Work Text:
Number 1
Your eyes were the first thing I noticed about you: they're round and blue and too big for your face. When they stare at me I feel exposed, hypnotized. Like I'm staring into a raging ocean about to swallow me whole, your lashes shadowed like storm clouds. They look like every bad decision I have made and will ever make.
The rest of you is shabby despite your best efforts: it is clear you've worn your nicest (let's be realistic, your only) suit to impress me, but it is of middling quality and not properly tailored to your figure. Your father bought it on sale, mass-produced for some common department store chain. Similarly, no amount of combing and styling can hide the fact that your mother cut your hair. You are untamed, undeveloped, unrefined.
But underneath the baby fat of your cheeks are bones of steel, just waiting to be forged into greatness. There is a stubborn set to your jaw and determination in your face. I see in your pretty eyes a soul filled with the same resolve and inevitability as a typhoon making landfall.
I've always had a sixth sense for raw talent and potential.
Many people will think I regret not being able to sign Max Verstappen, but I'm actually quite calm about it. The problem is that he is already half-formed underneath the hands of his father, and between the two of them they will consume everything else. Team Mercedes is mine, and I refuse to let Jos Verstappen have even a slice. Christian thinks he's gotten one over me, snagging young Max, but he's always been a bit too hotheaded for his own good. Mark my words, by the time Max is thirty, our hapless Mr. Horner will be dust and Team Red Bull will be nothing but a pedestal for the Verstappens – and then when Max ages past his prime or retires, there will be no one left to fill the vacuum, no heir to the throne, no second driver having survived long enough to fill those shoes. A legacy cannot survive when your competition is your own primary player, and Jos will never be satisfied with anything but Max as the central and only star.
At the end of the day, Max is something out of my control, and that is unacceptable to me no matter how good he is. He is already what he is and there is nothing left for me to contribute.
Not you, though. You came before me as an uncut block of marble, to fashion however I please. I see in you similarities to Max, but your father never did have Jos' money or connections. Still the same attitude, the same competitive spirit, the same raw materials – but he's left room for me to make my own marks. Unintentional on his part, but I appreciate the consideration nonetheless. You are currently not as good as Max in terms of baseline skill; nonetheless, I can make you better, with the right combination of mind games. It is too late for me to train you the way Jos trained his son, but that's fine, because this level of competition is as much about the brain as it is the body. Anger and impulsivity have always been the weaknesses of the Verstappen men. They explode outward. You, on the other hand, are the type to go inward; I didn't even have to look at you long to tell.
It just so happens I know how to use both.
You come before me at the right time, too. I'm currently on the lookout for something new. Nico came to me already beautiful and shaped by his own family of wealthy racing champions, and he's become more and more unmanageable as the years have gone by. Our parting was gradual and mutual: we've quietly tired of each other. You, though, you're the first of your line and not beautiful yet. You will become so one day, under my hand, and that is far more satisfying to me, to fully craft something of my own rather than buy it ready-made.
Naive child, you put your pen to paper not knowing what you've done. But I am not unfair: for what you will give me, I will give you more in turn, never doubt that.
I start slow. My first kisses are chaste, on the crown of your head, behind the ears, over both cheeks. You are a British lad raised by an exacting father and this tenderness is strange to you, but it is passed off as a cultural misunderstanding. We do things differently on the warmer parts of the continent, you know – in Spain and France and Italy it is this way too; that's just how we say hello. You are untraveled outside of your racing meets and so you accept this at face value.
You trust me easily. Too easily. All the praise your father withheld, I give to you freely. All the luxuries you forewent in your youth so that you could afford your karting, I buy for you without a second thought. All the worries you secret away behind your ribcage, I always have time to listen to. Eventually you are even more inclined to share them with me than your own family and friends. I supplant them in your intimacies; you are not satisfied with anything less than first place, and neither am I.
It comes to a head due to Lawrence Stroll, of all people.
That spot in Prema Racing was always yours. Does Lawrence Stroll think he can veto my boy from the team in place of his boy just because he bought a few shares? Does he forget who supplies their motors? The euros don't matter if the car doesn't fucking go, does it? I'd normally be angrier at such an insult to me, but this time I'll forgive his trespass and call it even because he delivered your gift-wrapped heart right into my lap.
"Thank you," you cry. "I thought – I didn't think you would care – I didn't want to trouble you – "
You always did cry too openly, too much, and it draws even more attention to your eyes, makes you look more delicate and alluring. You ought to be careful; crueler men than I would shed your tears on purpose just to see that.
"Shhh," I hush you, stroking your back. "What Stroll did was not right. You deserved that seat fair and square."
"I won't let you down," you promise. The more faith I put in you the more adamant you are to prove that it isn't misplaced, that the money I've spent on you so far isn't a waste. "I'll win it all; I will."
This time my kiss cannot be passed off as an innocuous cultural disconnect. As I pull away, your cheeks are pink, but you don't protest when I lean in for another. You nibble at my tongue inside you; you kiss me back. The floodgates are open; you'll be letting more of me inside you soon enough. Then again, from a certain perspective you've been letting me inside you since you showed up in my office with your cute little Powerpoint presentation all those years ago.
You seize the F3 championship with Prema. You immediately advance to F2 the following year and seize that championship too. Of course you did; even if I hadn't lavished upon you the extra resources and training exclusive to the Mercedes junior programme, your talent and discipline would have carried you through, albeit a little more slowly. You appear in my office with the trophy, glowing with your accomplishment. Before even going home to your parents, it is I whom you have chosen to find first.
It is 2016, Nico has left after selling his body and soul to finally achieve his goals, and you are eighteen years old.
You sign my contract and then I take you to bed that very day. Already I can tell how much trouble you're going to be, seeing you squirm and moan beneath me like that, but I think I might be persuaded to go through any amount of trouble for you, if you asked.
"Good boy," I whisper into your ear, and you come with the sweetest sigh I've ever heard.
The contract I give you is not for Team Mercedes – not yet. Williams of 2017 is no longer the legend they once were in the 80s and 90s, but right now they are still a solid midfielder for a rookie. It's a year for you to learn the ropes of F1, while you test out the Mercedes simulator and see how you compare against the others.
