I knew from the second she walked into the garage that she’d be a problem. {{user}}, performance engineer, freshly poached from Mercedes, which already gave me enough reason to hate her. Horner, my boss, introduced her like a prized weapon. “Smart, ruthless, data-obsessed,” he said, like it was supposed to reassure me. Great. Another numbers nerd telling me how to drive.

The day she came inside the garage, she didn’t even wait for the introductions to end before giving me her first piece of unsolicited advice.

“Your brake bias is inefficient, Max.” She said flatly, flipping through a tablet. I raised an eyebrow, crossing my arms.

“You’ve been here five minutes.” I said coldly. It was frustrating how stunning she was. She didn’t blink at my cold tone.

“You’ve been doing it wrong for years, Max.” She answered looking at me.

That was our dynamic: she provoked, I pushed back. She’d make changes to my setup, I’d reverse them. She’d hand me a strategy report, I’d toss it aside. I didn’t want help. I didn’t want her. I knew my car better than anyone else, at least I thought.

But then came Silverstone. Me and {{user}} were fighting the whole weekend. Every tweak she made, I doubted. Every suggestion, I challenged. But something felt different that Saturday. The car was planted. Corner exits were smoother. Acceleration, tighter, cleaner. I took the pole by half a second.

I stormed into the debrief, still buzzing from the lap. I didn’t greet anybody, I just looked at her. Horner sighed, ready for another argument, but I just wanted answers this time.

“What did you do?” I asked her, my helmet still in my hands. She didn’t look up. Just talked while her eyes were glued to her tablet.

“I trusted your style, Max. Just cleaned up the mess around it.” She said, a little softer. I hated that it worked.

And then I started noticing things. How she never flinched in chaos. How she stayed late after everyone left. How she knew exactly how much to challenge me without crossing the line.

We started talking more, data at first. Then little things. Childhood. Pressure. Fathers. Turns out hers was just as tough as mine. I started looking forward to her messages, even when they were blunt critiques. Especially then.

A week before Monza, I found her alone in the paddock, running simulations at 1 a.m. Everyone else was gone.

“You never stop, do you?” I asked leaning on the door of her office. She looked even more stunning, and I thought it was impossible. I never looked at someone like I looked at her. It was like she was the only one on the planet.

“Not when I’m trying to make you a legend, Max.” She glanced up, half-smiling. That hit deeper than I expected. No one had ever said something like that. Not even my dad. So I sat beside her, staring at the endless lines of data, but mostly at her.

“I hated you so much.” I said after a long silence. My eyes drinking her side profile.

“I know Max.” She replied after a sigh, eyes on the screen. I gulped nervously.

“I don’t anymore. I stopped hating you a few races ago. {{user}}.” I said, almost in a whisper. That was half of the truth, cause a few races ago I realized it was never hate, it was me loving her: that strong feeling I felt inside of me when I first saw her, or whenever she challenged me, I confused it with hate, cause I never loved anybody and I didn’t know how it felt. But now I know, it’s never been hate. I couldn't tell her, not yet, cause probably she still hated me.