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Carlos had imagined funerals would divide a life into before and after.
Instead, Lewis’s funeral begins like any other morning.
Morning traffic inches north out of London. The motorway is clear by the time the city falls behind them. Carlos drives. He grips the steering wheel more tightly than he means to. Teto sits beside him with one elbow against the window, saying very little. There is nothing left to say that has not already been said on the phone, in the paddock, outside the hospital.
London had long since become familiar. He has learned its rhythms: the ivy climbing soot-darkened walls, the Thames carrying centuries of empire with the same indifferent current, history sedimented into every stone until even the air seems heavier with it. Thirty miles away, Stevenage feels almost untouched by comparison. The fields spread quietly beneath a pale sky. Houses sit low against the horizon.
The hometown nurturing the greatest driver of his generation much resembles countless other English towns. Carlos had never been here.
St Nicholas’ Church stands at the top of a lonely hill, its flint walls weathered by centuries of English rain. There are no barricades, no grand displays, no attempt to monumentalize grief. People arrive in dark coats, greet one another softly, and disappear through the wooden doors.
Just inside the entrance hang two photographs.
In one, Lewis sits on the grass beside Roscoe, laughing at something outside the frame. Carlos has never seen that photograph before. It catches him off guard. The Lewis he knew was almost always in motion, walking a grid, leaving a briefing, stepping into a simulator, already halfway to the next obligation. Here he is perfectly still.
The other is a studio portrait against a white backdrop. Lewis is looking neither at the camera nor away from it, but somewhere beyond both, his expression impossible to read. Carlos stands before it for a moment longer than he intends to.
He realizes, with a quiet surprise, that after all the years they spent sharing a paddock, he has no idea which of the two photographs resembles Lewis more.
Carlos recognizes Anthony before Anthony recognizes him.
The line has already formed by the time he steps into the nave. It moves slowly; every embrace seems to last a heartbeat longer than custom allows.
Anthony stands beside Carmen and Michael, thanking each guest for coming. They exhibit the same composure Lewis always displayed. Carlos had marveled at how painfully dignified such perseverance was. Abu Dhabi. 2021. He remembers following Lewis away from the podium, expecting fury. Any other driver would have shouted. Broken something. Refused interviews. Lewis only thanked the marshals, congratulated Max, and disappeared into the night.
When Anthony finally reaches him, the old man, distressed, weary, wrinkle crawling over his face, smiles first.
“Thank you for coming, Carlos.”
The embrace is warm, familiar, and devastatingly ordinary.
Carlos has rehearsed a dozen sentences on the drive from London. None survive the moment Anthony’s hand lands between his shoulder blades.
“I’m so sorry,” is all he manages.
Anthony nods as though he has heard the words hundreds of times already, because he has.
“So are we.”
Nothing more is needed.
Carlos does not know for which part he is apologizing.
Carmen squeezes Carlos’s hand with both of hers. Michael thanks Teto quietly before greeting the next family friend waiting in line. The queue never stops moving. It cannot. Too many people have crossed countries, oceans, careers to stand in this church for a few brief moments.
Only after stepping aside does Carlos begin to notice the room.
Fred stands near the front with the Ferrari mechanics. Some faces Carlos still recognizes. Others are too young; they arrived after he had already left the cockpit for the pit wall. Rafael Câmara sits with his head lowered, the black tie hanging awkwardly against a suit he cannot yet look comfortable wearing. Charles stares into the hollow, looking disquietingly comfortable. Perhaps he has become too accustomed to burying his friends. Bono has come. So has James and Toto, both neurotically adjusting their cuffs as if they were occupied. A handful of engineers from different chapters of Lewis's career have found one another without speaking, as though years in separate garages have dissolved for a single morning.
There are fewer paddock faces than Carlos had imagined.
Of course there are.
People retire. People change championships. Some have children. Some have left motorsport altogether. The years have thinned the grid more efficiently than any regulation ever could.
Then he notices those who had never belonged to it in the first place.
Neymar.