My darling angel, how responsive and obedient you are. So eager to please. Another man and woman might have birthed you, but you are my creation. Even in your appearance and public persona, the graceful mannerisms and the elegant styles you wear – they have all been chosen for you by me. Considering how utterly provincial you used to be, though, and how dignified and sophisticated you are now, I see no reason why anyone should complain. Truly, getting rid of that god-awful haircut from your mother's kitchen was a mercy; we put it out of its misery. F1 is an entirely separate beast from F2: forget the cars being so much faster, it's the media scrutiny that is infinitely greater. Marketing matters, and oh my shining gem, and after I have finished polishing you they will adore you more than the princeling of Monaco, even as they can never have you, because you belong to me and me alone.
You put up a good showing in your first year. On the grid, you consistently outperform Stroll's son, and that infuriates him to my great amusement. You even cause a few upsets and podium on a few occasions.
It's off the grid behind closed doors where you really shine, though, and I have already made up my mind to replace Bottas with you for 2018.
I should make it clear that I am not the sort of dog that gives Formula One seats to whatever whore barks my way. The business of conquest is more important than that, and you understand just as well as I. My cock would not swell for you so fiercely if you weren't just as fierce in your pursuit of victory. I would have found you a seat even if we weren't fucking: you have consistently outperformed all the other candidates in both simulator and testing.
Your father would falsely add seconds to the stopwatch when you were still a tiny child in karts. I would not lie to you about your times in F1; the data needs to be accurate to properly train you.
What I can lie about are the others' times.
"This is your competition for the Mercedes second seat," I say, handing you the files as you climb out of the factory simulator.
"This is Ocon?" you ask.
These are actually Nico's times from his championship-winning season.
The way your face falls makes me wonder if I have made a mistake, but then you frown in concentration and soon enough you start matching and then beating Nico's numbers. So then, just to see what you are capable of, I hand you Lewis' statistics, tell you they belong to Bottas, and sit back to watch.
You are unable to beat Lewis just yet. It would be unreasonable to expect that. But you do pip him sometimes, and more than once you beat his record for fastest lap. Your tire management and race pace could use some work but that is a problem with all rookies.
Your surprise when I hand you your 2018 contract tickles my hindbrain. You still think you are barely even with Ocon and regularly worse than Bottas. I don't tell you otherwise: you're so grateful for the chance that here you are, voluntarily on your knees for me, cherry red lips wrapped around my girth. You dutifully keep your mouth open as I finish on your face, the strings of my seed clinging to your lashes; you let what drops land in your mouth linger on your tongue until I give you permission to swallow. And swallow you do, taking everything I give you, sucking my fingers clean as I wipe off your cheeks and chin. It still surprises me that you need no lipstick: I suppose you really were just born to seduce men like that.
2018 is an even more astounding year for you than I'd expected. You adapt to the car instantly. Second place in your first race, and first place by your second race. You podium consistently and challenge Lewis, barely missing out on the championship title by a handful of points. By 2019, you are a champion – surpassing Sebastian Vettel as the youngest WDC in history.
My captivating, exquisite thing; my treasure; I always knew you could do it. I enter you face to face that night, your supple body folded in half under me and your ankles around my ears. I swallow your cries with my kisses as you come untouched between our bodies. Forest nymph, changeling, put on this earth to entice mortals to madness. You are not human; you are something else, and it is not my fault that you have ensnared me so.
After I finish inside you, I hold you as we sleep, and in the morning I see your naked form beside me and I can't help myself – I startle your bleary eyes awake with my rutting, my path eased by the evidence of the previous night. We do this again and again and again; I am never as young and alive as when I am with you.
In 2020 you prevail once more, by a handy margin this time – shutting up the naysayers who said you got lucky the prior year. When you leave the car you jump into my embrace with the excitement of a child; as I wrap my arms around your slim, slim waist and lift you into the air, I think about tearing that race suit from your body, bending you over the car, and taking you in front of everybody to show them who really owns you. I do end up doing that later, on your hands and knees inside my office behind the team garage, my palm over your mouth to muffle your moans while I silence myself with my teeth in your shoulder. How fortunate for you that we switched from the white to the black race suits this year; no one will see the dark stains of my cum running down your thighs as you re-emerge to accept your accolades, but when I make eye contact with you from across the stage, I know that you can feel it.
I really took ahold of you right on time, didn't I? Poor Williams; they haven't been doing so well these past few years, and have gone from midfielder to backmarker since you left. You deserve so much better, and I'm giving it all to you.
I am on top of the world with you, my star. I think I will never fall back to earth.
Of course, this is where God decides to punish my arrogance.
2021 is where it starts. Red Bull have fielded a competitive car, and Jos Verstappen is itching for blood. He wanted his boy to be the face of the new generation after the Hamilton years, and you have stolen that from him. He feels, through Max, vicariously entitled to the achievements you have earned with your own blood, sweat, and tears. He wishes to conquer you by force.
I will not let him. I found you first. You are mine; you belong to me. Fret not; I will never let that unrefined, ugly man lay his hands on you.
And it is ugly. They drive dirty; they nearly kill Lewis trying to kill you; they lie cheat and steal; they even engage in dirty backroom deals with Michael Masi to make calls in Max's favor.
But you, my jewel, my shrewd, splendid thing – you don't fall for it. You use their own game against them, masterfully I might add. You bait Max into impulsive moves that no serious driver should be making and then argue your case before the stewards so perfectly that they have no choice but to award those penalties. Max would be a better driver if he didn't keep succumbing to rage; in order for his dangerous maneuvers to be justified he has to win first. "These are not unreasonable challenges; the FIA has agreed with me every single time. Team Red Bull accuses me of provoking their driver, and to that I say: if Max Verstappen allows himself to be ragebaited that easily, then he doesn't deserve to be a world champion," you tell the cameras, and they eat it up. This makes Red Bull that much more furious at you, and they try to submit their own complaints against you, but all of them fail to stand. In another life, if you hadn't gone karting, maybe you would have gone to university and become a barrister. Maybe you would have still met me, and I would have made you my personal lawyer, in more ways than one. Always on my retainer; you would like that, wouldn't you?
"I have to win," you tell me, bouncing on my length. I groan and pull you closer to me. You'll be the death of me one day. I am entirely under your spell when I'm sheathed inside you; if you asked anything of me at this moment I'd give it to you without a second thought.
"You will," I tell you.
And you do, though in 2021 it's a close thing, and in 2022 it is a closer thing still. Single-digit points differences, totals that should have swung to Max Verstappen had it not been for the mountains and mountains of penalties you so cleverly leveled upon him.
