Note: This is a work of fiction. Real public figures appear in entirely fictional scenes, dialogue, and events that never happened.
The sight of Lucas and Brad driving a real Formula 1 car tore across the internet, and this time the praise came without much of a fight.
The clips went up everywhere, posted and reposted until there was no scrolling past them, and the hardcore F1 crowd, the same one that had spent two weekends looking for reasons to doubt, finally ran out of them.
"Incredible. Real respect to these two. A-list actors actually getting in a genuine F1 car and driving it, you have to take your hat off."
"Yeah the car was limited, I went and checked the F1 site myself to be sure. But even so? Two actors handling something like that is no small thing."
"Lucas pushing it to 200 though?? That's the part that broke me. completely unreal."
"Forget the acting, just put Lucas in a seat full time. Give Verstappen a proper rival lmao"
"The fact that F1 actually signed off on a stunt like this. I'm officially counting the days to this movie now."
"Right? If the actors can drive THAT well, the film's going to be worth every bit of the hype."
"I've followed F1 my whole life and never cared one bit about Hollywood, never knew who Lucas even was, all these people losing their minds over some pretty face. Then i watched him drive. Yeah. I'm seeing the movie. Opening weekend."
It played out exactly the way the F1 CEO had said it would. A film that wasn't even finished shooting had pulled in a wave of attention most completed movies never saw, and more than that, it had reached the one audience the studio could never have bought outright.
The F1 purists, the ones who'd called the whole thing a gimmick, had watched their own doubt get driven into the ground, and a good number of them had quietly decided they'd be buying a ticket.
The clips didn't stay online, either. Television picked them up too. The footage of the two actors at speed made it onto the late-night talk shows, played for the audience and worked into the hosts' opening segments, and it didn't stop at the American border.
It reached as far as China, where Formula 1 had spent years working to plant a proper flag. The sport's hold there had grown fast since Zhou Guanyu became the country's first F1 driver, pulling a whole generation of new fans toward the grid, and with the Shanghai round set to return to the calendar the following season, the appetite for it was sharper than it had been in years.
Lucas was already a name that needed no introduction there, one of the biggest faces alive in any market. So when footage of him and Brad wrestling a real F1 car landed in front of Chinese audiences, it caught the same fire it had everywhere else, fans stunned that two actors could handle the thing at all, let alone like that.
---
Back in Mexico, the production rolled on through the Grand Prix without a snag. A full day had passed since Lucas and Brad took the F1 cars out together.
And because they'd driven them as well as they had, the agreement held. The two cars were theirs now, for the rest of the shoot and past it.
Stefano had given his word on that himself.
For everything the day had given him, Stefano kept returning to one thing, long after the cars were wheeled back into the garage.
It was how easy Lucas had made it look. The car they'd put him in had been held back on purpose, its performance wound down to something safe, a long way from what it would do with the leash off. And even like that, it was a Formula 1 car
The man had driven it as though he'd spent half his life in one. Brad had real experience behind him, road and circuit work from an earlier film, and Brad had not come near the same level. He'd driven well. He simply hadn't found the two-hundred mark, and he'd worked visibly for everything he did find.
For Lucas it had looked no harder than the dressed-up F2.
That was the thing Stefano couldn't let go of. The sense that whatever this man's gift was, it reached well past the acting, past the singing, past any of it.
Once the running was finished, he drew aside the two people who had spent the most time around Lucas across the whole project. Lewis, and Toto Wolff.
"Let me ask you something," he said, "and give me your honest answer." He let it sit a moment. "The car we gave them today was restricted. You both know this. Held back, softened, nothing like a real one on a Sunday. And still, what I saw out there stays with me." He looked between them. "Do you think Lucas could drive the full car? An actual F1 car, with nothing held back at all?"
He heard how it sounded the moment it left him. "I know. Believe me, I know how the question sounds."
Neither of them laughed.
Stefano waited, then opened his hands. "You are not laughing. I was certain the two of you would laugh me out of the room."
Lewis only smiled. "You think you're the first of us to ask it? I watched him take that modified F2 round at a hundred and eighty like he'd done it for years. The same question went through my head right there on the pit wall."
"And I had it too, and I threw it straight out," Toto said. "Because it is not a serious thought. He is an actor. An actor does not drive a Formula 1 car." He paused. "And then yesterday he sits in one, restricted or not, and runs it to two hundred without the smallest sign of trouble. So I have stopped throwing the thought away. A full-power F2, I believe he could handle it. An actual F1 car with the limits off, two-twenty, the whole machine? A week ago I'd have laughed alongside you. Today I would not bet against him. And I never imagined I would say such a thing out loud."
