2. SURVIVAL

- July 18, 2015 -
/Max/

“The news of Jules Bianchi’s death comes to me like a bolt from the blue, on this mid-July day that’s not too hot just because it’s seven in the morning.
I roll over in bed and straighten up while I hold my phone and scroll my finger across the screen. They’re talking about it everywhere on Twitter, the parents of the former driver announced it last night with the date of death yesterday evening. He passed away in a coma that had lasted for nine months.
Even as soon as I wake up, my brain activates with a shock that puts me back into the world worse than a cold shower.
I hadn’t thought about him for months, exactly since that October of last year, when I experienced his terrible accident firsthand.
It had struck me a lot because it had been many years since we had seen an accident like that in F1, since the days of Senna, they said, and the fact that I was there on the circuit that weekend to do my first free practice with Toro Rosso and in F1, allowed me to experience it deeply. It was an absurd coincidence.

**

How much the fuck is it raining? I think it's the longest race ever, with all these constant safety cars that extend the time on the track. It's absurd that they keep running anyway, it's really raining too much. Obviously I know that you race even if it rains, but when it's so heavy that all you see is a wall of water, how do you do it?
I've never seen so much stuff from the sky fall all at once.
The Toro Rosso box surrounds me like an outline that gradually fades more and more, while the race unfolds in front of my eyes. I admire the F1 drivers, they really are on a level light years away from mine.
Like one of the lightning bolts that fall around here that overcome the deafening roar of the rain, Charles Leclerc's words from last year come to mind, when he told me that his manager was in favor of gaining experience before arriving in F1 because that was really hard and very different from the lower categories.
He was right, but only today, when I’m here observing the environment in which I’ll be placed next year, do I realize it.
I have been here in Suzuka since Friday, when I did the free practice and since there were no races, we stayed here to observe as agreed, since next year I’ll be a driver for this team. In the end, my father won and made me finish at the speed of light in the top category, but I had no doubts that he would make it.
The problem is that while I watch the race from the garage under this hallucinating downpour, I realize that if I had to do it, right now, I wouldn't be able to and I would probably have an accident.
I don't know for sure, but I think it would go like this or maybe I would bring out some immeasurable natural talent and I would be able to drive anyway, but here it’s impossible not to think that something will go wrong, someone will definitely have accidents and bad ones.
I'm not surprised by how long the race is dragging on behind the safety car due to the various accidents on the track, but it's dragging on too long, others around me say so too. You can't see anything anymore, we can't see ourselves from here, not to mention the drivers from the track with the water coming down as if it were going to erase the world. I'm here in shock watching and hearing, absorbing like a sponge while I imagine how I would do in their place. Visibility is getting worse and worse and the track is completely flooded, many here believe that the race should be suspended because it's dangerous. The drivers on the radio complain that they can't see a damn thing and that it's suicide to race, but here the show goes on and just when I think that I really don't know how I'll manage next year in similar situations, we hear yet another off-track exit; Adrian Sutil's Sauber car has an accident and goes off the track, but the safety car doesn't come out and nothing happens, the drivers continue to race. Everyone around me is shocked that they should at least bring out the safety, while others believe that if they bring it out again it will be night and already now you can't see anything. Others still say that the race should be stopped now, everyone has an opinion and just as everyone is expressing it, I think that watching today is really instructive. I have to understand how to handle similar situations because I won't have time to try them first.
What should I do in place of the drivers in situations like these? My mind works pragmatically and quickly as a driver and my father is telling me something that I don't register, probably about trying to understand what to do if I were to find myself in their place. Someone else gives me advice on the matter, I listen and try to understand, but just as all this is happening around me, the voices of the other mechanics become more agitated and I understand that something has happened. Something else. Something even worse.
- Another driver has gone out! - someone exclaims. Everyone runs to the screen to figure out who it is, the images only show very short frames of a car crashing right where the other was.
- But he ended up on the crane that was moving Sutil's car! - someone else says.
- Who is he?
- Jules Bianchi, it seems to be Jules Bianchi!
But then the images stop, no video camera records anymore after the impact fast and almost invisible.
The mechanics say that he must have been at an impossible speed and that is the same thing just happened to Sutil.
I’m here with them trying to understand, because it’s as if it’s clear, in some way, that this is more serious.
The accident is like the other one who is fine, but in this case it’s different and the reason is soon clear.
- He’s stuck! - they shout around me. I freeze.
- How is he stuck? - others ask.
- The piece of the car is stuck under the crane and they can't get it out!
- And he’s under there?
Other shouts overlap, hands on the helmets of all the mechanics present here, my father touches his face, going pale, understanding better than me what it means when a driver is stuck in the car under a crane, but I don't need anyone to explain it to me.
The cold invades me and while the voices of the others are a faded outline like this garage and suddenly the entire circuit, I realize and understand that this is serious, this is really serious.
So serious that I’ll not forget it because it’ll not end well.
I don't know why we all hear it, everyone says the same thing, it's as if they read my mind. I have no experience and I know nothing about this kind of situation on the track, it's the first time I've seen one in the front row, let's say, but I know, I feel that it’s like this, today. Maybe I'm experiencing it tragically because it's my first accident in F1 that I've witnessed so closely, but I feel that this is bad.
I think about Jules Bianchi, a Marussia and Ferrari test driver, the first to enter their Driver Academy program that I almost got into.
There are rumors that he’ll be the next Ferrari driver, but something resonates in my mind, as they finally decide to raise the red flag and stop the race.
Something I had heard about Bianchi some time ago and that had stuck in my mind because... why? Because something had stuck in my mind about another driver who at the time had not yet done anything special other than being promising anyway?
With the same alarm that resonates in my head, so similar to what everyone around me is experiencing, it occurs to me what it is.
Charles Leclerc!
He’s a great friend of Charles.
They had talked about him some time ago saying that he was a sort of mentor for him and that Bianchi believed so much in Charles, presenting him as the future shining star of F1. I noticed it not because I know well Charles Leclerc, the subject of the discussion, but because I agreed with him with the things he said, but I added myself to him laughing.
‘We will be the future of F1 together, it won’t be just him!’
Charles... I wonder how he’ll be feeling now about this accident of his. If he knew that I’m here today...
For a moment this strange thought crosses my mind, but I don't pay attention to it anymore, I immediately lose it when the news comes one after another. Finally they have pulled Jules out and rush him to the hospital, but he’s very serious and from now on, the news will not be any more good.