And then in 2023 Red Bull has a terrifyingly good car, the best on the grid, and you –
There's an increasing devastation that sets in, a wildness in your eyes as the season progresses and for the first time ever since you joined Team Mercedes you have more second places than first places, and more DNFs (mutually, with Red Bull) than befits you.
Oh, my precious boy, what is becoming of you? You've already won four titles in a row; what makes you think you are still not good enough? It is my fault for not giving you a better car this year.
"He's objectively always been a faster driver than me," you plead, tears in your eyes, manic anxiety in your limbs. "I'm a fraud. I'm trash. I can't – I can't do anything right. I've only been able to fake it this long because I've had a better car and because the FIA favors me in disputes, but this year I can't hide it anymore – "
This rivalry between you and Max is getting concerningly destructive, and I don't like it. It's true, Jos Verstappen has created a monster made of energy drinks and child abuse, one who is impossible to beat if he's calm and driving at top form. So you – you've decided that your best way to defeat him is to keep him emotionally off-kilter enough to make irrational mistakes he shouldn't be making. Which isn't incorrect, but you're using yourself as the bait so each maneuver puts you at risk too; why can't you see that?
"George," I say, because I can't say anything else, "you perform. I'll sort the rest."
I wonder if I've said anything wrong because your face goes pale and you run out. I try to go after you, but then one of the engineers distracts me and by the time I've extricated myself from his grasp you are nowhere to be seen.
There are two races left in the season, and Max is in the lead. If Max outscores you in this GP he's won the title; he'll be too far ahead for anyone else to catch him. If you manage to close the gap it then everything will come down to the final race.
"George," I try to tell you, "no matter what happens, you'll always be mine, alright?"
"I promise, I'll win this," you reply instead. "I'll win this for you, Toto. Please – "
"Verstappen and Russell, tire to tire! Verstappen gaining but Russell refusing to yield!"
In the end, you don't.
"Verstappen threatening to run him off the track but Russell holds! Russell holds! Russell – OOOOHHH, CONTACT! AND – and – oh no – "
You don't win a podium, or another title.
"Oh no, oh no, oh no. That looks horrifying, Crofty, he just went fully vertical – the replay – oh lord, his neck – oh, God –!"
You don't win anything but the stench of burning rubber and a coffin.
The nausea crawls up my throat. My head spins and my knees go weak. The ground moves up to meet my face, and my vision goes black –
I jerk awake.
I am not at the circuit. I am in my office. In front of me is –
What on earth –
In front of me is an earnest young boy with nothing but a dream and a Powerpoint presentation.
And oh god.
Oh God.
It's you.
Number 2
For a moment I don't know what's going on.
I blink once, twice, but you don't go away. You're still standing there across from me, hopeful and eager, waiting for my response to your silly little slideshow. Your round blue eyes are watching me with barely concealed yearning. You want this so badly you can taste it.
I nod and smile at you mechanically. "That was very thorough, George. Thank you for coming in."
Your face falls slightly. In my mind I am doing my best not to behave in a way that would result in someone calling the police. What would I even say? No, no, no, you're dead, you're supposed to be dead, I watched your neck snap on live television along with millions of other people. I must so in denial of what I know I just saw that I am currently having a mental breakdown, and any moment now I'll wake up in a padded room surrounded by doctors.
"I'll be in touch," I manage to rasp, and you nod, gathering your things with shaking hands.
After you leave, I lock my office door. I blindly fumble around for something – anything. My phone, a calendar, the newspapers, my planner, documents – all of them say 2013.
This can't be possible. I've gone well and truly mad. I've lived ten years in the span of a second. Was this some kind of premonition of the future? A warning? My hands are trembling as I pour myself a drink I don't remember needing before you walked in. The taste of alcohol grounds me, but it doesn't erase the phantom images in my brain, that awful moment where your car goes airborne.
I can still feel the texture of your hair under my fingers. I can still taste your mouth. I can still hear you crying "I'll win this for you, Toto. Please – "
Three days later, I sign you to the Mercedes junior programme.
You're surprised when you receive the call. "I thought – I didn't think you were that interested," you admit when you come back to finalize the paperwork. "During our meeting," you add, unnecessarily.
"I apologize if I've seemed distracted," I supply. "I had a lot on my mind that day."
But you're here now, pen in hand, and when you sign your name I feel something settle in my chest. Perhaps it was all just a bad dream. A nightmare brought on by stress. Perhaps this time will be different.
I tell myself this even as I start the same dance all over again. The innocent touches. The praise your father never gave you. The careful cultivation of your dependence on me. You trust me so easily – too easily – it's all just as before. It's still you. I know who you are and what you will become, better than you know yourself.
Everything proceeds as I foresaw. I maneuver you into Prema; you demolish F3, then F2. You come to me first with your trophy in 2016, radiant with joy, and this time when I kiss you I already know exactly how you'll taste.
"Good boy," I whisper, and you shiver beneath me just as you did before.
The years unfold with eerie familiarity. Williams for 2017. Mercedes for 2018. Your meteoric rise, your championship titles. Under the gentle Mediterranean sun I drape you in silk and gold, feed you grapes from my fingers and wine from my lips. By 2022 I start to wonder if perhaps I really did just have a divine premonition, and by heeding its warning I've already changed fate.
But then comes 2023, and Red Bull's dominant car, and Max Verstappen hungry for vengeance. God, the way he looks at you makes me want to stab his eyes out with a red-hot poker.
This time, I make the car safer. I sacrifice some performance for better protection. Better security features. You notice – of course you notice – and it makes you push even harder to compensate for what the car lacks in sheer speed.
"The car feels heavy," you complain. "It's too slow. I can't – I need more from it, Toto. I need to be faster."
"You're fast enough," I tell you, but you shake your head.
"Max is faster. The Red Bull is faster. I need to be perfect."
And you try to be. God help me, you try so hard. You push yourself to the absolute limit, wringing every microsecond out of that car that you possibly can. You stop eating properly. You stop sleeping. Every weekend you emerge from the car trembling with exhaustion, and every weekend I watch with my heart in my throat.
"George, you need to rest – "
"I can't. There's no time. There's only a few races left and I'm – I'm not good enough yet – "
You snatch the crown in Singapore, but barely. It takes everything you have. When you climb out of the overheating car after crossing the finish line, looking as grey as a corpse, you collapse right there under the humid tropical sky.