Carlos recognizes him almost immediately, the instinct of a football supporter preceding every other thought. They had met once at a charity dinner years ago. Retirement has rounded Neymar’s frame. He stands quietly near the back of the church, speaking to no one.
A little farther away, LeBron James, even standing still, dominates the room. Carlos has forgotten how tall he is until everyone around him seems to shrink.
For a moment Carlos simply watches him.
Five championships [1]. More than two decades at the top. A retirement chosen rather than imposed.
Lewis had long cultivated a close friendship with LeBron.
But Lewis never had that choice.
Not because Lewis loved racing more than LeBron loves basketball. Carlos knows better than to compare devotions. Greatness has never measured desire fairly.
Lewis remained because there was still one unfinished sentence between himself and the sport.
The service passes in a blur of hymns, Scripture, and silence.
When the pallbearers are called forward, Carlos rises almost automatically.
Sebastian.
Charles.
George.
Carlos.
There are others as well, men from different chapters of Lewis’s life, but as Carlos steps beside the coffin he realizes, with a quiet certainty, that he is the only one still belonging to the paddock not as memory, commentator, ambassador, or retired great, but as one of the people still responsible for the sport Lewis never left.
The handles are polished brass. Brutally cold.
Someone gives a small nod, and together they lift.
The coffin is not especially heavy. Eight grown men, most of whom have spent their entire lives training their bodies, can bear its weight without difficulty. Yet it seems to weigh differently in every pair of hands.
George carries the captain who had stood beside him through years of impossible expectations.
Charles carries the teammate with whom he had rebuilt Ferrari, one careful season after another.
Seb carries the friend who had changed with him, grown with him, argued with him, and remained.
Carlos does not know what he carries.
A rival? A mentor? A man he had once defended without hesitation, and who he had later opposed with equal conviction.
The coffin does not become heavier, yet his hands do.
Outside, the bells begin to toll.
The church doors open; crowd waiting beyond has fallen completely silent.
Purple.
The color flooded Carlos’ vision before he distinguishes individual faces.
Scarves. Flags. Small bouquets wrapped in violet ribbon.
TeamLH.
They stand shoulder to shoulder behind the barriers, leaving a narrow passage for the family and the coffin. Nobody shouts. Nobody raises a phone above their head. Some bow as Lewis passes. Others simply place a hand over their heart.
Carlos has raced before hundreds of thousands of people. He has stood beneath podiums that shook with noise. As a team principal he held the constructor’s trophy as if it was the torch of freedom, attention of the racing world all onto him.
Silence, he discovers, is infinitely more difficult to endure.
One step, another. The coffin remains steady; the world does not.
By the time the hearse disappears from view, Carlos’ vision has begun to blur around the edges. He barely notices placing the coffin down.
“Carlos.”
Someone calls his name. Yet he seems to be the only one catching it. Every living creature carries a frequency of its own. Recognition begins where two frequencies overlap.
“You look pale.”
Lando. Of course that is Lando. He gives Carlos a concerned gesture, though minor enough.
“I’m fine.”
“You nearly fainted.”
Carlos starts to orchestrate words, then stops. There is no point arguing over something so plainly visible. Years ago he might have hymned something or raised his eyebrow or requested a cuddle from Lando, but they’ve been apart for over two years. So Carlos simply looked away, not bothered to recollect his facial expression.
Carlos retreats to the edge of the crowd without meaning to. Probably for another breathe of air.
Near the church wall, two Mission 44 staff members are speaking in voices too quiet to be overheard.
Except they are.
“Have you managed to reach him?”
The younger woman shakes her head.
“Nothing.”
“Not even through George?”
“No.”
A pause.
“I thought he shall at least come...”
It’s not a gentleman-esque behavior to overhear a private conversation. But Carlos instinctively knows who they are referring to. Indeed he is also half surprised that that person does not come.
Carlos remembers the way Nico darted into Lewis’ ward, face soaking in some distorted horror. The ward was packed, filled with everyone Lewis loved; amongst the group the bed appeared smaller, like a leaf submerging in the vast ocean.
Lewis was barely conscious then, but he refused to let himself go.
