Is K-Mag The One True GOAT???

Kevin was exhausted, he had been trapped in the same meeting over and over and over again. In a cyclical cycle of Haas trying everything to understand what they did right last weekend and how they will replicate those results. He and Nico had been sharing looks the whole time. Both believing that Bahrain would be the best they placed for the rest of the 2024 season. 

These meetings all combined to put him where he is now. 

Another. Freaking. Meeting.

At least this one was useful, given the fact that it was all about what strategies they would be using this weekend.

Kevin himself had stopped listening to Ayao a while ago, letting his voice fade into the background. He had been trying to teach his brain the skill of sleeping with his eyes open. 

So far no dice.

Kevin comes to when a voice that isn't Ayao’s speaks up “Excuse me Ayao.” Ayao doesn't stop, he keeps rambling “Excuse me Ayao.”

Getting tired of his team principal talking over people Kevin speaks up “AYAO. They are trying to talk to you.” he nods towards the team member, giving them a small smile. She nods back in thanks.

“Sorry. What's up?”

“We are at curfew. If we don't want to use one of our jokers we need to pause this meeting and head back to the hotel.”

“Oh, fantastic! Thanks for letting me know. Alright guys, let's call it a night. I'll see you all tomorrow for free practice!” Ayao says 

As they are leaving Nico leans over and whispers “I thought we'd never get out of there.”

Kevin snorts. “Tell me about it. Are you going out with the children to celebrate?”

“Celebrate? Celebrate what?”

“Mate really? They’ve been texting the group chat like crazy, trying to plan a time to celebrate us, Yuki, and Logan’s points from the last race.” He sighs, “You really need to check your phone more.”

“I know, I know. Do you know when and where they are planning on celebrating?”

Kevin pulls out his phone quickly scrolling back in the Back Half Chats (Yes Yuki we are keeping the name) until he found the message he was looking for.

“Seems to be a club about 15 minutes from the hotel. It looks like they want to start celebrating at 11. Holy cow. Yeah I am not doing that, I've accepted my age.”

Nico just laughs “yeah I'm good, I'll give them a heads up that we won't be there.” 

“Cool, See you tomorrow.” Kevin calls out as he slides into the driver's seat of his car. It takes all of his focus to safely drive back to his hotel. By the time he gets there and has scanned into his room he is dead on his feet. All Kevin is able to do is strip off his jeans before he falls into bed, out cold as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He awakes to the piercing sound of his alarm. Fumbling around for his phone, Kevin finally turns it off. Groaning, he rolls over.

Then he awakes once more, this time it's to banging on his door. 

“Fineeee, I'm up, I'm up” He grumbles to himself.

He starts mumbling nonsense as he pulls on pants, all while walking to the door. He pried it open slowly peeking out.

“What?” he snaps.

Thomas stands there unimpressed with his client. “You're going to be late if you don't hurry up.”

“Ah shit, come on in I just need to get ready and then we can leave.”

Thomas just smiles and steps into the dark room, immediately sitting down on the couch, and getting comfortable.

After 20 minutes Kevin is standing at the door, backpack on ready to go. Thomas just hands him his breakfast and directs him to the car. On the way to the track Kevin texts his wife, knowing that with the time difference she would be just waking up and there was no way he was going to interrupt the girls morning routine. 

“Stop pacing and sit down. She’ll be fine.” Thomas interrupts 

“I can't help it. Those girls are fierce and Chloe’s way too nice to send them into a wall when they deserve it. What if she crashes? What if the minute I turn away something happens to her?” 

“She’s a good driver, Kevin. You’ve already done a pre race with her, you've answered all her questions, and she knows that if anything happens she can talk to you and you'll have her back. She trusts you, so you need to trust her and come get ready for Quali.”

Kevin reluctantly sighs and trugs over to Thomas to start warming his muscles up. “Fine. But we leave the race on so I can know if something happens.” 

“Deal”

Thomas tunes out the race as he starts warming Kevin up. He knows immediately when something has happened because Kevin's attention is no longer on getting ready, it's glued to the TV behind him. Thomas watches his client's face, as it grows more and more excited until he's jumping from the yoga mat and plowing through the door out into the garage. 

Thomas trails after Kevin, just watching in quiet happiness as the man hugs Chloe to death while rambling about how proud of her 3rd place he is. It's honestly adorable to see him take the young girl under his wing, and treat her like one of his daughters. Eventually though Thomas has to step in, because Chloe has interviews and the podium to get to and it's almost time for Qualifying to start. 

Eventually he gets Kevin into his car, and watches as his client pulls out for Quali. As a trainer, free practice and qualifying is decently boring. To combat this Thomas generally likes to get paperwork or meal prep done, oftentimes though he ends up chatting with other trainers. They complain about how needy their drivers are (George, Alex, Yuki) or how reckless and headache-inducing they are (Max, Charles, Lando) either way those conversations tend to fall to jealousy on how easy going Martin, Xavi  and his clients are. But what do they expect, their bosses are all young kids and theirs are fathers, it's a different mentality. 

They were having one of these conversations when compulsive place checks lead to a ton of swearing.

“What happened?” Thomas asks

“Charles crashed and took out Lando, Carlos, and Checo.  Max seems like he will be on pole, so I'm complaining. Charles is going to be insufferable, his boyfriends on pole and he's down in the pits. My god” Andrea groans as he rushes out of the room.