They rush you to the ice bath and then the hospital. Overexertion, they say, shoving tubes full of fluid into your veins. Heatstroke. Dehydration. Stress. Your body simply gave out under the strain you'd put it through.
I sit by your bedside and hold your hand as the machines weakly beep and whir around you. You're unconscious, and I tell myself that you'll wake up any second now; you have to. I saw that alternate future for a reason; I couldn't have possibly gone through all that just to fail.
You slip away three hours later. Multiple organ failure, the doctors tell me. Your own brain cooked itself inside your skull, your body too depleted to recover. Even if you did live you'd have permanent nerve damage and never race again.
I listen to the machine flatline, and as the medical staff rush in to futilely start the chest compressions, the world tilts sideways –
– and I blink, and you're across from me again with your Powerpoint, young and alive and whole, and oh.
Oh.
Oh.
Number 3
This time when I dismiss you from my office I carefully sort through my memories. What else happened in 2013? It's been so long –
Michael Schumacher. That's right. He'd had his skiing accident, hit his head. It would be later this month. I remember now. You'd emailed me right as the season ended, perfect timing I should say – I would have been too busy with the races had it been a week or two ago – and we'd met soon after that. And then, and then, the Michael Schumacher accident that had made the news.
I wait, and sure enough, right before the new year begins, Schumacher is in the papers.
Google is extremely unhelpful, but I've come to understand that either I am a prophet, or I have traveled back in time. Rebirth. Regression. An act of God. I don't know what to call it, but I understand with crystal clarity: each time you die, I come back here. To this moment. To this choice.
As if there was a choice.
I've held you in my arms. I've tasted your victories and your body both. I've shaped you into something magnificent and I can't – I won't – let you go.
Not when I finally understand what's happening. Not when I have another chance to get this right.
I ask questions I already know the answers to. I sign you to the junior program, and everything proceeds as before. Except when 2017 rolls around and Nico leaves, I try something else.
People think that I will give Valtteri Bottas Nico's empty seat, or even Ocon or Wehrlein, because they don't know who you are yet. You're just a teenager who did well in F2, promising but unproven. It would be the sensible thing to put you in a midfielder junior team first, to let you learn the ropes.
But I already know what you're capable of. I've seen you smash eight world championships. Why waste time?
"George Russell will be taking the second Mercedes seat for 2017," I announce, and the entire paddock loses its collective mind. Bottas' supporters are especially infuriated. Ocon and Wehrlein, too, refuse to accept this lying down, and only the fact that Lewis already exists saves Team Mercedes from all sorts of racial discrimination lawsuits.
"Are you sure about this?" Lewis asks me, bemused. "He's just a kid."
"He's more than capable," I tell him, and I know it's true because I've already seen it.
All the skeptics quickly shut up when you prove me right immediately. Podium after podium, trophy after trophy. You adapt to the Mercedes like you were born to drive it – because in a way, you were. I have built you for this seat, and I have built this seat for you, three times now. I smile enigmatically when the reporters ask me how I knew you would be so good right off the bat and laud me as some kind of strategic genius in the same breaths as they gush about your prodigious driving.
The years pass. You stack titles like vertebrae. You're everything I always knew you could be, and when I claim you in the darkness of hotel rooms around the world, I tell myself that this time will be different.
This time I'll keep you safe.
But then again comes 2021, and Max Verstappen, and Red Bull's competitive car. And I watch the same old pattern begin to emerge – your hunger, your determination, your willingness to pay all that you have just to come out on top.
"I have to beat him," you tell me, and there's something wild in your eyes. "I have to."
"You will," I promise, but this time I mean to ensure it by any means necessary.
I try everything. I file complaints with the FIA about Red Bull's car legality. I push for regulation changes that would hurt their performance. I even try to get Max disqualified for dangerous driving, armed with perfect knowledge of every incident that will happen between you.
But I don't have the power to take down the Verstappens and Christian Horner all at once. Jos and Christian both have been in this sport longer than I have. They have connections I don't. And they, for all their faults, protect their own.
The fight for the championship intensifies. The brawls multiply. I watch with growing dread as you and Max tear chunks out of each other race after race, both of you too hardheaded to back down, too greedy for worthless points on a spreadsheet to see sense. Even worse than him simply driving to beat you, it's like he's driving to impress you, which really does make me want to wring his fat neck (difficult to do to any F1 driver, but I'd make a worthy attempt, for you).
"George, please," I beg you after another too-close call. "It's not worth your life."
"Yes it is," you say simply, and I have no response because I know – I know – you mean it.
When the final race comes, I stand in the garage and watch you climb into the car, and I'm already mourning you even though you're still alive.
I don't remember what actually does you in this time. Another scrap with Max, probably. Or maybe the stewards finally had enough and you pushed too hard trying to prove a point. The details blur together across the lifetimes.
All I remember is the way you looked at me before your eyes closed forever, consumed and aching and still somehow hopeful that you'd made me proud.
And then the world dissolves, and I'm back in my office again, and there you are with your round blue eyes and your dreadful haircut and your ill-fitting suit, and I want to scream until my vocal chords bleed.
Number 4
This time, I'm more careful about hiding my knowledge of you. I act appropriately impressed at the bullet points I've seen a million times before.
I don't try anything different this time.
What would be the point? I've tried giving you a safer car – you worked yourself to death. I've tried giving you the seat immediately – you still found a way to destroy yourself. I've tried protecting you from Max – the universe just finds another way.
So this time I simply go through the motions. I sign you. I train you. I make you into a champion. I watch you burn intensely and vividly, and I wait for the inescapable end.
It comes in 2022 this time, in a wreck that could have been avoided if you'd just backed off for once in your godforsaken life. But you didn't, because you never do, and so I hold your gasping, broken body in my arms and I close my eyes and I wait for the reset as you breathe your last.
Why do you keep doing this to yourself, George?
In every single life I've lived so far you seem completely unable to take loss well. You are like Nico, with what you will give up for a coronation – no, you are even worse than Nico, because Nico at least knew he had hit his limit. The moment he won his championship, he walked away before it could destroy him.
But you? You don't know when to stop. You don't know how to accept second place. You would rather die than admit defeat.
Have you grown too used to the taste of triumph because I have allowed it of you too early? Did I create this hunger in you, or was it always there, waiting to consume you?
I think about the boy I first met, unwavering and unyielding and ready to do anything to succeed. I think about how easily I shaped that motivation into devotion, how readily you gave yourself over to my control.
