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Across twenty-three seasons in Formula 1, Fernando has learned more than most people ever will. He knows that. He has built his career and life off of this certainty.
Fernando is surprised that it took him this long to find out, really. He is chronically online-he has no shame in admitting this. He scrolls through social media almost religiously, posts TikToks in his free time, and probably knows as much memes as the youngest members in the paddock.
But last night, after a fairly good qualifying session, he had indulged in a nice, but still light and healthy dinner. He had gone to bed that night rather early and had not had the chance to check social media.
But his morning, waking from a pleasant eight hours of sleep, he had prepared a nice breakfast then opened his phone. Tapped on the black and white X icon to doom scroll through bites of his oatmeal. Then he sees it. Freezes. On his screen were tweets and tweets about Max, about Christian Horner, about what he had done to Max.
Fernando stares at the screen, blinks once. Twice.
The tweets blur together as he scrolls: there are broken sentences, scathing accusations, words like "grooming," and "rape." There are thousands upon thousands of tweets, of news articles, of people speaking as if it’s all already proven true. None of it makes sense, really. Not in the way that it should.
His first instinct is to deny it. The source of all this chaos is some obscure blog, one of those ones that feast-off of half-truths and overdramatized rumors. Social media loves to exaggerate, to speculate. In his career, he has grown very familiar with this concept. He knows how quickly things can distort online. He knows that. Is confident in that.
But yet, the disturbing feeling in his gut does not settle in his certainty like it should have. Instead it lingers in the back of his mind as he scrolls away, resurfacing unchanged, as if the accusations would suddenly become true if simply repeated louder.
And then, the very denial he believed shatters, broken by the deafening roar of burning tires and the lingering ghosts of cries the past.
It does not settle.
He remembers how he found Max, found him curled up into a ball as he cried outside the motorhome after the race. How he winced when he attempted to untangle himself as Fernando offered him a hand. How he said that he had met with Horner late at night. Max was so uncharacteristically upset that night that the memory stayed with him, but at the time, Fernando had not realized the truth. He had missed the signs. Fernando had been so confident—so certain that Christian was at most shouting at Max, that his injuries were a trick of Fernando’s tired mind or from soreness, that Max’s tears were from his frustration.
That was Monza 2016, ten years ago.
Max was eighteen then.
Now that Fernando remembers this, an uncomfortable knot twists in his chest. It is accompanied by an ache, a paralyzing helplessness from knowing that he could have done more, from knowing he could have stopped it. There were so much signs that night. There were so many signs and Fernando had ignored them, sped past them all.
The crushing weight of the knowledge that he could have done something is followed by sudden rush of blood-boiling rage. Because Fernando remembers what Max had said—P7, only making up the five places he lost, the frustration, the bite in his voice. And Christian—the fucking scum of the earth—had hurt Max, had raped him over that? A fucking P7?
It angers Fernando, but it also horrifies him—not because Fernando now knows that Christian likely assaulted Max because of the finish, but because of what it could mean. A freezing wave of dread washes over him. Because if Christian was assaulting Max over a P7 finish, how much times has it happened before? Max was breaking records: the youngest to win a race, to get a Formula 1 seat, and Christian was still hurting him.
So who was he to say that it ended that year?
Because it could have happened for longer than just '15 and '16. It could have gone on for the years and years that followed.
Questions spiral through his mind. How long has Christian gotten away with this? How long had he hurt Max? The thought of possibly years and years of pain, of suffering under Christian’s thumb makes Fernando sees red. The edges of his vision go blurry. The sound of everything around him turns fuzzy. He can barely breathe. Barely think straight.
Fernando does not realize he had written a message to Max until he had already sent it.
Do you want me to kill him for you?
He sends the message, and in that moment, he feels more certainty than he has ever felt in his entire life. Because if Max wants Christian dead then Fernando does not think he can stop himself. Stop himself from heading straight toward the nearest airport, from taking his old trusty R26 and punting it 237 kilometers per hour into Christian Horner, the fucking devil himself.
And so as Fernando sends this text message, he knows with absolute certainty that he will kill Christian if Max asks him to.
But, there a something buried in the back of his mind that haunts him:
Fernando knows that Max will not reply.
He will not reply, because he has always thought of others’ concern for pity. He will not reply because, despite the helmets they have exchanged, the drinks and laughter they have shared, they have never truly been close. Close enough for Fernando to know little facts about him, yes, but not close enough to truly know Max. He has never known Max enough to know that he was suffering. Known Max enough to know all of this was happening beneath the surface.
And now, sitting at a small table ten years from that moment, Fernando wonders if there was anyone who had ever truly known Max at all. Because Fernando may not know Max well, but he knows this much: he knows that Max is guarded, that he shuts people out, and that he refuses help because he cannot stand to be pitied, to be an object of empty charity.
And if there was no one had known Max well enough to notice what Christian was doing to him—no one who had recognized the signs, no one who had learned of the truth later, tried to tear Christian from his position thereafter—then had Max ever really had anyone by his side to help him at all?
There were still so many unanswered questions in Fernando’s mind. It was almost ironic—how little he actually knew compared to how much he always believed he had.
It almost makes him laugh.
He never really knew anything at all.
And yet, Fernando still knows a few core truths. Max will not reply. Fernando cannot fix this. He can reach out, but he can not change the past, can not go back and stop Christian Horner from sinking his dirty little teeth into Max all those years ago, can not prevent all the damage and hurt that was already done.
Even still, although Fernando knows there is little he can do, he still hopes. He hopes that Max can heal. He hopes that Max will someday be able to find peace. And most of all, he hopes that one day, Max will take one of the many hands of all the people who care for him.
Fernando pockets his phone and heads to the door.
Somehow, he leaves the room having learned more, yet knowing less.