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After the crash, Max goes through the motions. He congratulates Charles and Isack, makes conversation with Kimi, and goes through the driver interviews that hound him with their usual thinly veiled questions. Asking him about what went wrong, why he keeps on crashing, why he’s underperforming, why he can’t save the team he has loved from the beginning from falling apart around him.
By the end of it all, Max is tired.
Laurent, Raymond, and his father are talking to each other below the stairs leading to the Red Bull motorhome when Max makes his way over. They likely are waiting there to catch him-to spew out empty apologies, spit out condescending condolences. Max clenches his fist. A hot wave of anger buried by exhaustion rises again. He doesn’t want to listen to all the stupid useless apologies he’s heard hundreds of times today, the ones he has heard thousands of times throughout the season.
Max sprints up the stairs. Runs through the floor and all the way to his driver room and locks the door. A can of Red Bull stares insultingly at him from up top his desk. It is flying into the wall before he even registers it is in his hand. His eyes sting. He just stares blankly as the can of Red Bull-smashed and broken-slides to the floor, yellow liquid oozing out.
Max hears a soft knock.
“Max” The distinctly French accented voice of Laurent calls out from behind the door.
Max’s mouth opens to spit out a sarcastic remark. Because how much fucking times does he have to explain that he doesn’t want to talk now- that he doesn’t want to hear it? Want go hear them repeating Max, Max, Max with every added problem like a broken record. Max slams his mouth shut. And yet, despite all their stupid apologies, they change nothing. They still do not listen. It is almost like he is twelve again and begging his dad to listen to him and not give up on him after a race he fucked up badly, a broken record saying the same things over and over and over again, shouting into the wind from a clifftop as he pleads that one day he will be listened too even though he has always known deep down that he will not be.
In the end, Red Bull was truly like his second home in the same way.
The can crunches under his feet, ruined further as he hears Laurent’s fading footsteps. The lump in his throat doesn’t even disappear as he shouts in frustration, destroying the can further and further. The remaining liquid from the Red Bull can sprays out onto the floor with a splat, staining the hardwood like a bloodstain. Now the can is an unrecognizable carcass, an empty husk of what it once was.
“Max.”He hears GP’s voice ring out behind the locked door. “Can we talk?”
Max keeps his mouth shut. He hears rustling and a soft plunk reverberate behind the door but no fading footsteps. GP sighs.
His refusal to speak must anger GP. “Mate, we really need to-“
“Go Away”
“Well I don’t plan on leaving, so that’s too bad.”
Silence again before GP lets out another sigh. “Look Max-I’m not going to sit here and apologize again because I know you are tired of it. Today-no, this season is quite shit. There are problems and there us miscommunication”
A bitter, mocking laugh escapes Max. “That was certainly one way to phrase it.”
“Max-“
“Don’t.”
“I want to work things out with you, Max. I really do.” GP’s voice is soft but lined with desperation.
“The team always wants to work things out.” Max spits out venomously. “And yet, every single time after, I say something and the team goes straight back to ignoring me! Because it is one thing if the car tries to kill me, and it’s another if no one even listens to me about me pointing it out-In Canada you don’t listen to my setup feedback, in Austria you don’t again and the rear wing tries to kill me, and now in the UK tries to kill me again! And that’s only the tip of the iceberg- What will it take for you to listen?!” Max tugs at his hair in frustration. “Will it take having the car be crushed and crumpled beyond recognition? Will it take having my guts spilled out across the car when my luck finally runs out?”
Silence again then- “Max.” GP’s voice is steady and filled with something almost like regret. “I can try, but I can’t promise they will listen. They are not listening to me as well.”
Part of Max wants to shout back- demand that GP makes them listen but deep down he knows that would be unfair. His limbs feel like lead and he is an empty vessel, drained of all remaining power and hope.
“Okay.” He just replies, the fight having already left him.
Max hears more shuffling as GP rises from his seat on the floor. “And Max?” GP says before leaving. “You may not believe it at the moment, but I will always be here for you, okay?”
Max can’t help but let out a choked laugh. “I know.” The fact that it was the truth makes it even more insulting somehow.
Max curls up on the floor as he finally hears the sound of GP’s fading footsteps. His eyes sting. Because deep down, he really wants to believe it. Wants to believe that everything will change, that this is all just a fever dream that he will eventually wake up from. Believe that one day this home will embrace him again like it did for the long years prior. But it feels like the end rather than the beginning of something better. He believed and believed and believed through the years, but the shiny red, blue and yellow was just a glossy finish that covered a razor-thin shell of cheap aluminum, and the illusion of a rebirth for the team he called his home is shattered, crumbling around him. And now he finally has to admit that his beliefs may have been nothing more than a child’s delusion. Of a five year old him who believed that his mother and father and sister would always stay together with him. And now he is eleven again, watching his mother from the rear window of his van as they drove away, finally coming to terms that his family will never be what it once was.
Max stares at the destroyed can. In the end, the thin metal shell was helpless to prevent itself from making a mess all over the hardwood floor.