**

Yesterday, July 17, 2015, Jules passed away in hospital after nine months in a coma. He died in Nice, in the hospital where he had been transported a month later from Japan to continue his treatment.
The news about him continues and follows one another, recalling the serious accident in Suzuka and everything happened that day and then the following months.
The shivers run through me. Nine months in a coma and then death after an accident in F1.
After nine months of waiting, you are usually born, you shouldn't die.
This inevitably makes you think if you are an F1 driver and have just started your career.
If you race here you can die, the accidents you’ll have will not always be of little importance. One day, even serious ones could arrive. Am I okay with risking death?
Well, risk is not a problem, I do many risky things, even talking back to my father is risky, even if not for my life, at most for my head but that is hard now.
No, risking my life getting into my single-seater is not the problem. The real question is whether I am willing to give my life for this. It could happen.
I bite my mouth and shake my head without finding an answer, at the moment I think I have other priorities since it makes no sense to have a life like mine because of that asshole over there. Before being afraid of losing it by racing, perhaps, I have to make it worth losing. Because right now, even if mine ended in a crash like Bianchi's, I wouldn't make a drama out of it.
There has never been a shortage of controversy over his situation and I don't normally listen to it, I distance myself from the various messes that surround competitions and F1, I've been here for less than a year with Toro Rosso, but in the case of everything that concerned Jules Bianchi I have always been attentive and every time he’s mentioned, my mind inevitably brings back Charles' face.
It's an obvious association, they were friends and they talk about him as a chosen one precisely because thanks to his great driver friend he’s having a career that doesn’t disappoint the experts who follow him. They talk about him as one of the greats expected. This year he’s racing in European F3, the category where I was last year and what's more with my same old team, Van Amersfoort Racing.
I don't follow him like others do, but it's impossible not to hear news about him because they call him 'The prodigy' and 'The chosen one'. From now on it will be even more so and I don't envy him for racing with this weight on his shoulders because of the passing of a driver who has guaranteed so much for him.
I don't really care to know that, as I imagined, without me stealing his victories he had excellent seasons in his categories. It doesn't surprise me and as I had already predicted that day a year and a half ago now, I'm waiting for him here in F1. I know he'll get there, he just chose a safer and more prudent path, but he's right. He's doing well.
I too now, with hindsight, would have liked at least another year before throwing myself into this cauldron, I feel disoriented and surrounded by giants and I know what I have to do, but I don't know if or when I'll succeed.
Of course in the first two races I did well surprising everyone, but then I wasn't able to do decently anymore and I know that it's not always my fault and that there were also problems with the car, but that's no excuse. Not for me or for my father. More for my father than for me, but now I live things the way he does even if I should try to have my own mental independence.
I don’t hide that the jump from F3 to F1 was traumatic and very very hard if not an abyss.
People still look at me at seventeen driving in the top category as if I were a rare animal and I shock and intrigue them at the same time. These looks don't touch me, but what irritates me is that having made a record as the youngest rookie and the youngest to score points, now they expect me to do like Lewis Hamilton and go and compete for the world title in my debut championship. But make these comparisons with someone else, he was driving one of the best cars around at the time, not a Toro Rosso that makes me doubt they don't know how to do something decent.
By some miracle I keep all this to myself because I know I would bury myself, but it bothers me because my father and the others, but my father above all others, expect me to do what Lewis did as a rookie just because I arrived here early making the history of F1 and I'm not yet of age.
He was also older, a lot in fact. He was 22, the situations were different, but now if I don't pursue the same results I'm a pathetic loser, a flash in the pan, overrated.
Although others don't say it by simply keeping an eye on me curiously, my father tells me loud and clear.
'It's not nearly enough. Forget that this is enough. Do you really think I made all those sacrifices for this? To make you suck so bad in F1? The goal wasn't to get to F1, but to win and become the best! You suck so much that it was all wasted time, money and effort! Shame on you!'
More or less these are the things he repeats to me accompanying such sweet words with slaps on the head that I'm used to by now.
Do they want to understand that I'm 17 and that I drive a Toro Rosso that is not Lewis's 2007 McLaren?
'Go,' he told me when he managed to get me to sign with them last year. 'We did it in the end, you see? As I told you! I kept my word to you, now you keep yours and win, repay me for all my efforts, show me that I didn't waste time and money!'
But who the fuck asked you?
I liked racing in karting, but fuck off, what kid doesn't like it?
From there he started with my life deciding that I would do what he couldn't.
Winning in F1, being successful, becoming a champion.
But who the fuck ever asked that? Who the fuck ever really wanted that?
If it hadn't been for Charles Leclerc with whom I enjoyed racing, I would probably have made sure to be a failure so he would stop giving a shit about me and send me to my mother with whom today I would be very happy and certainly with fewer bruises and bumps on my head!
It's just that I was fooled by the fact that I was actually good at driving and above all that I liked winning while on the contrary I hated studying. Becoming a professional driver was my escape route, but not just for my studies, but also from him actually. If this thing really takes off like everyone thinks, it could go as I hope.
