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“You pinched me. I had the right of way!”
“I was on the lead lap, you dolt! You have to let me through.”
“Not if I’m fighting for position I don’t!” With each yell the men got closer and closer to one another, their fingers pointing into each other’s face until I was worried someone might lose an eye.
“Enough!” I pushed myself between them. “That is enough.” I put a hand on each man’s chest and pushed them backwards. I was furious, though not enough that I didn’t notice the feel of their muscles under my palms through their thin team shirts.Not now.I reminded myself.You can think about this more later.
“What happened today was an unfortunate accident.” I turned my head to glare at each man. “No one tried to sabotage anyone’s race. It just happened. Now, you two need to go cool off so that we can figure out what we are going to do next.” I gently pushed each towards their rooms. “Go rest. We’ll talk strategy in the morning. And you should really think about apologizing. Not just to each other but to the team, too. That’s just good courtesy and everyone notices when you don’t. Ok?”
Alejandro let out a gruff “Ok” and Jason pushed his hand through his hair, “Yeah, ok, sorry man. I really didn’t see you there.”
“Yeah,” said Alejandro, “I got that. Ok. I am sorry I yelled. Next time use your mirrors.” Then he walked to his room. Jason walked to his own room and I was once again left in the living room thinking about the amount of testosterone I just dealt with.
Well ok then.
Chapter Eleven
We left Australia ina hostile peace, and headed back to our homes. For me that meant the offices of Smith Racing, but the men went to their home countries. The drivers and crew got a week break before we needed to gear up for the next race in Bahrain. The factory and engineers as well as marketing staff did a debrief of the events of Australia and then decided what, if any changes, needed to be made.
For me that meant a week combing through the footage we had from Australia and parsing it out across our social media to promote the drivers and team. It also meant brainstorming new ideas of what we could do to come back from the hit our reputation had taken in the fallout from the crash. After Bahrain we were supposed to race in China, but the government had run into some hot water with the FIA, so it looked like we would get a longer break next. My idea was to take the guys on a team building retreat. Nothing fancy, but it would hopefully help them to act more like teammates and less like enemies.
The Bahrain Grand Prix itself was relatively uneventful. We stayed in another three room hotel suite and managed to get through without any fighting. The team took the men out shopping in a bazaar, which meant we got some good footage of them trying to navigate in a foreign environment. The actual race went well. Jason finished P17 again, but actually ahead of other drivers while Alejandro got a P10, earning us our first points of the season.
On our way to dinner out with the team I told the guys about my plan for the next week. “It’ll just be for three days but it will be good. Real old school team building stuff like trust falls and such. I’ll record footage and we’ll use it to spice up our social media since the fans will be waiting an extra two weeks for any races.”
I could feel the eyes rolling behind me. “Kat. You want us, two elite athletes, to go do trust falls in the woods?” asked Jason.
“Don’t start with me, mister. You drivers all go do crazy things like cliff diving or mountain climbing and stuff. A little corporate bonding won’t hurt you.”
“If it is bonding content you want, why not go spear fishing instead? I could teach you.” said Alejandro.
“If it’s all the same to you I don’t think either of you should be holding sharp objects when you spend time together.” I snarked back.
“She has a point there, dude. As long as wherever we go comes with a good weight room and a spa I’ll be fine,” said Jason.
“Thank you. I found us a resort in a small town in England. We’ll get our same standard suite and it’ll be great.”