The world swallows itself up again, and I open my eyes to find you loyally waiting for me across my desk, innocent and doomed and mine.
"Mr. Wolff," you say, nervous and eager, "thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me today."
And I look at you – really look at you – at this raw, unformed version of yourself who doesn't yet know what you're capable of, who hasn't yet learned to sacrifice everything at the altar of victory. Your eyes are wide and hopeful as you wait for my response, and once more I dive into the abyss.
Number 9
I don't know how much more of this I can take.
Each reset comes with the full weight of memory intact. I remember every impact, every breakdown, every moment of watching the light fade from your eyes. They pile up inside my skull like so many car wrecks, twisted metal and broken bodies, and still I keep coming back to this moment. To you, across my desk with your charmingly terrible slideshow and your bewitching blue eyes.
By now I've developed a theory: perhaps the problem is that I've given you too much, too fast. In every life you've won your first championship so early. Perhaps that too-early exposure to perfection poisoned you, made you incapable of accepting anything less. Perhaps you need to spend more time learning humility before I hand you the keys to the kingdom.
This time, when I sign you to the junior programme, I keep you at Williams longer. Two full seasons, instead of one. I placate you with stolen kisses and soft touches, even as you chafe under the restriction – I can see it in the diligent way you seek my approval, in how you analyze every word I say to you for hidden meaning. But you perform miracles nonetheless, dragging that tractor of a car into places it has no business being.
When I finally promote you to Mercedes in 2019, you're more mature. More seasoned. You earn your first championship in 2020, and for a moment I think perhaps I've found the solution.
But then comes 2021 and Max Verstappen, and the same old story begins to play itself out. The desperation. The obsession. The preposterous fear of second place. You perish in another preventable collision, if only either of you had shown an ounce of common sense, and I'm back in my office again.
So then the next time around I wait until 2020 to promote you, and this time it doesn't even take you a full year to get used to the car – you outperform Lewis immediately. It should be a good sign, except that only makes the rivalry with Max that much more intense when Red Bull fields a competitive car the following year.
Waiting until 2021 is no better. By this point you're nearly feral with the need to prove yourself, accurately convinced that I've been stringing you along for years. When you finally get the Mercedes seat, you drive like a man possessed. The championship battle with Max is vicious and short, and you are gone before the season is even fully over. You make him run into you at the final straight and the momentum of his car pushes the both of you past the finish line, with you in the front. The cars are still intact as both of you climb out, so off to the weighing and cooldown rooms you all go – and then right as your placement is certified you collapse to the floor.
Later the surgeons will say something about an undetected cranial bleed, or maybe it was something to do with your neck; I can't remember.
The awards banquet that year is more like a funeral wake.
Your seat is empty.
Your name populates the book of records next to Jochen Rindt.
Number 16
Each time I delay, you only become more destructive. The fever in you doesn't diminish with waiting; it only metastasizes. By now, I've run out of ideas for how to slow you down, so I take the nuclear option: I simply never promote you at all.
I sign you to Williams, and I leave you there.
I still watch you. Still monitor your progress. Still send the occasional note of encouragement.
(Still partake of your body in the dark, for I am never strong enough to resist you.)
But I never give you what you really want – me, us, Mercedes, everything you came to me for in the first place.
You handle it about as well as I expected, which is to say terribly.
"What did I do wrong?" you ask me one night. "Why do you hate me?"
"I don't hate you," I respond automatically. How could I? I tried to leave you be; I swear I tried. It's just that you are a temptation every time I see you, and sooner or later I lose my self-control.
"Every single year, you tell me, next year. Next year, we'll see. You still need to develop. How long is it going to take?"
"George – "
"I know you're lying to me!" you scream. "I know those times are fake! Those times you tell me that belong to Bottas, they're not his! I know what Valtteri's real times are and I've been beating them for years – and you could have left me at any team, any team at all, but you put me in Williams of all teams – even Force India would have been kinder!"
I hear something shatter. The wineglass you've ripped out of my hand, perhaps. Or maybe your heart.
You spiral. Without my attention to anchor you, without the promise of Mercedes dangling before you like a carrot, you lose yourself in anguish. You start taking irresponsible risks on track, making lunges that no sane driver would attempt. You're trying to force my hand, trying to make me notice you, trying to make yourself impossible to ignore.
It works. Everyone notices you – but not in a positive way.
"Russell's gone mad," I hear James Vowles say at one race. "He drives like he's got nothing to lose."
And you don't, do you? Because I've taken everything that mattered away from you simply by refusing to give it to you in the first place.
You cave your skull in at Spa, the same corner that's claimed so many others over the years. They say it was driver error. Too much speed carried into Eau Rouge, the car losing grip, the barrier coming up too fast. But I know the truth: you died of heartbreak and stifled potential, and I'm the one who killed you this time just as surely as if I'd tampered with your brakes.
Number 23
I try leaving you at Haas instead.
The problem with Williams is that they're perpetually underfunded, trapped in a downward feedback spiral of poor performance and lack of investment. But Haas – Haas at least has Gene's money behind them, even if they don't always know how to use it properly. Their energy is new. Unconventional. They don't have the pressure of being one of the top teams, but they are improving year after year. Unlike Williams, which rests on the depression of expired grandeur and withered laurels, Haas is young and excited, a respectable midfielder that sees plenty of action, cheerful and undaunted even when they lose.
This time, you handle the abandonment in an entirely novel fashion.
You're distraught at first – I can see it in your face when year after year passes and Mercedes never calls. But unlike Williams, Haas actually has resources. Engineers. A development budget. Room to grow.
And you? You've always been brilliant, but now I get to watch you bloom in a way I've never seen before.
This time when I kiss you and tell you to keep proving yourself – next year, I say, next year – you take me seriously. You go around the paddock like a man on a mission, talking to the best engineers from other teams. Like all the other drivers, formal education has never been your forte, but you have a unique technical understanding of the car that even the Verstappens don't. It's so easy for you to charm them – you talk shop with them and let them talk shop with you; you remember their names and treat them like human beings.
"If you're a bit bored and looking for a challenge, have you considered Haas?" you ask them, optimism in your eyes and persuasion on your tongue. "We're looking for someone with your expertise. Let me put you in touch with Günther."