He was hanging there for someone.
Almost everyone in the room had a clue of who that person was. And when Nico screamed Lew, Lewis opened his eyes. Not fully, but more than enough to recognize his selected family since childhood, puppy love, nemesis, no more friend.
Nico kneeled, taking Lewis’s hand.
Lewis smiled. A very small smile. The kind Carlos had seen hundreds of times after qualifying, when Lewis was too exhausted to celebrate.
Then Nico kissed him.
Carlos looked away.
He told himself he’s giving them privacy. Years later he wonders whether he was actually ashamed of witnessing something so intimate, or everything else he didn’t dare to confront.
Three nurses came to check the equipment, then quietly freed Lewis from the ventilator. People began getting out, leaving space for those closest with Lewis.
Against the direction, Nico climbed into the bed and wrapped himself around Lewis. Murmuring something about their past, which Carlos could not hear clearly but could vividly picture. As if Lewis had never left.
No one opposed Nico’s acts. Anthony and Carmen looked at each other and shed tears.
It is not a secret that in his will Lewis left Mission 44 for Nico to manage. And Nico disappears, almost like protesting the collective agenda of sealing Lewis’ life passage as a biography.
“I’ll walk you back.”
Someone drags Carlos back from his private planet. Once again.
Carlos is too tired to refuse kindness, even though the transient warmth comes from his ex. Different threads of bitterness entangle on his taste buds; he is so drained that any helping hand redeems him a little bit.
They leave without attracting attention, slipping away from the mourners gathering outside the church. Neither of them speaks until they reach the small car park.
Lando glances across the rows of cars.
“I thought you came with Teto.”
“I drove myself.”
The lie leaves Carlos’ mouth without effort.
Lando studies him for a moment, as if measuring whether to challenge it.
He doesn’t.
“All right,” he says at last. “Call me when you get home.”
“Stay.” Carlos requests. Almost forcefully, as Lando used to comply with all his requests.
Lando softly looks into Carlos’ eyes. Carlos meets his iris, expecting some cruelty or contempt. But Lando’s eyes are too pure to contain anything malicious. Only a glimpse of sorrow, lithe and fluffy.
“Carlos, not today.”
Lando sighed. So airy that the words merge into London’s fog.
“Not today.”
The arrow Carlos Sainz Jr. discharged two years ago fires back right into his chest.
Carlos had announced these two words two years earlier, beneath a sky full of fireworks behind another crowd.
Another silence disguised as celebration.
Fireworks had consumed the Abu Dhabi night until the sky seemed less illuminated than burning. Gold dissolved into white above the pit straight, each explosion erasing the one before it. Somewhere beneath them, Audi’s pit house erupted.
Mechanics, engineers, marketing staff. People came toward Carlos all at once. People who had spent years betting their careers on a manufacturer everyone else had dismissed as late to Formula One.
Someone was already crying before the trophy reached him.
Someone else was laughing so hard they could barely remain standing.
Television cameras followed wherever Carlos moved. Sponsors waited their turn. Journalists abandoned other interviews halfway through questions. For one improbable evening, every current of the paddock seemed to bend, however briefly, toward Carlos Sainz Jr.
He had known victory as a driver.
This was different.
A driver’s triumph belonged, in the end, to a Sunday afternoon.
A team principal’s victory spread through hundreds of hands.
Every embrace seemed to confirm the same impossible truth: they had built this. In very few years.
Across the garage, Lando watched with the sweet smile Carlos had known since they were barely more than boys.
It reminded him, absurdly, of another Abu Dhabi, eight years earlier, McLaren orange instead of Audi black.
Lando standing on the top step at last.
Carlos had opened his arms before Lando turned back.
Lando had crossed the distance almost at a run, sweat still dripping from his race suit, laughing so hard he could scarcely breathe. For a few seconds the cameras had lost interest in the trophy altogether. There had only been the two of them, holding on as though one man’s victory naturally belonged to the other.
Carlos had believed, then, that success expanded.
That there would always be room enough inside it for another person.
Standing beneath the fireworks, with photographers calling his name from every direction, however, he discovered a quieter possibility.
