Page 95 of Hot Lap
My heart’s thudding in my chest.
Misho’s voice comes through calmly in one ear as he confirms technical shit with Reece. Everything is clinical and perfectly timed.
Reece says nothing beyond, “Copy.”
He’s RP11, totally focused and fucking magnificent.
Everyone in the garage watches the monitors. There’s no small talk, no wasted motion. Every person here is locked in. I’ve never seen so many people so focused on one process. They’re devoted to this one machine and the man who drives it like it owes him something.
I don’t dare blink.
Not once.
The lights go out, and I flinch as the cars launch, the sound hitting my chest like a punch. Reece starts in fourth behind Nico Belmonte, Petra, and Lynch Sutton. A blue and gold car is already making a move on the outside, pressuring Reece. It’s Wyn and I remember what everyone’s said about his aggressive driving.
Reece holds his line, unwilling to yield to his younger brother, blocking the WolfBett car with surgical precision. Wyn’s forced to back off in the first turn.
Laps pass.
I try to keep up with what I’m seeing and hearing. Timing deltas. Tire degradation. The layered ballet of it all. It’s not just driving. It’s strategy quietly orchestrated in code words and milliseconds.
Then it happens.
Misho’s voice crackles on the team comms. "Yellow flag — sector 2. Car 37 off at turn 11."
A replay flashes on the screens before me.
A purple and orange car is spinning. No.Crashing.
The impact is brutal. Nose-first into the wall. Debris flies everywhere, carbon fiber shards glittering like deadly confetti against the barrier.
My stomach drops clean through me.
The garage goes still, and not in a good way. It’s not the focused silence of strategy, but the held breath of dread, andit radiates from everyone around me, a collective pause where time stretches and contracts simultaneously.
Ona murmurs at my side. "Sartelli. Veteran driver. Struggled all year. His seat's going to another driver next season."
On the screen, the cockpit remains still for two seconds too long. Two seconds is everything. Two seconds is the difference between walking away and not. Between a story you tell at dinner and a memory that haunts the people who loved you.
My breath locks in my lungs. This is what they don't show you in the glamour shots, this moment when physics and flesh meet and only one of them yields. Death is what lurks beneath every champagne spray, every victory photo, every casual mention of "going for a drive" at three hundred kilometers per hour.
Reece is out there right now, his hands on a wheel, his foot heavy on a pedal, trusting that carbon fiber shell to keep him whole.
And I face a lifetime of mornings when I might wake to a phone call instead of his kiss. Race after race that might end not with a podium but with a hospital bed or a casket.
Then there’s movement on the screen. A marshal scrambles up the barrier. Sartelli lifts himself from the cockpit, stands upright, and raises a hand toward the crowd.
Misho’s voice comes through the radio again, calm as a summer morning. “He’s okay.”
The cheer that goes up in the grandstands echoes through the feed in my headset and kickstarts my heart.
He's okay, but the reality of what could’ve been settles into my bones like cement.
This is the price of admission to Reece's world. Formula 1 isn’t just glamour and adrenaline, it’s also this horrific, inescapable sinking dread, and the acceptance that every time he straps in, he's making a calculated bet with his life as collateral.
The garage exhales collectively, returning to normal rhythms, but I can't quite shake off the horror of what could’ve happened.
Hands trembling, I grip the edge of the console.