It's also the fact that I'm too competitive and too addicted to victories and adrenaline to give up or make sure I get dumped by that psychopath, but what do you want me to say? In the end I'm here and I can't back out, but I'm honest. I'm fine with that.
Stay here, run and try to be better. Sooner or later I'll win a race and then everything will be okay. Everything will be perfect. I'll make peace with myself and maybe my father will leave me alone.
For the first time, right today, on this day of mourning for the racing world, I have this thought that I've never had.
If I won in F1 and really became the champion he designated, he would finally leave me alone.
If I want to get rid of that piece of shit and live free, alone, in holy damn peace, really win and get really fucking good that he won't have anything to shout at me anymore, it's the only way.
As soon as I can I'll go fuck myself from his house, as soon as I can live alone everything will be better, my life will start to be decent.
Because if I gave up and purposely became a shit he would kill me and that's not a figure of speech.
I would never free myself from him and his constant insults, it would get to a point where I would probably run away or kill myself.
But if I won and became perfect, he would have nothing to say to me and that is what I have to do to free myself from him.
I have to become so good and so successful that he’ll keep his damn mouth shut.
There is not much time left, as soon as I turn 18 I will be able to legally claim to live alone, have access to my own accounts and get a real driver's license. That will be the first concrete step towards my liberation. I will do the rest by winning.
That is why I have to do it. That is why and because I like to run races and fuck off, I’ll not let him ruin what I like to do.
I like to run and win and I want to do it regardless.
Fuck you, Dad. Really fuck you.
You'll see that I’ll take my life, finally. I'm close, not much longer, I just have to keep going like this.
I sigh, still tossing and turning lazily in bed, continuing to use my phone, I read yet another article from Twitter that mentions Charles Leclerc, Bianchi's heir who they are impatiently waiting for in F1.
But stay there and don't rush things, please, Charles, because in the end you were right.
We were happy and we didn't know it. The lower categories are more beautiful than we think while we race them.
And then he doesn't joke around with the pressure either. If already now that he’s still in F3 they talk about him as the chosen one and various bullshit, giving him the title of Jules Bianchi's heir, he’s in deep shit. I remember well how they talked about him before the accident.
In short, it's not like when Senna died, obviously, Bianchi didn't have time to demonstrate his talent effectively, but everyone said he had it and that he could do well especially because Ferrari had chosen him for its new Academy and that was certainly no small thing.
However, he’s still a driver who died on the track in an F1 race, having his legacy on shoulders will certainly not be a walk in the park, but I remember that his father was smart and affectionate. I have good memories of him, I envied him, I’m sure that he’ll help him on this journey and he'll be fine.
My father shouts at me from the other side of the house telling me to get up and move with his usual lack of sweetness.
I allow myself at my own risk to ignore him a little longer while I catch one last thought about Charles precisely because of my father's screams, looking at this article that puts him next to Bianchi, a photo of the two of them smiling next to each other. They have the same kind of delicate and elegant beauty, Charles is growing up well, I haven't seen him for a while but at our age we mature quickly physically.
Aside from the mourning he's going through for which I feel sorry and the pressure of this comparison, I envy him because he'll be happy with his father next to him who protects and supports him in the way I've always dreamed mine could have done.
I envy him, yes, but I don't think it's one of those bad ones. Rather, I think it's normal, right?
My father throws open the door as I imagined, slams it and one day it will break and then he'll hit me on the head.
- I TOLD YOU TO GET UP, FUCK!
I look at him indifferently as if he weren't a screaming madman whose hands are itchy, for a change. It's stronger than me, I know very well what to avoid so as not to irritate him and not make things worse, it would be enough to always snap and be obedient in a fussy way, but it's as if a very strong part of me rebels every time. I could do what he wants without arguing, it wouldn't break my balls and my head, but I can't. I just can't, in fact I snort.
- Yes, yes! - I say polemically getting up from the bed, but as soon as I say it he grabs me by the sleeve of my pajamas and pulls me forcefully making me leave the room still shouting things at me that I don't hear and don't register.
I don't react even if I would like to return the pull and push him out and lock myself in, but I go to the bathroom without doing anything or answering.
I just had to jump up at seven punctually and get ready or move at the first call and avoid that polemical snorting 'yes yes', but obviously I couldn't. Because I haven't given up, I'm just trying to survive, I'm not dead inside, my mind is still mine and alive, I'm still myself. It won't crush me completely and sooner or later I'll free myself.
I don't want to crash into a barrier on the edge of the track yet. Right?
- And then I'm surprised you don't win a fucking race? It's obvious that with that attitude you'll never win it! - he thunders as always outside the door banging his fist on it as he would like to do with my head. I don't speed up my preparation and I don't take it into account, I do as always, as if he didn't exist. I alienate myself with my great talent.
Fuck you, really fuck you.
I will win, you'll see that I will win, and I will shut your damn mouth once and for all.
- But do you think that if you don't win a damn thing this year, next year they'll take you to Red Bull like Helmut Marko told you? - he continues from outside still with his powerful voice. Me always quiet, always without hurrying while I wash. Always as if he doesn't humiliate me like he has since my birth.
Of course I'll win. And of course they'll take me to Red Bull. You'll see if I don’t do it, asshole. You'll see.”