Success also condensed.
Without announcing the moment it began, it narrowed the world until everything beyond its center slipped gradually out of focus.
He did not notice it happening.
Not until Lando reached into his jacket, drew out a small velvet box, went down on his left knee, and smiled in exactly the same way he had smiled all those years before.
The ring caught the firelight.
For a long time, Carlos simply looked at it.
Then he heard himself speak.
“Not today.”
The words left Carlos’s mouth with surprising gentleness.
He reached for Lando almost immediately, as though he might soften what cannot be unsaid.
“Lando...”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Lando snorted. “I don’t?”
Carlos shook his head. “I can’t.” The answer sounded insufficient even to himself.
Outside, someone began chanting his name again. The office door rattled under an impatient knock before falling silent.
Lando waited. Carlos had always loved that about him. He waits. He lets people arrive at their own conclusions, even when they take too long.
“I’ve only just started,” Carlos said at last.
“You’ve just won.”
“No.” The denial came so quickly that they both pause.
Carlos looked through the glass wall overlooking the garage. Mechanics were embracing one another. Someone had climbed onto a toolbox waving a Spanish flag. Television crews weaved through the celebration looking for another angle, another face, another story.
“They think this is the destination,” His voice was almost absent. “It isn’t.”
Lando followed his gaze. “What is?”
Carlos did not answer.
Because he could not.
Not truthfully.
He knew only that the feeling flooding through him tonight bore almost no resemblance to satisfaction. Victory had not quieted him. It had sharpened his hunger.
Silence settled between them once more.
Lando closed the velvet box, click almost inaudible.
“I’ve been asking the wrong question.”
Carlos turned.
“I kept wondering when the timing would finally be right,” Lando smiled, though the expression never reached his eyes. “But timing isn’t the problem.”
Carlos wanted to object, but he could not find the words quickly enough. Or, the words refused to come. Perhaps because he had depleted the efficacy of words.
The first time, he had just retired and Lando still been racing.
The second, they had only just arrived in Switzerland.
Each refusal had sounded temporary. Each had asked Lando to wait a little longer.
Somehow “a little longer” had become the shape of their life.
Lando stepped closer, smoothing an imaginary crease from Carlos's jacket with the easy familiarity of someone who had done so for more than a decade.
“You’ll build your dynasty,” He said it without sarcasm. “You probably should.”
His hand lingered for the briefest moment before falling away.
“I just don’t think there’s anything waiting for you at the end of it.”
When Lando left, he closed the door carefully behind him.
The celebrations outside continued long into the night.
Carlos eventually joined them. He smiled for the cameras, the bright, vibrant laughter that every single sponsor and media coverage craves for. Accepted congratulations, the way he was trained in since stepping into the paddock as a child, in papa’s company. Lifted the trophy again when photographers ask, the way that it glittered alongside his beautiful, mesmerizing face.
Nobody noticed that, sometime before dawn, the ring-shaped indentation remained pressed into the velvet lining of a box Lando forgot to take with him.
It stayed in Carlos’ office until the cleaners found it the following week. He told them to return it to Mr. Norris’ place in Monaco.
He never asked whether they did.
When Carlos returned to Hinwil, he returned alone. The roads had disappeared beneath another crust of snow. Winter erased tyre tracks overnight. It could do nothing about absence.
Lando had not come back after Abu Dhabi.
Carlos had spent the entire New Year ruminating the fact that Lando has left.
On holiday Madrid smelled of roasted chestnuts and olive oil. Mama asked whether Lando’s flight had been delayed. Carlos answered too promptly. “He’s spending the holidays elsewhere.”
Nobody asked a second question. Ana gave him a sympathetic look. That frightened him more than if they had.
The Sainzes all knew what everyone else knew. It had never required an announcement.
“Vamos, people aren’t silly. The entire world has knowledge of how much I’m into you. I have been into you, long before I was racing Formula One. Even the most hegemonic heterosexual people recognize that we are dating.” Lando said to him once. Should be the second time he turned down Lando’s marriage proposal.
