Chapter Text
THE SUN
EXPOSED: Private messages of junior racing prodigy, 15, shared online
Screenshots circulating overnight appear to show private messages involving a 15-year-old driver widely tipped as one of karting's brightest young talents. The images were reportedly shared without the driver's knowledge.
DAILY MAIL
Lewis Hamilton: 'I'll always speak up for young drivers like Oscar'
Speaking in the paddock at Spa-Francorchamps on Sunday, Lewis Hamilton said he would "always" make himself available to young drivers navigating difficult moments early in their careers, naming junior driver Oscar Piastri amid renewed calls for the sport to do more to protect minorities from media intrusion.
THE TELEGRAPH
Verstappen: 'We don't need this kind of thing in the sport'
Jos Verstappen did not hold back when asked about the story involving a teenage junior driver, calling it "disgusting" and saying governing bodies should "do something about it."
AUTOSPORT
FIA faces pressure over safeguarding for minors
Motorsport's governing body is facing renewed calls to introduce clearer protections for junior drivers after private material involving a 15-year-old competitor circulated widely online.
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OSCAR
PF International, England
August 2016
His blue kart moved fast under him through Turn One.
The guys on the fence could had seen a half-correction, maybe a tiny change in steering angle if they cared enough to look. Oscar felt the whole thing in his bones. The rear went light exactly as he came off the brake, right as his small gloved hands twitched on the wheel and his foot wanted to fix the problem with more pedal. His kart offered him one very stupid question: would he trust it, or was he going to become sensible at the worst possible time? He chose badly, or well. It depended on who was asking.
He knew what to do now, he just kept his hands steady. They had taught him that a few year ago in little club karts and then had to learn it again in OK-Junior, where everyone was faster, meaner, and old enough to know exactly how much of the track they could steal before it became their fault. The kart kept vibrating through his ribs. Slide, bump, all of it straight into his body.
But he always loved it, which was incredibly inconveniently because it also made him feel extremely dizzy, like he might throw up in his helmet and then have to explain that to a concerned adult.
The boy on P2 had been close since the start. Close enough that Oscar could still hear him behind on the straights, the other engine noise rising and falling just out of reach. Harry's pit board kept appearing at the edge of the straight with numbers written too frantically to be comforting.
+1.4
2 LAPS Oscar saw it and turned his eyes back to the corner.
The guys had done their job. Now his tyres had to last, and Oscar had to get to the checkered flag before anyone could tell him second was still an impressive result, which, yes, was true and at the same time a terrible thing to say to someone who had been leading.
That last lap started before he could get ready for it, his hands started shaking a bit. He had spent the entire race trying to keep it out of his head but apparently the lap hadn't got the message. Whenever he talked to an older driver, they said to only think about winning only after you had done it. Oscar understood the logic. He also thought older drivers were mostly lying, because of course you thought about it. You thought about it in the back, an unsupervised bit of your brain, the bit not currently assigned to braking, steering angle, or keeping the kart pointed in a direction his parents would approve of.
Turn Three washed half a kart-width wider than he wanted, and Oscar hated himself so much before the apex. The boy on P2 would see that. The boy on P2 would know. Whatever. Let him know. Oscar got the exit anyway.
The track finally opened in front of him, dirty and bumpy under the late-summer sun, the heat coming out of his engine making the far end of the straight look uncertain. Every vibration came through the wheel into his bones, the engine loud behind his ribs, his suit damp at the collar. His mouth was dry enough that his tongue stuck briefly to the back of his teeth, and he had the stupid thought that he should have drunk more water when Harry told him to.
He was so happy he could barely stand it, which was such a silly thing to feel with half a lap still left to do. The last board said +1.6.
The final corner couldn't come quickly enough.
Oscar turned in. Thankfully, his kart held. Inside the helmet, just his own breathing, too loud and too fast. Then he was over the line, and the noise reached him late, out of order: engine first, then fence, then someone from the team making a sound so high and hysteric Oscar hoped it was not meant to be his name. Four seconds. Oscar laughed.
It came out breathless and ridiculous, trapped in the helmet with him, too big for the plastic shell. He lifted one hand off the wheel after the flag, aimed at no one in particular, just because keeping both hands down felt like too little for how he was feeling. His team were leaning over the fence, someone jumping, someone else with both arms in the air.
He had done it. He had really done it. His first victory in Europe. Although parc ferme immediately tried to turn that into a list of jobs. Kill switch. Gloves. Don't trip over the sidepod like an idiot. Someone steadying the kart as he climbed out even though he could do it himself. Heat coming off the engine in waves. His balaclava sticking to his hair. His face aching because he could not stop smiling.