So many people say yes to you, you born politician, swaying voices to your side. How could they not? Even if you weren't so adorable and wonderful any engineer would kill for the chance to simply work with a respectful driver who can click with them the way you do.
You collect talented people the way some drivers collect penalty points. You convince them that Haas is a project worth investing in, that they could build something special there. And slowly – painfully slowly compared to the instant success I've always given you – they do.
I watch from Mercedes as your car improves year over year. You start with consistent points finishes, and then your first podiums, and then consistent podiums, and multiple race wins. You start becoming a genuine championship challenge.
You do it without me. You build yourself a rocket ship through sheer force of will. You make yourself a danger and force everyone to notice you. I'm amazed at how much you've accomplished without me and furious at the same time. Even as I try to distance myself from you I can never bring myself to let you go.
You need me, just as much as I need you. Without me to manage you, to channel your fixations, you throw yourself into war with single-minded intensity. It's worse than any timeline where you drove for me, because now you have something to prove, not just to Max Verstappen but to everyone – to the paddock that doubted you, to the teams that didn't sign you, to me most of all.
"I did this myself," you tell me, viciously, as you push me onto my back and climb on top of me. I wonder if I made you this monster, or if you've just been this way the whole time. "I don't need you. I don't need Mercedes. I don't need anyone."
But you do need someone, George, I think helplessly. You need someone to tell you when to stop, when to back off, when enough was enough. And I wasn't there for you before so I don't have the right to tell you those things now, not that I ever succeeded even when I was.
You die again, wheel-to-wheel with – I don't remember who anymore. Probably Verstappen; he's the guilty party in 90% of these incidents, but it could have been Mazepin for all I know. Turn 1 at Monza, neither of you prepared to yield. The result is catastrophic. The red flag waves; I stand in the Mercedes garage watching the medical car rush to the scene, and I know before they even announce it.
Number 34
I try again. And again. And again. I cycle through every team – McLaren, Renault, Ferrari, Aston Martin when Lawrence sells his stake, even Red Bull (where unlike all of Max Verstappen's other teammates of timelines past and future you do well enough not to get dismissed for poor performance; you just, as expected, dig your own grave instead). Either I put you there, or I don't sign you at all and let some other team take you for their junior program. The pattern is always the same: you build yourself up without me, you succeed beyond anyone's expectations, you become something truly magnificent, you start a war with anyone in your way (usually Max Verstappen), and right as your light burns brightest it gets snuffed out. A few regressions ago, I don't even remember anymore, I tried to team up with Lawrence Stroll to blacklist you from Formula One permanently, so that you would never even touch the inside of a racecar. Somehow you still managed to get there and dragged Cadillac of all teams (I still don't know how you did that; they were never meant to enter F1 that early) into podiums and then a championship. You were an angry fuck then, somehow still molded by me even when you tried so hard to be free – you were breathtaking in your rage, as breathtaking as the sweet child I held and spoiled all those other times – and of course, it ends just like all those other times. You reckless dramatic neurotic little princess; I've had an easier time keeping rare tropical orchids alive; hothouse flowers have more survival instinct than you.
So I give up on the variations where I send you elsewhere. I can't keep myself away from you even when I try to let you go, and then I lose you anyway, so I might as well have you for however long I can. I give up on the alternate routes; I simply stall and delay for as long as possible, and then I get you to Mercedes eventually. There's no point in pretending to send you away otherwise.
I hate you and I blame you for this hell that I've been living over and over and over again. Because the problem is you. The problem has always been you – your inability to accept defeat, your pathological need for perfection, your desire for death over defeat. These things exist in you independent of my influence. I didn't create them. Made them worse, perhaps, but they were always there.
Every single time I try again, thinking perhaps I've missed something, some variable I haven't accounted for. But the ending is the same. You and Max, or you and Charles, or you and the wall, or you and basic biology, tire to tire and steel to steel. And then the sickening crunch and the mercilessly hollow silence that follows.
I close my eyes and wait for the reset, and I'm so tired I could weep.
Sure enough, when I open them, you're across from me again with your stupid fucking Powerpoint presentation and your glory and your downfall written all over your face in lines I've learned to read like scripture.
What am I supposed to do with you, George Russell?
I've tried giving you everything. I've tried giving you nothing. I've tried everything in between. And no matter what I do, no matter how I arrange the pieces on the board, the ending is always the same.
You're going to leave me. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually. It's as inevitable as gravity, as certain as the sun rising.
The only question is, do I want to be there when it happens?
And God help me, I do. Even knowing how this ends – how it always ends – I still can't let you go. I'd rather have you for a few brilliant, burning years and watch you annihilate yourself than never have you at all.
So I smile at you across my desk, I prepare to sign you to your demise once again, and I tell myself that maybe this time will be different.
Even though I know it won't be.
Number 58
I have forgotten how old I am, but I will never forget how young you were.
Every single time it's the same. The details vary: the squeal of tires and the shriek of metal, or a great ball of flame, or the sharp edge of a sidewalk curb, or the flat tone of a vitals monitor, or your lungs gurgling with fluid as you cross the finish line because you insisted you were fine to drive even though you were so clearly sick, or –
Every single time it's the same, the way my heart and head rip in half when you breathe your last. And then suddenly you are whole and healthy and untouched again, inside my office. My cherished, wretched boy, forever young.
I've given up on trying to prevent your death and now I'm just trying to keep you alive for as long as I can. By now, through trial and error – so, so much error – I have a decently good idea of how fast I can let you progress at each level before you implode and collapse, how long I can drag things out at each stage before you explode and self-destruct.
I can delay your entry to F1 for a maximum of two years, by not interfering with the Lawrence Stroll situation with Prema Racing. I lie to your face and pretend that there is nothing I can do, all the while expressing my sympathies. I make your career progression as roundabout as possible, Carlin in F3 and then GP3 and then Formula 2, giving you just barely enough progress to keep you satisfied.
It is similar for the Williams situation: two years seems to be your mental limit before you go insane. I can stretch it out to three by letting you drive the Mercedes in Lewis' stead when he tests positive for COVID in 2020. I did learn that while you are capable of winning, even in a car too short for you and shoes too small for you, to let you have this win and then force you to go back to the Williams backmarker right after would have made you, once again, self-destruct in frustration.
Paradoxically, since you are so willing to die for victory, I have to get you used to losing, to disappointment and defeat, in order for you to…not die.