Yet Carlos pretended that he didn’t know the world knew, and the world partook in his theater.
They ran into a paparazzi once when walking their dog, Pinon III. Filming them interlacing their fingers and exchanging kisses. Carlos, with the long-cultivated habit of exercising, this time to maintain his good-looking face, an asset for sponsorship and pr purposes, caught the paparazzi with much ease.
“Carlos, let’s just pay him...” Lando suggested. This wasn’t worth panicking. Only requested some negotiations and deals.
Carlos cut Lando off.
“Retired drivers spend time together.” He smiled, with impeccable courtesy. “We live twenty minutes apart. We train together. We play golf and I beat Lando every time. We walk the dogs.”
The reporter laughed.
Carlos laughed too.
All photographs of them walking Pinon III and joking around together were published, except for the one with them finger twined. Just another ordinary Carlando bromance moment.
The only photograph Carlos bought out laid idly on their decoration shelf. Carlos stared at it for a long while, found it unbearable, inverted it upside down, and fled to his office.
Across the full-height window mountains extended into the horizon. Carlos had stopped noticing these mountains years ago. He measured seasons by development cycles now. Winter meant correlation tests. Spring meant Melbourne. Summer meant upgrades. Autumn meant budgets. He looked only at the glass.
He shall prepare for the board meeting tomorrow, then a pr event empowering young female go-karting drivers in the local community.
His calendar no longer resembled that of a racing driver. Aerodynamic updates. Budget reviews. Sponsor negotiations. FIA working groups. Three continents in nine days. Somewhere between them lay a Grand Prix.
Sometimes he forgot which one.
The walls of his office displayed no trophies.
Those belonged downstairs.
Instead there were production schedules, projected expenditure, wind-tunnel allocations, and a map marking Audi’s commercial expansion into North America and Southeast Asia.
Success had become measurable.
Not in tenths, but in percentages.
He still drove, but growingly rarely. Mostly prototypes after private tests, long after journalists had left and the garages had emptied. Engineers enjoyed watching him climb into the cockpit. He still possessed the irritating smoothness that time had failed to erase.
“You could still race,” Ugo complimented once.
Carlos looked toward the pit wall. There was still work upstairs. He climbed out before the fuel was gone.
Carlos had little time to think about Lando. The season refused to leave room for private grief. Lewis, still racing on terms the sport kept trying to take from him, occupied too much of it.
Ferrari had become Audi’s only genuine rival. Every Monday morning began with the same reports: aerodynamic efficiency, tyre degradation, development curves, and one final column tracking the championship.
Lewis won Shanghai.
Lost Suzuka by four tenths.
Finished second at Monaco.
Retired from the lead at Silverstone when a hydraulic line failed three laps from the end.
Carlos remembered feeling two emotions at once. Relief first, then fear. He watched the Ferrari strike the barrier and realized he had stopped breathing. Only after the radio confirmed Lewis was climbing out did Carlos notice his nails digging into the palm. He never spoke of that moment again.
Summer brought little mercy.
Two further mechanical retirements in Europe.
One collision caused by a rookie misjudging dirty air into Turn One.
Singapore belonged to Lewis again.
In Brazil, an engine penalty left him nineteenth at the start and he crawled back onto the podium, championship chance still alive into Abu Dhabi.
Then Lewis finished second. Once again.
Ugo crossed the line as Formula One’s second Black World Champion.
Champagne burst against the pit wall. Mechanics embraced one another. Someone was already crying before the cooldown room had emptied. Against the revelry Carlos simply removed his headset.
Five points.
Only five.
Ferrari had secured the Constructors’.
Audi had secured the Drivers’.
“We’ve done it,” the chief strategist whispered, her voice exhibiting clear pride. “We have the World Champion.” A perfectly timed Safety Car had transformed a narrow mathematical possibility into a championship.
Carlos looked at the timing screens a moment longer.
“No.”
She widened her eyes in disbelief.
“We lost.” Carlos smashed his headset onto the floor.
Nobody argued with him.
Television preferred another story.
The documentaries spoke about Lewis’s legacy.
