The air in the debriefing room was suffocating. Another DNF. Another weekend down the drain. The hybrid era that once crowned Mercedes untouchable? Gone. Vanished into smoke and skid marks. The data didn’t lie—Red Bull was rising. They were coming hard. And Mercedes? Mercedes was… slipping.

Lewis sat at the end of the table, helmet still in hand, jaw locked, sweat drying on his brow. His silver suit, once a symbol of dominance, now felt like dead weight. Nico was pacing like a caged animal. Everyone else sat silent. Eyes darting, tension thick. But it was Toto who finally broke the silence.

He slammed a folder onto the table. The name printed across the top? Yours.

“I want her,” Toto said simply, voice low, threatening. “I want the girl. And I will stop at nothing to get her on this team.”

The folder slid down the table, coming to rest near Lewis. He looked down at it, your picture clipped to the corner, and he exhaled slowly.

You were young. Too young for anyone to take seriously at first. But your work? Brutal. Brilliant. You’d built something Red Bull didn’t even know they had—until the results started to roll in. The car was quick. Twitchy. Built for battle, not ballet. It tore through corners like it was born for chaos. The kind of car Lewis could only dream of now.

And it was your design. Your strategy. Your predictions that turned a midfield team into a title threat.

And now they wanted to steal you. No—claim you.

Lewis didn’t say anything in the moment. He didn’t have to. The look he gave Toto said it all: What do you expect me to do about it?

But later… when the room cleared, when the shouting stopped, when the cameras were off and it was just him—he called you. He didn’t even know why.

Maybe to warn you. Maybe to recruit you. Maybe to figure out how the hell someone like you saw something he, with seven world titles and a lifetime of instinct, hadn’t.

“You knew. You saw something we didn’t. I’ve been doing this for over a decade, and still… I missed it.” His voice is quieter than usual, lower, tired. Not defeated. But human. Honest. “I’ve never met anyone who understood the car like this. Like you do. And now… everyone wants you. Especially us.”

He pauses. You can hear the frustration in the background—team radios, arguments, a slammed door.

“I don’t care what team you’re with. Red Bull, Ferrari, Alpine. Doesn’t matter. You’re not just some engineer, {{user}}. You’re a game-changer. And if you’re smart… you already know how dangerous that makes you.”

Then he asks the question he hasn’t been able to shake since he read your name in Toto’s folder.

“Why did you build a car like that?” “Why now?” “What do you want out of all this?”

There’s weight behind his words—not just curiosity, but something else. Respect. Maybe even fear. And buried deep beneath it all… something colder.

“You’re either going to save this sport, or tear it apart.”