the race, when he was standing in the garage, pulling on his gloves, and suddenly caught himself thinking: “It’s a shame he can’t see how I look right now. The white race suit suits me much better than the black one. He’d say: ‘Like a bride, only angry.’” George smirked at his own thought then, shook his head, and got into the car.
And now he understands that that fleeting thought wasn’t a bug, but the already fucking architecture of his brain. He no longer knows how to rejoice without a witness. How to win without a spectator in an orange cap watching the screen and twisting his lips: “It’ll do. But in my day, you would have been fifth.”
Because what’s the point of being a god on the podium if the only person whose opinion matters is watching from another world? If he didn’t even see that race, because in his new world there are different tracks, different cars, and, possibly, different people who brush their teeth with their left hand and make coffee for two.
This swing is his life now. A moment – you’re on top of Everest, licking salted caramel off a spoon, tasting victory. The next – you’re sitting in a sticky puddle of that same melted ice cream, looking at your reflection in the phone screen, and you don’t understand where you ended and this vast, gaping, Spa-Francorchamps-sized emptiness you still haven’t learned to fill began.
And George Russell closes his eyes.
In the silence of Monte Carlo, where the only sound is the hum of the air conditioner, sounding like that very angry vacuum cleaner that made Max leave, he walks the path again.
Up – “I’m a champion. I don’t need Max.”
Down – “But I want him to see.”
Up – “He chose GT3 himself.”
Down – “And I chose to be no one without him.”
The swing stops exactly at the point where the pain becomes familiar. Where you don’t cry anymore, don’t rage, but just exist in a state of waiting.