About barriers broken, about diversity, about the children who had entered karting because they had finally seen someone who looked like them standing on the top step.
Marketing departments were infatuated with those statistics, so were sponsors.
Every campaign celebrating Formula One’s future still borrowed his face. He won another Laureus. The sport had found, over the years, a great many ways to honor Lewis Hamilton. Handing him an eighth title had simply never been one of them.
“You think he’ll retire?” The newly crowned champion was watching Lewis’ interview on the hospitality television. He was talking about the next season the way one was talking about a prophecy. Their dedication, destination, and destiny.
“No,” Carlos did not look up from the annual reports.
“Why not?”
Carlos turned another page. “He hasn’t accepted their answer.”
“Their answer?”
For the first time Carlos looked toward the television.
Lewis was smiling.
Exactly the same fragile yet perseverant smile he had worn after losing Abu Dhabi in 2021.
Exactly the same brittle yet genuine smile after Silverstone in 2026, when the Safety Car had stayed out until the chequered flag despite every strategist in the paddock knowing there had been time for one final racing lap.
Different Race Directors, different regulations, and different presidents.
History always seemed capable of discovering a different road toward the same destination.
Lewis had learned that long before anyone else. He simply refused to agree that history should have the final word.
“He still believes he can win?” Ugo asked.
Carlos was quiet for a long time.
Finally he said, “No.”
Ugo looked confused.
Carlos returned to the reports.
“He still believes they don’t get to decide when his story ends.”
Years earlier Carlos would have admired that. He would have defended Lewis after difficult stewarding decisions, questioned inconsistent rulings, and complained whenever regulations bent toward convenience rather than fairness. As the vice president of GPDA, he shouldered the responsibility to protect his fellow drivers from the institution.
Somewhere along the way, however, his objections had become calculations.
Every Sunday morning he wished Lewis well. Every Sunday afternoon he needed Ferrari behind Audi. He no longer remembered when those two wishes had ceased to coexist.
Championships carried no memory.
The next year, by the time the Japanese Grand Prix arrived, every strategy meeting began with the weather.
Rain.
Intermittent.
Standing water.
Visibility concerns.
Engineers debated crossover temperatures.
Recovery procedures.
Safety Car deployment.
The probability of red flags.
Someone mentioned the FIA’s revised protocol for recovery vehicles.
Someone else reminded him that the GPDA had proposed mandatory automated neutralization years ago after another wet-weather incident.
“It never passed,” Carlos almost missed the sentence. It reminded him of a casual Wednesday, as banal as every single late afternoon in his life. In a meeting room overlooking the paddock, forty minutes behind schedule because commercial negotiations had overrun, the motion and verdict finally began. Allocating less than five minutes for Kimi, the world champion and president of GPDA, the FIA and team principals fell into some cacophonous debate.
Over the endlessly lengthy debate Carlos caught some fragments, including that automatic neutralizations would remove the human judgment that makes this sport what it is, dilute the spectacle for broadcast partners already renegotiating rights fees, and concede to fear, which the sport means to overcome. All justifying the institution’s preferred order. Carlos remembered himself abstained, because he knew his vote wouldn’t matter anyway. Better not to make an enemy when it would serve no purpose.
The motion failed. The meeting moved on. Eventually, so did he.
Outside, rain poured down, covering the ground hazy white.
Inside, engineers continued discussing tyre temperatures.
No one mentioned death.
No one ever did before it arrived.
Carlos does call when he gets back. Throwing himself onto the fluffy bed of Four Seasons at Park Lane and pressing the dial button.
The call is picked up in less than five seconds.
“I’m home.”
“I know.”
“You told me to call.”
“I did.”
“I’m fine.”
Lando does not answer immediately. Carlos can hear only breathing at the other end of the line, quiet enough to mistake for static.
“You don’t sound fine.”
Carlos looks through the window. Another English rain, extending from the Victorian era to the contemporary, postmodern epoch, dressed the world in an opaque veil. Much like the rain in Suzuka.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
Another silence.
Then Lando chuckles, softly. “Not that.”