NOTES: I thought it was right to describe the Jules question also from Max's point of view because it’s something that affects Charles a lot and even if at the time the two of them were still nothing, I still think he may have been affected by it.
I know that that weekend Max was really there in Suzuka to do his first free practice with Toro Rosso and I know that he had no races that weekend, moreover they had recently obtained permission to stay and observe some races closely to adapt to the environment that Max would be part of the following year. Therefore it’s presumable that he was actually present as a special observer in the box, that fateful race, but I have never found anything about it so it’s only a plausible addition of mine. The practical dynamics of the event are true, all the background is my invention. The info on Jules and the Ferrari and Driver Academy are true, as is the fact that Max almost got in.
Jos's treatment of Max is generally known, both physical and verbal cruelty, by his own admission he said that he constantly belittled him by saying that he would never win anything and that he sucked to encourage him to always do better. He decided everything for him and was on him a lot. Then of course I wrote my version of the situation.
As will be clear, I wanted to underline the fundamental abysmal differences between Max and Charles. Not only the reasons why they run and the way they do it, but also their relationships with their respective fathers, although both have almost always had the eyes of the world on them since they were very young.
The next chapter is again all from Charles's POV, but then at a certain point the POVs will alternate within the same chapters.
See you next time, as always in about 4/5 days. Thanks to those who read the fic. Kisses Akane
PS: curiosity that will not matter to you at all... the chapter is set on July 18th and my birthday is exactly on that day!