Downtime

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IMPORTANT: Trigger warning for death/mentions of death

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Hunt was bored. There was no avoiding it. Of course he had things to do. He could go work out, but the idea of calling up the trainer his team assigned him didn't appeal. He was getting kinda hungry though. Maybe he would head out to grab some food.

'One thing at a time Hunt,' he thought, 'Lets get some food before I think about how to spend the time that I have.'

After heading to the shop to pick up some chicken and rice, he got to work making the burritos.

An hour later, and after cleaning up his entire kitchen after a very unfortunate accident involving a bag of flour and an unsuspecting William Hunt. He had made his lunch.

Sitting down on his couch while flipping on his TV, he scrolled through the channels until he found something interesting. The channel was broadcasting a show that he had loved as a teen, he was watching with interest before an ad break started causing his mind to drift. Suddenly an idea hit him.

Over quarantine, he had taken to streaming and had built a community of followers on twitch while streaming. He had since neglected them as racing restarted. He wondered if any of them would still tune into his stream. Then an even better idea hit him. What if he got one of his racing buddies to join him on stream.

Looking through his contacts, he decided that Lando or George were probably the best options. Finally, he decided on Lando.

"Hey, what's up mate?" Lando answered.

"Remember how during quarantine, we all hit twitch and did streaming until racing resumed?" Hunt asked.

"Yeah? What about it?"

"I got bored, and I'm gonna stream again, wanna join me?"

"Sure!"

After a few minutes both of them headed onto a discord call before deciding on starting a co-op career mode on the latest version of the F1 Game.

After introductions were all done, the two got into their career mode. Lando, of course, picked McLaren. Hunt supposed that there would be issues if Lando picked something that wasn't McLaren. Hunt however was not limited to such things as the Jaguar team wasn't in the game, cherishing the moment, he chose to race for Alpine.

The choice of Alpine meant that as soon as the career mode started, Hunt was able to fight with Lando. Although Lando was the more senior driver, Hunt was able to get the better of him on many occasions. All up until the 2nd hour of streaming where Lando decided it was time for a bit of mischief and "accidentally" took Hunt wide and forced him into the pit lane.

"What the hell man!" Hunt shouted.

Lando was too busy laughing to form an answer.

"That's how you want to play? Fine, challenge accepted!"

The rest of the stream dissolved into chaos as the two kept trying to take each other out at every possible moment. The stream ended with both of them too tired from laughing to continue driving.

"We should do this more often, maybe we get the others in on this next time?" Hunt suggested

"That would be hilarious." Lando replied.

Hunt said his goodbye to Lando and his stream before he checked the time. When he had started streaming it was 1:30PM, now it was nearing 5PM. He had been streaming for about 3 and a half hours.

'Well, at least I managed to kill some time.' Hunt thought. '3 and a half hours is better than nothing.'

Later on in the day as he finished showering, he got a phone call from his PR manager.

"Hey, I got you a spot at a career day event. Some of the other drivers are also coming along, I think Lando and Alonso are also coming. There was an open spot and I put in your name. You wanna go?" His PR agent proposed

"Sure! I got time to spare. When's the event?"

"The event is this Wednesday, it's at Avondale Park at 12:30pm."

"Woah. Short notice much?" Hunt replied

"Sorry, I've been trying to find a good time to tell you, but between all your races and your 3 hour stream today, there wasn't a good time."

"It's fine. Anything else I should know?"

"I think that's it, I'll let you know if there're going to be any other changes"

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Wednesday

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According to his PR manager he was supposed to dress in team gear. This of course meant that he was supposed to dress in a collared team shirt and black pants. He arrived at the school at 12:15 and quickly found the other drivers all in their respective team gear.

"Hey," Lando greeted, "You ready for this?"

"Yeah, I'm ready to finally have things to do." Hunt replied.

"What do you mean?" Alonso asked. "You don't visit your family while you have time off?"

"Nah, they died a while ago." Hunt said.

Lando promptly did a spit take and started coughing.

Alonso was silent for a moment before saying "I'm sorry for bringing it up."

"It's ok," Hunt replied, "That was a long time ago."

Soon, the event started and the drivers headed to the area that they were assigned. As they got to their rooms, they all introduced themselves to the people in the room. It went in the order of seniority.

"Hello, my name is Fernando Alonso, I drive for the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team" Alonso started

"Hello, my name is Lando Norris, I drive for the McLaren F1 Team" Lando continued.

"Hello, my name is William Hunt, I drive for the Jaguar Panasonic F1 team" Hunt finished

Being the newest driver on the grid, Hunt didn't expect to get many questions. And as he expected, he didn't. In fact, during the length of the event, his job was to pretty much just stand there and wait. However, as the event neared its end, Hunt got a question.

"This one's for Mr. Hunt." someone asked, "What does it feel like to switch from F2 to F1?"

"It was really different from what I was used to." Hunt started, "I had to relearn all of my braking zones and where to put the power down. It took a lot of time to get used to and it's still a bit challenging now."

"Thank you," The person replied.

After that question a few more people asked the others more questions before the drivers said that they would do signings and photos for a bit. Fernando of course had the longest line given he was the most popular driver present. Hunt had a few people who had been following him all through his F3 and F2 career and were ecstatic that he had made it into F1. He gladly autographed their things and took pictures with them.

After that, the event ended and the hosts thanked them all for coming.

On his way back to his home, Hunt checked the time, it was 5:30, he decided that when he got home he would take a shower before making himself dinner.

Dinner consisted of some fish and a potato salad. The potato salad was the easy part. He had only ever made fish once, when he was still in college. And that ended with his roommate panic calling the fire department after Hunt set the fire alarm off.

After carefully making sure he followed the steps from a video he found online he carefully prepared the fish before frying it in a pan.

"Phew" Hunt sighs as he flops into his couch. "Didn't need that stress in my life. I have enough, thank you very much."

After a while, his food was ready and he took it to the table to eat. Alone he sat at the table, reflecting on his day. His mind lingered on what Alonso had brought up today. To be honest, he really missed his parents. He used to share this house with them, but then while he was away on one of his F2 races, his parents were in a fatal wreck involving a drunk driver. A tear slowly rolled down his cheek as he thought of his parents. He briefly shook his head. His parents had set him up for success and in their honor he had promised himself that he would succeed. Right now that's what he had to focus on. He promised to himself that he would visit them after the season ended and thank them for all they did.

With that in mind, he finished up his meal, brushed his teeth, and watched a bit of television before he decided it was time for bed.