Carlos frowns. “What?”
“You’ve apologized before.”
“Landino—”
“No.” Lando’s voice remains gentle. “Say something else.”
Carlos closed his eyes.
For years he has negotiated contracts worth hundreds of millions, persuaded sponsors through crises, convinced engineers to abandon months of work for another concept, calmed furious drivers over the radio. Words has become instruments, polished until they almost always achieved the desired effect.
Only this sentence has defeated him three times.
“I was wrong.”
“I know.”
“Will you marry me?”
Lando this time giggles. “You really are terrible at this.”
“I know.”
“Good thing you’ve got me.”
“... is that a yes?”
“I’ve been waiting fifteen years. It has always been yes.”
Way too sketchy. The most underwhelming proposal of all history. But Lando says yes without the slightest hesitation.
They choose Sardinia almost immediately. Book a private jet to get there right after the thought.
Neither of them explains why.
The guest list grows shorter. Every new name Carlos adds is eventually crossed out by Lando. Colleagues become acquaintances. Acquaintances become obligations. Obligations disappear altogether.
In the end only those who have known them before either of them became institutions remained.
Family.
MaxF and Teto.
A handful of other friends whose lives had never revolved around Formula One.
No one from the grid.
Carlos has once insisted he would never truly befriend another driver. They were there to compete, not to become friends. His words age like fine wine, except that one of them becomes his family.
For the rest of the days they almost glue together, overcompensating for the past two years apart. Until lando leaves to answer the call from a startled MaxF does Carlos pull out his contact list. He scrolls down the screen till the not-so-familiar name appears. Nico Rosberg. His thumb hovers over the screen for several seconds before pressing call.
The line connects.
Then, as anticipated—
The number you have dialed is not available.
Carlos listens until the recording repeats itself. Only then does he end the call.
In the upcoming summer break, they would exchange rings beneath the Sardinian sun.
They would become husband and husband.
Audi would publish the official photographs after negotiating exclusive release rights with GQ, which covers the ceremony.
The FIA would congratulate them.
Sponsors would drape themselves in rainbows for a week.
Audi’s share price would rise slightly. Analysts would attribute it to positive public sentiment, strong executive visibility, and sustained confidence in the brand. The market had always preferred optimism to mourning.
The world, still trying to recover from the wound of losing Lewis Hamilton, would welcome almost any story suggesting happiness remained possible.
Yet before all these occur, by this upcoming Tuesday Carlos would be in Miami. The championship would continue. The wedding and honeymoon could wait. And even then, they would last only part of the break. There would still be upgrade meetings, wind tunnel allocations, budget reviews, and another championship to chase.
Life, Carlos has learned, would never pause for joy any more than it has paused for grief.
The FIA’s Pride campaign would place Lando and Carlos on its home page.
A former World Driver’s Champion and a multiple-times Grand Prix winner and team principal leading a new team toward its first peak in history.
Diversity. Progress. Representation. An image the sport would wish to present to itself.
But the outside world could wait. At the very present moment, the dusk falls.
Sardinia is quieter than Carlos remembers. The sea breathes against the rocks. Moonlight stretches across the water until horizon and sky become indistinguishable. Their shadows lengthen over the sand.
Years ago, under the same moonlight, somewhere on this island, this beach, two boys had promised each other championships.
They kept that promise.
The sport found its own way of punishing them for it.
Lando reaches for Carlos’ hand. This time Carlos takes it before Lando has the chance to pull away.
Carlos thinks of the kinds of people racing had taught him to admire. Some climbed a summit once and descended without regret. Some devoted themselves to perfecting a single craft, indifferent to victory itself. Some never stopped climbing, because standing still felt too much like dying.
For years he had believed the last category contained the greatest people the sport had ever produced. Lewis had chased an unfinished sentence until there was no life left outside it. Carlos had almost done the same.
The tide reaches their shoes before retreating again.
He watches the water erase their footprints. Even the sea could not preserve all imprints of the past.
Lando squeezes his hand.
Carlos squeezes back.
Neither of them says anything.
————FIN————