“Welcome to the club, at least this means Kevin’s starting 5th, and Nico’s 6th.” Thomas calls after him, high fiving Martin in celebration.

He wants to be sick. Kevin’s hands are shaking so badly that Thomas has to help attach his hans device to his helmet. At least he has people to buckle him into his car. Kevin’s brain feels like a hurricane, with thoughts of:

your not good enough, the only reason you got this high again is because of the crash, you will never be enough, you should crash and take out everyone so the only good haas gets first

swirls around and around in his head, darting out randomly to strike at his core. Tears want to flood, nausea bubbles up, and he just wants to scream in time to the howling wind in his brain.

And then it's quiet. 

So very quiet.

He likes the quiet.

Kevin looks around in amazement, apparently his car is the eye of the storm. He has been driving for so long that just getting in his car makes him slow his breathing and focus. 

God muscle memory is an amazing thing.

With his brain finally calm, Kevin takes a deep breath in and pulls out into the formation lap. Taking it nice and slow, letting his tires warm up to the best temperature. 

One red light.

Two red lights.

Three red lights. He can feel it in his bones.

Four red lights.

Five red lights.

Start.

Nico jumps forward, and Kevin lets him pass. 

The first five laps go great, Nico’s 5th and Kevin’s 6th.

It gets even better when George and Oscar have a terrible pit stop around lap 40 putting them behind everyone else.

I'm in fucking third right now holy shit!! I might actually get on the podium!

Kevin can feel hope blooming up from his diaphragm, 

It quickly explodes when one over corrected corner causes him to crash.

Bad

One moment he is sliding around turn 10, the next his car hits the wall and goes skidding across the track taking out who knows how many cars. 

“Kevin, are you okay? Kevin I repeat, are you okay? Kevin, please respond?

He fumbles around his steering wheel, finally managing to hit the radio button.

“I'm okay, that one just… put me through the ringer a bit” he groans

“Great to hear. You should stay put for a minute. The cars are still on track and it seems like you've taken out a bunch.”

“Yeah that's not gonna be a problem” he groans, rolling out his wrists and taking account of all the places he might be bruised. 

Wham

Kevin blinks.

Wasn't I just on the track? How the hell did I end up in the wall?

Worried about even more people crashing, Kevin makes the idiotic decision to climb out of his car and check out the carnage. All he can see is a graveyard of metal, green, blue, black, pink, neon green, and white bits of carbon fiber lay strewn about. He watches as drivers clamber out of their coffins and take in the utter destruction. He takes in the scene himself.

Did I… Did I cause this? Am I the reason these guys could be hurt? Oh god I almost killed my friends. 

A shape looms over him. 

“K…in Ke…n Kev…n Kevin” Valtteri’s black and green suit comes into focus. “Kevin, are you OKAY?”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry”

“Did you mean to crash?”

The question takes him off guard “NO! God no Val you have to believe me! I'm sorry I didn't mean to I'm so sorry” 

“Than your good. Let's focus on getting everyone to safety first.”

“I'm sorry”

Valtteri just purses his lips and guides Kevin onto a scooter and back to the paddock.

“KEVIN OPEN UP!” 

Someone is banging at his door. He doesn't know why, they should all hate him for what he did.

“KEVIN IF YOU DONT OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR WERE GETTING A CARD! … Fine bitch”

Whoever mumbled that last part seems to walk away. Leaving Kevin to wallow in his misery again, like he deserves. 

A beep, and then his door swings open. Kevin can see 9 blurry shapes pile into his room.

“Get over yourself. You didn't hurt us.” Valtteri snaps

“Why aren’t you answering our texts?”

“How are you feeling mate?” Alex and Yuki hurriedly speak over each other.

“Why aren’t you answering our texts?” Yuki tries again

“I don't deserve to.” Kevin mumbles

“Well tough shit dude. You care about us, we care about you.” Logan says while gathering up an armload of blankets.

“Yeah. Deal with it.” At that Lance climbs onto the bed and turns on the TV to some random home renovation show.

“Mate, can you please change the channel?” Yuki whines as he claims the spot on Kevins right side.

Lance then begrudgingly switches to the food network. With two sides of Kevin claimed everyone quickly piles onto the bed.

“Out of my spot Yuki” Chloe says pulling at the man playfully

“No I was here first, and I'm older so I get first dibs”

“Well he is my mentor. So move” At that Chloe is able to push herself in between Yuki and Kevin, leaving him to reach over her shoulders so he can pat Yuki’s arm condescendingly. .

Nico smiles shaking his head in exasperation before taking a picture of the whole group and texting it to Louise.

Nico:

Thought you would appreciate this.

Attached is a photo of the hotel bed. Kevin is positioned at the center with Chloe and Yuki curled into Kevin’s right side, and Lance sitting at his left. Behind Lance sits Logan, with Alex clearly trying to fit his lanky frame in between the two younger boys. Daniel is laying at Kevin's feet with his head on Kevins shins. Valtteri can be seen on the edge of the bed opening bags and bags of snacks, while Zhou is trying to help him. 

Louise:

Thank you. He Facetimed us and kept saying he was fine, but it's good to know you guys take care of each other. Watch out for him please, he’s not been doing to hot.

Nico:

Of course! We have more than made amends, plus I gotta pay him back for getting me my first podium (even if it is 3rd place) We are back of the grid buddies forever!

Current 2024 World Driver Championship Standings:

Current 2024 World Constructors Championship Standings: