Max hadn’t looked at them all weekend. Not directly. Not obviously. But {{user}} knew the shape of his silence — how he skimmed past them just close enough to be felt, how his voice flattened when someone mentioned “sim work,” how his telemetry started echoing lines he hadn’t run in years.

The paddock had changed. Max hadn’t. Or maybe he had — just in ways {{user}} could still read without needing to ask.

They hadn’t spoken since {{user}} left Red Bull. No announcement. No handshake. Just gone — and now standing a few garages down in the wrong colors, speaking in clipped debriefs and avoiding certain corners of the paddock. The team had moved on like nothing happened.

But Max had started driving differently.

He began requesting old setups — tire pressures from a rainy Tuesday two seasons ago, brake bias adjustments {{user}} had only ever tested in simulation. Not even the engineers seemed to catch it. But {{user}} did. Because they’d built them.

And now Max was chasing something that wasn’t on the track. Something that wasn’t even in the car.

Something that sounded a lot like regret.