"Good." Stefano nodded, slow. "Then it is not only me losing my head."
He let a beat pass before he went on.
"The ambassador role isn't signed yet, I know that. But in my mind there was never another name. It has to be him; I knew that the moment all of this started." He turned his glass slowly. "And if he agrees to it, I already know how I'd want to introduce him at the event. Not standing at a podium." A pause. "I'd want him to drive out in front of everyone. Not in the toy we handed him this weekend either. An actual F1 car, opened up, the restrictions pulled right back until it's a breath away from what the drivers race on the weekend."
Lewis lifted an eyebrow. "You're serious."
"Completely."
Toto sat with it, and the interest showed on his face even as he shook his head. "You know what that would cost the organization. A near-full-spec F1 car, prepared and made safe for an event of that size, with everyone it takes to do it properly standing around it. The number would be frightening."
"I know exactly what it would be." Stefano didn't waver. "And it is not mine to decide alone, and perhaps it comes to nothing in the end. But tell me honestly it doesn't tempt you. If Lucas agrees, and his agency and his manager agree, it becomes a moment the sport carries with it for years. We are not given many of those."
He wasn't speaking on impulse, and both of them could see as much.
He had watched what Lucas did in that car with his own eyes the day before. The ability was real, and the car had been sitting in his garage only the morning prior.
If it came down to reassuring Lucas and the people around him that he would be safe, Stefano was ready to place his own position behind it.
Because a thing like that would be far more than a famous name brought in to wave from the grid.
The sport had never had a Global Ambassador in all its history. The role itself would be new, and the way the first one was introduced would set the measure for every one that came after.
To have that man arrive at the wheel of a full F1 car, at racing speed, in front of a packed Grand Prix and every camera in the place, was a moment Formula 1 had never staged in all its years.
It would carry the hundreds of millions who followed Lucas, most of whom had never sat through a single lap, into the heart of the sport in one afternoon. And it would put the last of the doubt to rest for good.
Anyone could place a famous face on a poster.
A famous face who could truly drive the car was something the sport had never possessed, and might never have the chance at again.
---
Sunday came, the final day of the Mexican Grand Prix, and the production rolled on the way it always did. The crowd, though, had swollen to something the weekend hadn't seen yet. The last day of racing always pulled people in, but this was past that, and everyone working the gates knew exactly whose fault it was.
Lucas and Brad. Mostly Lucas.
Security had stopped being able to hold the line cleanly. A few of the bolder ones kept slipping the cordon, finding the gaps and pushing through, and every last one of them broke the same direction. Toward Lucas.
What kept it from becoming a real problem was the three men around him. Jack and Simon, Lucas's own security, who had done this in far worse places than a race paddock. And Shawn, who drove for Lucas and had no business being built the way he was, stepping into the front of any surge before it reached the others.
The fans shouted in English, loud and clear over the noise of the paddock.
"Lucas, please! One picture, just one! I love you, man!"
"Come on, let us through!"
"We only want to see Lucas!"
Lucas turned toward the voices and lifted a hand, and the wave set off a fresh round of screaming. Then his eyes caught on one of them. A kid, fifteen at the most, fighting for a clear line of sight, hemmed in on all sides and getting nowhere.
He couldn't make himself wave them off. Before the main detail closed in to peel the group back, he called over to his own men.
"Jack, Simon. Let those few through. I'll take a picture with them. That's all they want."
Jack and Simon knew him well enough by now. They knew the soft spot, and they knew better than to argue with it. They stepped aside, but not before each ran a quick, practiced check over the small group, hands and pockets, making sure nobody was carrying anything they shouldn't.
"Go on." Jack said it low, his eyes never still, tracking every movement as the group came forward.
They reached Lucas one after another and threw their arms around him, the kid included, close to tears. A few fast photos, and then the main security folded back in and led them gently away.
Brad had watched the whole thing from a few steps off. He came over as the group was guided out.
"You know you don't have to do that every time." Brad shook his head, half a smile on him. "One picture turns into a hundred, and you let it happen, every single time. Most people sitting where you sit would've had them cleared out and not thought twice about it. You're too soft for this business, you know that?"
Lucas lifted a shoulder. "It's the last day here. They came a long way to see this. Costs me thirty seconds to make it worth the trip."
Brad let it drop, but the look he gave Lucas had something near respect in it.
A moment later one of the venue's own security people came up to Jack, uncertain how to play it. "There's a man at the outer gate. He keeps insisting he's Mr. Knight's manager. Neil Lamb, he says he is. We weren't sure whether to let him through."
Lucas's head came around at the name. "He said Neil? What does he look like?"
"I have a photo." The officer held up his phone.
Lucas looked, and his face cleared. "That's him. That's my manager. Let him in."
"Understood, sir." The officer dipped his head and went, though he had plainly walked over half-sure the man at the gate was another impostor.
It wasn't paranoia, either. People had tried it before, more than once. Claiming to know Lucas, claiming to be on his team, anything to buy themselves a few feet closer. The detail had learned a long time ago to take nothing on someone's word.
A few minutes later Neil came through, dabbing sweat off his forehead, looking like a man who'd just fought his way out of a crowd, which he had.
"There. Finally." He found Lucas and let out a breath. "Do you have any idea how many people are out there? It's a circus. And the security had me down as some lunatic fan pretending to be your manager. Me." He shook his head. "Unbelievable."
"Don't hold it against them." Lucas chuckled. "They're only doing the job."
Neil grumbled but let it go. As he moved deeper in he slowed, taking the place in. The cars under the garage lights, the crews moving around them, real F1 drivers standing in loose clusters talking among themselves. Joseph spotted him and called out a greeting, and a few of the other actors and crew did the same as he passed.
He sank into a seat, and a staffer pressed a coffee into his hand. Neil took one sip, set it down, and looked at Lucas straight on.
"Alright. You know why I'm here. So explain it to me."
Lucas gave a wry chuckle. "Is this about Friday?"
"Oh, good. You already know." There was an edge running under the words. "The second that footage hit my phone, I cancelled everything. Two meetings, a flight I actually wanted to be on, all of it, and got myself down here instead. Because I was told, flat out, that putting you in a real F1 car was off the table. Off-limits, no exceptions. And then I'm watching you do exactly that, at two hundred miles an hour, with the whole world filming it."
He leaned forward, and the edge gave way to something heavier and quieter.
"Here's my problem. There's always a next time with you. This one was wound down. The next one won't be, and sooner or later you'll say yes to something that doesn't give you room for a single mistake." He held Lucas's eye. "I'm not going to lecture you. Just promise me you'll talk to me before the next one, not after I've seen it on my phone."
Lucas turned the cup slowly on the table.
"Why did you even say yes to it?" Neil's voice dropped, plainer now. "You know how dangerous that is."
"I know. I do." Lucas met his eye. "I just wanted to find my limit, that's all. And that car was restricted, Neil. They capped the power, dialed the whole thing down on purpose. It looks like an F1 car, but it wasn't running anywhere near what a real one does."
"Find your limit, my ass." Neil snorted. "Restricted or not, that's not something you gamble your neck on for the fun of it."
Lucas only smiled. He had made his peace long ago with the fact that there were parts of this Neil would never follow.
Because Neil didn't know the real reason. Nobody did. Lucas had gotten into that car for one thing only. To find out whether what he had done a hundred times over in the [Mind Workshop] would hold up out in the real world.
Whether the body the role had built into him, lap after lap inside the simulation, would answer the same way with actual asphalt under the wheels and a real wall waiting on a mistake.
And on Friday, when he drove it, it had not let him down.
It had come "close." Close enough to the F1 car he knew from the inside of the [Mind Workshop] that the gap hardly mattered. And it told him the single thing he had wanted to know.
If he ever climbed into a true F1 car with nothing held back, the body the [Mind Workshop] had shaped through the role would carry him. He could drive the real thing, full power, and walk away clean.,
But that stayed where it always stayed. His, and no one else's. Even Neil, close as the two of them were, would never come near it.
So he gave Neil the version that was true enough.
"I couldn't really pass it up." Lucas spread a hand. "Stefano, the F1 CEO, told me that if I handled the car well, I could keep it. So I handled it. And now the thing's mine."
Neil had the coffee halfway to his mouth and stopped. "Hold on. The CEO told you that himself? You're saying that F1 car you drove on Friday is yours now? Just like that?"
"Yeah." Lucas nodded. "Want to see it?"
That got him. Whatever else Neil felt about the whole business, this was the car his client, his friend, had taken out two days ago, and he couldn't pretend the curiosity wasn't there.
But before either of them could get up, a man crossed over to them.
"They told me Mr. Knight's manager had finally arrived, so I came the moment I heard." It was Stefano. He offered his hand, warm and easy with it. "Stefano Domenicali. President and chief executive of Formula 1. A pleasure to meet you."
Neil knew the name before the hand reached him. "Likewise. Neil Lamb." He took it, and even as he did, something settled quietly at the back of his mind. A man like this did not cross a paddock on the final day of a race weekend to shake a manager's hand over nothing.
There was something he wanted. And standing where they were standing, with whose car now sitting in that garage, Neil had a fair idea it had very little to do with him, and everything to do with Lucas.