I'm sorry, dearest. I'm so, so sorry. I know that pit stop was a disaster. I know you all but crucified yourself to put that car back in points position anyway, even setting the fastest lap after. I know you deserved better than my clumsy sabotage. But you also deserve better than an early grave, over and over and over again.
I would lock you in a cage to keep you from hurting yourself, if I didn't know that you would always find a way to hurt yourself eventually. I did consider it, you know. Kidnap you, keep you in my basement, a cell with padded walls. I'm not that insane, though. (Yet.)
Truth be told, I cannot imagine a world where you don't race. You're so incredible and happy and alive when you do. You wouldn't be the same without it. You always seem to find a way back to the grid, back to your doom, no matter what I try. You are always you, until the bitter end.
I've tried literally everything to make the car safer, and you keep finding increasingly creative ways to commit suicide. I've even purposefully steered development in a way that will make it slower – I deliberately messed up the regulations for the ground effect era, several times in a row, just to keep it from being WDC-competitive. I make sure it is so obviously bad that even you, neurotic princess that you are, can't blame yourself. Do you see, you troublesome child? This is what you do to me. I would fucking disintegrate my own chances at winning – your own chances at winning – just to keep you alive one second longer. Just to keep you one second longer.
Number 62
The sight of you doesn't even stir my lust anymore. That is how weary I have become. Watching you go where I can't follow over and over again rips away a piece of me every single time and I don't know how much longer I can go for. Even though the car I have given you is a shitbox that can't possibly come even close to any championships, it is a tank and you remain whole no matter how many times you run into the wall. You're doing the same thing you used to do and every single time I am convinced that it will be your final crash.
I am teetering on the edge of insanity, put there by you. Or maybe I've gone insane long long ago and I'm just here, winging it. I still have no idea how I am able to smile to the cameras and pretend that I'm perfectly normal when I am clearly not.
I wish I didn't have to do it this way but I don't even know what else I can do. You deserve to earn your way onto a team through your own merit instead of competing with Lawrence Stroll's billions; you deserve the best resources and training I can connect you with instead of an impersonal cheque; you deserve to debut in F1 as early as possible instead of being left to flounder your way through the junior series; you deserve a monster of a car the very moment you enter the grid, not a Williams tractor; you deserve pit stops and strategies that aren't a complete disaster; you deserve a dozen championships and the idolization of the entire world; you deserve my attention and worship, all of it. Instead I feed you scraps, day by day, just barely enough to keep your flame from burning out too quickly. I say nothing about your suboptimal haircut and leave it like that all the way until you figure it out yourself well into your late twenties, all to delay the public knowledge of how dangerous you truly are, just so I can have your memories to myself. I wither slowly inside every time I am unable – no, that's not true, I was able, so many lifetimes ago; now I am merely unwilling – to bestow upon you the legend and laurels that are your birthright. I wish it could be otherwise, but I don't know what else to do.
It is your life, so it should be your choice, but is it really? You have proven time and time again that if you had a choice between living to fight another day, or immortality knowing that you will die, you always, always choose the second option. How can it be ethical to give you freedom if this is what you keep doing to yourself, time and time again?
So I ruin everything for you, as I always do. And I keep ruining things for you, and by some miracle you are not deceased yet, so I just continue ruining things for you, even as your fans and detractors alike start noticing how unbelievably garbage your luck seems to be for someone who doesn't drive for Ferrari.
The disqualification in Belgium is a legitimate mistake. That, I swear to you, on every single life I've lived, that I did not sabotage you on purpose that time.
"I'm so sorry, George. That was all my fault. I'm sorry."
I can see the tears in your eyes, how upset you are. I'm afraid that your head will be in the wall by the very next race. I know how hard you take these things, how you assume that every mistake is your fault even when it's not, how you assume that every failure on either of our parts must mean that I hate you and that I am planning to toss you aside at any second now.
To my surprise, however, you take it on the chin and keep driving.
The rest of the year proceeds reasonably normally, until Singapore. You emerge from the cockpit looking like a ghost and I think I've lost you once again, but shortly afterwards you leave the ice bath only marginally worse for wear. Is that the difference, I wonder, between fourth and first?
Then comes Qatar. Once again, you choose to start a feud with Max Verstappen, and once again, I think that it's going to be another failed run, and I spend hours sobbing in private because no matter how many times I see you die it never gets any easier. When Max actually rams your car in Spain, my heart leaps into my throat and I think that I will see sparks and shards of carbon fibre strewn across the track, your lifeless body broken against the wheel once again. Instead the Mercedes tanks it and both of you keep driving.
I still wonder if I can get Max on Team Mercedes. Maybe, after enough regressions, I might be able to figure out how to come out on top in a head-to-head with Jos Verstappen. Maybe if I get rid of Jos Verstappen's influence, I might be able to tame Max and make it so you two stop fucking killing each other in nine out of ten of my regressions (honestly, it's like a thread connects the two of you, the way a chain connects the two of us – but he can't have you no matter how much he wants you because you are mine). Maybe if I sabotage Max's car and kill him by "accident", maybe if I spend some money to order a mafia hit on the Verstappens, maybe if I buy a gun and pull the trigger myself, you'll be safe. (At least until you start picking fights with the next guy down, whether it's Leclerc or Sainz or the McLaren boys.)
Do you understand what you've done to me? I would legitimately offer up Team Mercedes as bait – as a sacrifice – to Jos Verstappen for your sake. I legitimately plan to devote my time and money and energy and freedom to petty power struggles with that jackass instead of properly running the team, for you. I would risk turning Team Mercedes into the toxic mess that is Team Red Bull if it means removing one of the biggest threats to your life and sanity, apart from, well, yourself.
Just like all the other lifetimes, you insist on driving even as you're recovering from a respiratory infection and I fear that we'll pull you from the car blue and unbreathing, but instead all I have to witness is your raspy voice over the team radio. In Baku you only manage second place, not first, and you are not even upset.
After everything that's gone on, you are still not gone yet, and the hope blossoms in my chest again. Maybe this time, I plead, like a gibbering moron, maybe this time things will be different.
Because this time around, you're different. Despite a few incidents and bursts of anger, despite your habit of pushing yourself to the brink, you're so much calmer. Stabler. You handle triumph and failure so much better.
You are the George I know, and yet, you are not the George I have known. You're not so…well, you were never truly stupid, but you were kind of stupid. Desperate might be a better word. Desperation makes you stupid.
