Drive to Survive

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-One

The next morning, Dylan was up and ready before her alarm had even gone off. It was Qualifying day and she was buzzing with excitement to experience a busier COTA track and see her friends hopefully do well today. 

They weren't needed at the track until around 11am, as qualifying wasn't until 3pm local time so after tidying up her messy room a bit, Dylan decided to wander down to Lando's room and see if he wanted to join her for breakfast. 

Against her better advice, she knew that Lando kept his door on an unlocked latch so that he didn't have to get out of bed if he ordered room service. With this knowledge in mind, she bumped the door open with her hip and walked straight into his room. 

"Hey Lan, I'm starving, do you wanna go-"

Dylan froze, not having expected to see Lando sat in front of two laptops and a large camera. 

"Chat, say hi to my lovely friend, Dylan."

A stream of messages flooded up the screen on one half of the computer on the right and Dylan hesitantly approached the back of Lando's desk chair. She really should've messaged before just walking into his room but she didn't expect that he'd brought an entire streaming set up with him. 

"Can they see me?" She whispered as she crouched down next to him.

A new voice filled the room, "Yup. And hear you."

Dylan spun her head around, looking for the source of the sound. It was a familiar voice but she seriously didn't know that anyone else was staying in Lando's room. 

"Not quite, you dummy. Look down here." The voice directed her and she looked back at the screen on the left, finally seeing a tiny Max Fewtrell waving back at her. 

"Hey, Max!"

"Hey Dee, how's grand old Texas?"

"Oh, you know. Very grand. Fairly old."

Lando snorted at her stupid answer and swung an arm around her shoulder, "Dee is wearing the wrong team colours but we'll forgive her because she has this stupid thing called family loyalty."

Once again, the messages on the laptop flooded up the screen, almost too quickly to keep up with. Every time Max or Lando said something, the responses would come flying in.

"Very sorry to interrupt." She murmured, trying not to get picked up by the mic on top of the camera, "Only came to see if you wanted breakfast."

"Ooh, yeah, we're just finishing up. Grab that other chair and come hang for the last few minutes."

Dylan obediently pulled over another chair from the other side of the room and sat herself down next to Lando. She had no clue how many people were on this stream and could see her right now. All she could think about was her messy hair and embarrassing entrance so she really hoped nobody was paying much attention to her. 

Lando started chatting away with Max again and Dylan took the time to glance down at the screens in front of her. It seemed they'd been streaming some sort of computer game together and there was the chat box on the side as people continued to send in questions and comments. Every now and again, Lando would glance over it and pick out a few to answer.

It was a really brilliant way to connect with his fanbase and he did it so naturally. Formula 1 drivers were often so unreachable so it was probably refreshing for lots of fans to see what a normal guy Lando was and get a glimpse of his personality outside of racing. She couldn't decide whether the McLaren marketing team would love him for the voluntary PR or hate him for the fact that they couldn't control or monitor what he did.