Someone thumped his helmet hard enough to make his teeth click.
"Four seconds," one of the mechanics called, like Oscar might have missed it.
"I heard," Oscar said, and then laughed again because it sounded cocky and he didn't feel cocky. He felt dizzy like someone had wired a battery inside him.
The trophy was smaller than he thought it would be. That was his first thought when they handed it to him. Ungrateful, so he immediately tried to rearrange his face into something more winner-like. It had his name printed on a temporary strip taped to the base, slightly crooked, the edge already lifting where someone had pressed it down in a hurry. He wondered if he would ever get a professional one, engraved by a machine.
Then there were photos. Way too many photos, probably, but for once he did not care. He held the trophy. He stood with the boys from the team. He got fizzy, non-alcoholic spray in his ear and down the front of his suit and took it with dignity, by which he meant he only flinched once and did not swear where anyone's parent could hear. He wished his mum was there. His dad too. And in a part of himself he would have denied under oath, the boy from home. It meant nothing. It was dumb. They had mostly just sent messages too late at night and then pretended the little typing bubble was completely normal behaviour. Oscar still thought of him anyway, for one bright, tiny, embarrassing second, and then immediately hoped he was not smiling like an idiot in every photo.
The looks came after that. The mechanics were still loud, still touching him and messing up his hair and saying things like future world champion, probably an overreaction, but it got him excited anyway. Then he noticed that the back of the crowd had gone quiet. The sort of awkwardness where people kept finishing conversations when you got near them.
A woman with a media pass glanced down at her phone, then at Oscar, then away so fast it scared him a bit. Two men near him had stopped talking completely. One of the boys from another team was staring at him with his mouth slightly open, like he was waiting for his mum tell him what expression to have instead, and when Oscar looked back, he looked down at the floor.
The good feeling stayed, which was dense of him. It should have gone, and there was no shortage of reasons for it to, and it didn't. Instead it stayed there, loud and embarrassing, while the back of his neck went cold under the damp edge of his balaclava and his fingers found the seam of his glove, worrying at one loose thread until it dragged tight against his skin.
Oscar started looking for his phone before he even knew why. It was in the inside pocket of his team jacket, buzzing against the chair where someone had thrown it. The screen lit up with notifications. Too many of them. Messages stacked on top of messages, missed calls, names he knew and numbers he didn't.
MUM
Oscar call me now please
MUM
Oscar
MUM
It's okay. Just call me.
His fingers kept worrying the loose thread in his glove.
"Oscar." He looked up.
Harry was standing by the side of the awning. Harry, who was not quite his manager, not quite his babysitter, and somehow both. He had flown over, checked the hotel booking, reminded him twice that drinking enough water remained compulsory even on a race weekend. Harry had both hands at his sides and no lanyard near his mouth, which was wrong. He always chewed the edge of his badge when he was thinking. Oscar had once told him it was disgusting, then spent the next six months feeling weirdly reassured by the little white tooth marks in the plastic. Now there was no badge. No clipboard. No joke about him being a hero.
"Hey, can we go inside for a second?" Harry asked.
Oscar still had the trophy in his hand.
"Is it Mum?"
"She's okay." Harry said it too quickly. "She's okay, mate. Come on."
He took Oscar to a room behind the podium. Air-conditioning turned up like someone was storing fish. Four plastic chairs, one table, bottle rings drying on the plastic. The bin was already full of empty waters.
An old clipboard sat near the edge of the table.
It had gear ratios from qualifying, some half crossed out, and Oscar's eyes went there before they went back to Harry.
11/68. 11/67. 10/68, underlined twice.
Harry shut the door.
"Something's happened," Harry said.
Oscar watched Harry's mouth move and wished, bizarrely, that he would put the badge back between his teeth.
Harry just kept talking and talking, softly, which was worse. If it had been loud it would have given Oscar something to be angry about. Instead Harry kept his voice low and wary. Oscar tried to follow it, but every sentence seemed to start in the wrong place.
He could hear the words, mostly, but they all arrived in the wrong order. Something's happened. Online. Your messages. A boy. I'm so sorry. Your family knows. We're trying to get it taken down. Don't look at it yet. Oscar, listen to me, don't look at it yet.
Oscar. Oscar. Oscar.
Oscar just looked down. Harry's face had too much on it. The trophy handle was cutting a damp crescent into his palm; he had carried it in with him, apparently, because his hand was still doing winner things while the rest of him started to understand.
"What messages?" he asked.
Harry's face changed, and Oscar knew then.
His messages. The wrong people seeing them. The stupid little blue bubbles he had typed into after midnight, thinking a passcode and a closed bedroom door meant anything at all. He could see one of them suddenly, not even one of the bad ones, just are you awake, which was somehow worse because it was so small.
The rest would come later, in pieces he would keep learning by accident: screenshots cropped smaller and smaller, headlines with his age in them, men asked for comment who should never have learned his name. People would learn the word safeguarding because of him and still somehow make it sound like it was his fault.
He knew enough.
The underlined numbers on the board went blurry first. Annoying, because that was the one thing he'd been trying to focus on. Harry kept saying his name.
Oscar could see him saying it more than hear it. Oscar, Oscar, hey, sit down for me. Just sit down.
He sat because the chair appeared behind his legs and there did not seem to be any other direction to go. His karting suit was wet at the collar from the fizzy spray. It was cold now. The fabric stuck to his neck, sugar drying into the seam.
He felt so dizzy and his hands were shaking, except no they weren't, they belonged to the boy sitting in the chair, the one still holding the trophy.
That boy had messy helmet hair and red marks on his jaw from the balaclava. That boy had won a race by four seconds. That boy had been stupid enough to truly think private meant private. He was only fifteen. Nobody had told him wanting something could make adults behave like vultures with Wi-Fi.
"I need to call your mum," Harry said. His voice had gone soft in a way Oscar already hated, it was that one voice adults used before doing something they were going to describe as mandatory. "Listen, I'm going to step out for a minute, okay? You don't have to talk to anyone else. Just breathe. I'll be right outside."
Oscar nodded, or that boy did, and Harry hesitated by the door, mouth half-open, and then he left.
The stupid air conditioner kept making its awful little whining noise and Oscar looked at the brand new trophy in his hand, the temporary strip with his name on it already starting to peel at one corner.
For a moment, absurdly, all he could think was that he should press it back down. Someone had gone to the effort of printing it before the race. It would be rude of him to let it come off, which was obviously not the main issue, but his brain had apparently chosen administration.
He simply pressed it down with his thumb, once, twice, and then the air caught halfway in.
Then the crying started. It was so ugly. Too physical. He tried to breathe and made a thin, awful sound that didn't seem to belong to him at all. He got the trophy onto the table. Both hands, cautiously, because if he dropped it everyone waiting outside would hear. Then he folded forward with both hands over his face. The chair scraped back loudly. He slid off it anyway.
The floor felt too cold, even through his karting suit. His knees hit it hard enough that it should have hurt. Maybe it did. He really couldn't tell. His phone was buzzing again somewhere above him, on the table, his mum's name lighting the screen over and over.
He could not pick it up, could not call her. If he heard her voice it would be real.
So Oscar just cried on the floor beside the chair, one hand pressed so hard over his mouth his teeth cut into the inside of his lip. His trophy still sat on the table above him with his name peeling off at one corner. Outside, the team was still celebrating the best race of his life, and the fizzy drink dried sticky at his collar, and his mum's name kept lighting up his phone.
------
CHARLES
Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium
August 2016
"Did you see this?"
Max was on the floor between the bed and the radiator with a Red Bull laptop open on his knees. Apparently even Sunday night at Spa could not stop Red Bull from needing him to look at telemetry.
He looked around, their hotel room was trying very hard to be nowhere. Ugly brown curtains and yellow carpet. Yesterday they had pushed the two tiny single beds together, but the bed frames were too thick, so it ended up with a crack down the middle wide enough to lose a phone, a ring, or, if Charles was feeling dramatic, a whole relationship. Through the windows, the Ardennes went dark and wet, narrow roads and people still coming back from the circuit with team jackets zipped up to their throats.
Charles should have been asleep. He was tired from having spent the weekend in GP3, his ART suit still hanging damp over the back of a chair. Max had spent the afternoon in the F1 paddock being asked about Ferraris and La Source and whether you could be too aggressive when you had already won a Grand Prix at eighteen. Max did not look up.
"See what," Max asked.
"Eh. Écoute-moi."
Charles caught himself, switched back, annoyed at his own words. "Pay attention to me."
"I am."
Max still hadn't looked at him.
"Non, no. You're doing your I am so very busy with my telemetry and cannot be expected to know anything voice."
Max glanced at him then. "This is my normal voice."
Charles rolled his eyes. "No, your normal voice is much more annoying."
Max reached for his trackpad. "Then it is serious."
Charles hated that Max could do that. Annoy him into talking properly. He crossed the room and held out his phone. Max looked at the screen.
For a second, nothing changed. His face, his fingers on the trackpad, all of it normal, exactly where it had been before he started reading.
"Fifteen," Charles said.
Max took the phone from him and scrolled.
"Fifteen," Charles said again, because saying it once hadn't done anything for Max. "He is a child, Max."
"Yeah."
"They put his messages online."
"I can read."
Charles nudged his knee with his foot. "Hey. Chéri. Tell me what you're thinking." The scroll bar stopped halfway down the article.
Charles waited him out. He had gotten so good at this, at understanding Max, which was probably either romance or a personality disorder.
The radiator knocked once in the wall. Somewhere in the corridor, a door opened and closed. People laughed, then shushed each other, and the sound got swallowed by the carpet. Charles looked at the door before he could stop himself. He'd lost count of the amount of times he had done that this weekend.
"Sorry," Max said. The apology came out small enough that Charles almost let him have it. Almost.
"Again," Charles corrected, "but less like you are paying a fine." Max looked at him. Charles looked back.
"Je suis désolé," Max tried, the accent all wrong, the words coming out flat and a little too fast, like he was getting rid of them. Charles smiled at him anyway.
"Merci."
"You are very demanding," Max muttered.
"Oui, et you're still here. So maybe you like it."
Max looked back down at the phone. His mouth did not move, but his shoulders went up. Charles knew before he asked.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Max."
Max glanced at the phone. "Nothing useful."
Charles leaned over and read upside down. Jos Verstappen.
He didn't need to read the whole thing. He caught disgusting, uncomfortable, the sport doesn't need this kind of shit, and then Max locked the phone so fast the screen went black under Charles's hand.
"Hey, I was still reading," Charles said.
"No."
"Non?"
"No."
Charles stared at him. "You cannot say no to an article."
Max didn't blink. "I just did."
"It is not how journalism works."
"This is not journalism."
Charles had expected to argue. He had prepared, poorly, several arguments. But when Max said it like that, Charles lost the whole performance. He could see Max was upset.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. The gap between the two mattresses opened under his weight, ridiculous and awkward, and for one stupid second he wanted to laugh because of course this would happen.
Max put the phone face-down on the desk.
"You had already seen it," Charles said.
"Someone sent it to me."
"Who?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
"No, it doesn't."
"It matters if they sent it because of your father."
Max's jaw moved once. Charles wished, immediately, that he had been less right.
"I don't want to talk about him," Max said.
"Okay."
"Then don't ask."
"Très bien."
Max looked surprised by that, which was so unfair. Charles could be mature. Sometimes. When he crashed and went under medical supervision, perhaps. Or in a hotel outside Spa, when there was no better option.
For about four seconds, neither of them said anything. Then Charles said, "Chéri, I want to talk about us." Max closed the laptop.
"No," Charles said quickly. "Don't be like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you are preparing for impact."
"I am not."
"You closed the laptop like you were about to be told your brakes failed."
"Yes, that would be easier to deal with."
"Max."
"What do you want me to say?"
Charles opened his mouth. Nothing useful came out.
There were too many things to say, and all of them sounded dramatic in English. In French they sounded worse. In Italian they sounded like he was about to call his mother. Separate emergency.
Max watched him struggle for a moment, then said, "If it was us?"
Charles hated the relief of not having to say it first.
"Yes."
"It won't be."
"Tu ne peux pas savoir ça." Charles caught the slip and didn't bother correcting it this time. You cannot know that.
"I can know what we do."
"That is not the same thing."
"It is close enough."
Charles made a sound that was almost a laugh and absolutely not a laugh. "You are impossible."
"You knew this."
"I knew you were annoying. I did not know you were going to become a locked filing cabinet with a racing licence."
Max laughed.
Charles pointed at him. "Do not pretend you do not understand. You understand."
"Unfortunately."
Max looked at the phone on the desk, face-down.
"We are already careful," he said.
"We are stupid careful," Charles pointed out.
"Then we are more careful," Max told him.
"More than stupid?"
"Yes."
"There is a category after stupid?"
"For you, probably," Max decided. He smiled anyway.
It lasted half a second, and then the boy's karting photo came back to him, the too-young smile under the headline, his chin lifted like someone had told him where to stand and he had believed them.
"That boy, he did not do anything wrong," Charles said.