"Your seat is not the one in danger," I tell you, as the negotiations drag on. It's not even anything important: there is still no official announcement because we are currently going through the remains of your junior contract, line by line, as you insisted, need I remind you, you spoiled brat. If I am to have Max under my thumb either next year or the year after, it will be Kimi who gets relocated back to one of the midfielders, just like all the other rookies and junior drivers. It'll be a disappointment, but it won't kill him. Kimi stepped up his game after the summer break and is significantly more consistent than he was at the start of the year, though, so he is safe for now –
What? No. Don't be ridiculous; Kimi doesn't interest me at all. Maybe a prior, more selfish version of me might have – but no, I'm too sick of all this to even consider such things anymore. Compared to all of you I have known, he is but a pale imitation; how can I even think of anyone else? Honestly, can you believe this is the first time you've made it far enough for Kimi to even enter the picture?
"Promise?" you ask me, with that damned look in your ocean eyes.
You're more beautiful now than you were at any point in any of my previous lives. I think you would be even more beautiful still, if your hair greys and crows' feet form around your eyes and laughter lines deepen by your mouth. That's all I want now. You were an untouchably blinding flame in your youth and you flickered out just as quickly. Even if in this life I never gave you the opportunity to succeed that I gave you in past lives, just once, I would like you to outlive me.
"I promise," I say, and I kiss you because I am a decrepit, brokenhearted fool, and I can't help it.
I've made it for this long resisting your siren call. A true record, for me. But all men have a limited amount of willpower at their disposal, and I've always had less than average when it comes to you.
You squeak in a muffled shock into my mouth, and internally I am begging you to slap me, punch me, push me away. Instead, you sink into my chest as I put my arm around your waist, and you kiss me back. My other hand tangles itself in the curls around the back of your head while you loop your arms around my neck, and it's just like all the other times; nothing has changed. You are still you and I am still me. It's as if – it's as if our bodies remember each other still, as if across all time and space we've never been apart for that long at all.
I consummate our union slowly, our hips rocking together like a boat on a calm lake. I am an aged man, in both form and mind; my bones creak and my heart aches. But your lithe frame still writhes against me so receptively, as if I too am a ravishing young man who deserves you.
I am not, and I don't. I realize that now. My partaking of your flesh is not the desire of an arrogant man who thinks he is entitled to the world anymore; I am merely a wounded, lonely creature who seeks warmth just as a plant must face the sun.
"Is this why you sent me away to Williams for all those years?" you ask me, cradling my face in your hands.
"I'm sorry," I blurt out, because I've done so much worse than that, things you will never know. For all I've done, though, never doubt what I feel for you. What I've always felt for you, from the first moment I saw you.
"I forgive you," you say, and no no no you're not supposed to say that, and were I a better man I would not have done what I did next, which is to bury myself deep inside you and empty my life into your soul.
The realization should terrify me. Perhaps I should let you go, send you away and never see you again – actually do it, not the halfhearted pathetic measures I tried before. Let you live your life without me, without my influence, without the obsessive addiction that seems to ruin you every time.
Later, as we lie side by side – your warm, living body cradled in my arms – you whisper to me, "I think this will be our year. I'll win it for you, Toto, I promise I will."
My stomach drops, because something about the way you say that sounds familiar, and not in a good way.
"I believe in you, George," I say faintly.
"Everything I've done," you say, devotion and wonder in your tone, the same devotion and wonder that's laced your words all those other lives, if only I had properly listened, "I've always done for you. I've only ever wanted to make you proud of me, no matter what it took."
I was so busy meddling with the ground effect car this whole time, trying to make it safer but also worse, that I hadn't thought about what came after. In every life I've lived, you've never made it that far.
You don't make it that far.
Number 63
I feel sick to my stomach as I wake up in my office once more.
You are still there. Pure and innocent and untouched by the world.
By me.
I don't mean to do this to you again – the failed F3 Prema bid, those Williams years, the terrible ground-effect car right as you join Mercedes, the disqualification in Belgium, that disastrous double-stacked pit stop that haunts me to this day – but I have to know. I have to know. I have to keep everything the exact same from the previous run, except for one last thing.
This time, in the midst of the 2025 contract negotiations, when I promise you that your seat is safe, I cross my arms behind my back and hold them there.
I do not touch you.
2026 comes and passes. You get older and somehow even more beautiful nearing thirty than you were at twenty.
You do not die.
Do you win? Do you lose? I don't remember. I've stopped caring. What I do know is that you accept the result like a normal human being and get ready for the next year.
And now I stand on the edge of a cliff wondering if this is how it all ends. It is this agonizing truth which I must confront now: perhaps the problem was never the car, or Max, or the championship.
Perhaps the problem has always been me. Perhaps everything I've done for you, to you, has been nothing but my own selfishness masquerading as affection. Perhaps you never needed me at all.
How could I have been so foolish, so blind? This whole time I've been thinking that despite your talent and discipline you were so mentally fragile that you couldn't handle any of it yourself, neither the pressure of victory nor the anguish of defeat.
But it was never just you, was it? It was never anything to do with winning or losing. You drive in Formula One, for Christ's sake. You've driven in junior series. You've karted. You've had your fair share of losses and incidents and spinouts before we met; everyone has had them, even the legends. Even the best of the best. You don't make it all the way to this level being so delicate that you break at the slightest gust of wind. Everyone driving on this grid has made mistakes and learned from them; you are no less than they. As much as I call you my boy, you're all grown-ups; you can take it.
No, it was always my fault, wasn't it? It wasn't the competition you couldn't handle. It was me. All this time I've been blaming it on the cars and the stopwatches and the chequered flags, when it was I who drove you mad. The entire time you were racing for yourself, everything was fine. The moment you started racing for me is when it all fell apart.
You were never an idiot. This whole time you've always known your own limits. You simply don't have any when it comes to the people you care about.
I know the cruel choice I am faced with now. The real one.
I am yours; I have always been. But you…you were never mine to hold and touch. I can either have you and lose you, or I can never have you in the first place, no matter how radiant you become.
I wonder about you surviving just fine without me. The question is, can I survive without you?
We are back in the office where it all began, speaking of contracts and paperwork and other boring things to close out the season. The meeting concludes; we have both said the pieces that need to be said. You look at me with those damned damned eyes, your wine-dark seas encased in storm, and I am lost.
You say goodbye and I wrap my arms around you in farewell.
I make my decision.
I love you.