"No."
"And it still happened to him."
Max looked at him then.
The split between the two mattresses pressed under Charles's thigh. His phone was still face-down on the desk, Max was looking at him like he had already run the calculation and hated the answer, and Charles hated that he had needed the article to point at it. The story was awful. Their hotel room was ugly. Max's father was in the air saying things Charles could not bear to repeat. All of it mattered, and still the worst part was how quickly Max understood what Charles had only just become brave enough to say.
"Yes," Max said.
Charles rubbed both hands over his face. "I hate this."
"I know."
"Stop saying 'I know.' You sound like a tired husband."
"I am a tired husband."
"You are eighteen."
"Exactly."
Charles glared at him. "Say something that is not infuriating."
Max thought about it with insulting seriousness. "I hate it too," he said.
Charles dropped his hands. Max frowned. "What?"
"Nothing. That was..."
Charles waved a hand vaguely, like he was trying to catch the sentence again now that it had landed properly. "That was good, actually. You sounded like you meant it."
"I did mean it."
Charles pressed a hand flat over his sternum, eyes already going wide and tragic. "Oh, so the other things you say, you don't mean. Wonderful. Good to know. After everything..."
"Oh my god."
"...I suppose I should have expected this, really, you don't want me anymore, it's fine, I'll just..."
Max rolled his eyes. Before Charles could finish whatever sentence he was building, he leaned over and pulled him into a hug, one arm then both, knocking Charles half off balance so he had to catch himself against Max's shoulder.
"Okay, drama queen," Max said, into his hair. "I'll always want you, baby."
"You called me baby," Charles said, muffled, into Max's shoulder.
His smile fell away, and he pulled back just enough to look at the door. It was locked, he knew it was locked, he had checked it twice when they came in, the way he always did. That didn't stop him checking again now, with his eyes, from across the room.
Max followed his eyes to the door, then back to Charles, and outside no footsteps stopped.
"No one heard," Max said.
"You don't know that."
"I would hear them."
"You would not. You are too busy being a putain locked filing cabinet."
"With a racing licence."
"Do not use my jokes against me."
"They are good jokes."
"Obviously."
Max reached for his hand.
He did it slowly, which was new. Usually Max decided things with his whole body and left everyone else to catch up. This time his fingers touched Charles's wrist first, light enough that Charles could have moved away and they both would have pretended that was normal. Charles did not move away. Max's hand closed around his.
"Not this hotel again," Max said.
Charles looked down at their hands. Charles squeezed his fingers. "It has a very sad breakfast."
"Charles."
Max squeezed back.
"Fine. Different hotels."
"Sometimes."
"Sometimes," Charles agreed.
"Separate arrivals," Max went on.
"We already do that," Charles pointed out.
Max tightened his hand. "More."
"That is not romantic," Charles protested.
"This is not romance."
Charles looked at him. Max looked immediately annoyed with himself. "I mean," he said.
"No, please. Continue. I am fascinated."
"Charles."
"No, truly, tell me more about how sitting on a hotel floor holding my hand is not romance."
"That is not what I meant."
"Then say what you meant."
Max glanced at the phone again. Charles wished he wouldn't.
"I mean I don't care if it is romantic," Max said. "I care if it is ours."
Oh. Charles hated him. Charles loved him so much he had to look at the wall for a second.
"That was better," he said, because saying anything else would have killed him instantly.
"Good."
"Still a little filing cabinet."
"Fine."
"But one with range."
Max huffed. It was almost a laugh if you were generous and had spent too much time with him.
Charles shifted, climbing awkwardly into Max's lap, knees either side of him, until there was nowhere left for either of them to look but at each other.
Outside, someone walked past the door. Their conversation came through muffled and ordinary, a language Charles did not know, shoes dragging on the carpet, a keycard beeping two rooms down. Max's hand tightened once around his.
Charles had been making rules in his head since he saw the headline. Different hotels. Separate arrivals. Fewer photos. Fewer jokes where someone might hear the wrong word and keep it. No calling Max baby unless he had checked the door. A disgusting rule to have invented at eighteen. Made worse by the fact that he had invented it without meaning to. Then the list stopped being theoretical.
Charles turned his wrist until their palms lined up.
"I don't want to get good at this," he said. "The hiding. Flinching every time someone walks past a door." Max looked down at their joined hands.
"Me neither."
Charles nodded. Then, being Charles, he said, "We will be, though." Max looked at him. Charles looked back. The phone stayed face-down on the desk.
"Yes," Max said.