Exclusive Access - Chapter 1 - Stupid Questions, Stupid Answers

Stupid Questions, Stupid Answers

The neon orange numbers on his sim-rig dashboard glowed in the dark room, casting a sharp glare over Noah's pale skin. It was three in the morning in Rotterdam, only weeks before pre-season testing was set to begin. Outside, a bitter winter rain lashed against the windows, but inside, the only sound was the high-pitched whine of a virtual V6 turbo engine blaring through his headphones.

Noah twisted the carbon-fiber steering wheel with practiced precision, snapping the car across a pixelated apex. He was flying. He was completely in the zone until a voice cracked through his headset, breaking his concentration.

"Noah, your entry speed into turn four is still too high. You're washing out on exit."

Noah didn't lift his foot off the throttle. He let out a sharp, dark laugh. "Max, it's three AM. Don't you have a real world championship to defend, or is micromanaging an eighteen-year-old rookie your new hobby?"

"If you wash out like that in Bahrain, you will destroy the rear tires in five laps," Max Verstappen replied, his tone level and completely immune to Noah’s sarcasm. "Fix the line. I am going to bed."

The connection clicked off. Noah pulled the car into the virtual pit lane, tore the headset off, and let his head fall back against the headrest of his racing seat.

On the desk, beside his meticulously organized triple-monitor setup, lay a heavy, matte-black folder. Embossed on the front in silver foil was the logo he had spent his entire childhood chasing: Oracle Red Bull Racing. Inside was the contract he had signed just a couple of months prior, guaranteeing him one of the most coveted, high-pressure seats in motorsport.

He was an F1 driver. At eighteen, he had bypassed the usual years of waiting, thrown straight into the deep end alongside a three-time world champion. To the rest of the world, he was a prodigy. To himself, he just felt the crushing weight of expectation.

Noah stood up, his lean frame clad in an oversized, worn-out vintage indie band tee and baggy cargo pants. He reached up, his fingers mindfully tracing the small, faint crescent moon birthmark on his left collarbone, right beside the heavy silver chain he never took off.

The house was completely silent. He walked down the quiet hallway, pausing outside the door of his nine-year-old adopted brother, Elio. He pushed the door open a fraction of an inch, watching the boy sleep peacefully under a pile of blankets.

Guilt, heavy and familiar, tightened in Noah's chest. Over the last few years, while his adoptive parents, Sebastian and Will, were going through the painful, messy peak of their divorce, Noah hadn't been here. He had been living out of suitcases, traveling from one track to the next, completely consumed by his own ambition. He had escaped the screaming matches and the broken home by hiding in a cockpit. Elio had been left behind to deal with the fallout.

Now, Noah had a multi-million dollar salary and a global platform, but he still couldn't fix the fact that he’d been a ghost in his brother's life.

Needing to escape the quiet of his own thoughts, Noah grabbed his car keys, pulled on a pair of beat-up Converse, and slipped out into the rain.

The headlights of his road car sliced through the pitch-black Rotterdam night, illuminating the sheets of torrential rain bouncing off the empty tarmac of the A16 highway. Inside the cabin, the ambient dashboard lighting cast a soft blue glow across Noah's face, catching the edge of his sharp graphic eyeliner. An indie rock track with a heavy, distorted bassline pulsed through the speakers, the raw energy of the music filling the silence he desperately needed.

He shifted gears, his movements fluid and subconscious. His fingers tightened around the leather steering wheel, his TAG Heuer watch catching the dim light. In the passenger seat, his phone buzzed incessantly on top of his jacket—likely a group chat notification from Kimi, Ollie, or Gabriel—but Noah ignored it. Right now, he didn't want to be the prodigy rookie. He didn't want to think about the simulator data or Max’s blunt warnings about his entry speeds.

He approached a wide, sweeping bend where the water had pooled into a dangerous, glassy sheet. Most drivers would back off, brake early, and stick to the center of the lane.

Noah did the exact opposite.

He didn't lift his foot. He intentionally threw the car into the tightest, most aggressive line, challenging the physics of the slick surface. For a fraction of a second, the tires lost their grip, the back of the car threatening to step out into a violent spin. A normal driver's heart rate would have spiked to a hundred and eighty. Noah didn't even blink. He smoothly countered the steering, catching the slide with a relaxed, micro-adjustment of his wrists, powering through the puddle and leaving a massive spray of mist in his wake.

He let out a short, breathy laugh against the quiet hum of the engine. This was the only place where he was completely in control. On the track, every movement was logged, analyzed, and critiqued by an entire team of engineers. At home, the heavy ghost of his family’s broken dynamics lingered in every empty corner of the house.

His thoughts drifted back to Elio, sleeping under that mountain of blankets. Noah felt a familiar, sharp pang of guilt in his chest. He remembered when things were simpler—the exact day his dads, Sebastian and Will, had surprised him with his very first, beat-up kart. They had spent the entire evening tracking lap times on a rental circuit, ending the night sitting on the back of a tailgate, eating greasy fries and laughing until their stomachs hurt. That was before the divorce, before the screaming matches. Before Noah started using his international schedules as an excuse never to come home.

He had run away from the wreckage of his family, hiding behind a visor, using the roar of an engine to drown out the noise of his parents breaking apart. He had protected himself by pushing everyone away. Now, he was eighteen, an F1 driver with a top-four seat, but the armor he’d built felt heavier than ever.

Noah reached down, grabbing the cold brew from the cup holder and taking a bitter, icy sip. The highway stretch was ending, the distant lights of the city skyline blurring through the rain-streaked windows. In less than forty-eight hours, he would be boarding a flight to Bahrain. The quiet isolation of the rain would be replaced by the blinding sun, the suffocating heat, and the flashing cameras of the media pen.

He took one last deep breath, letting the indie music wash over him, memorizing the feeling of absolute privacy before the world claimed him.

🏎️. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁˖ .⁶ᯓ★

The first-class cabin of the overnight flight from Amsterdam to Bahrain was quiet, illuminated only by the soft, ambient floor lighting and the scattered glow of personal entertainment screens. Up here, away from the economy crowds, Noah could finally relax his shoulders.

He sat back in his oversized leather seat, clad in a comfortable black hoodie and his favorite baggy cargo pants. His fingers traced the heavy silver chain around his neck as he looked across the aisle. Occupying the surrounding seats were the only three people in the motorsport world who didn't view him as a threat or a corporate asset: Kimi Antonelli, Oliver Bearman, and Gabriel Bortoleto.

"If you stare at that telemetry data any longer, your eyes are going to turn into lines, Noah," Gabriel said, leaning across the aisle with a grin, holding a bag of junk food he'd smuggled on board.

"I'm checking the track evolution from last year's race," Noah replied smoothly, his tone laced with his usual dry irony. "Some of us actually have to work for a living, Gabriel. We can't all just coast on charm."

Ollie snorted from the seat behind them, lowering his eye mask. "Says the guy who got dumped straight into a Red Bull seat at eighteen. If you stall it on the grid in your debut, I'm never letting you live it down."

"If I stall, I'll just blame the clutch mapping and look sad for the cameras," Noah shot back, a genuine, rare smile breaking through his usual guarded expression. "The media loves a tragic rookie story. They'll eat it up."

Kimi looked up from his Nintendo Switch, pulling one side of his headphones down. "Just don't let Max see you eating those chips, Gabi. He'll calculate the exact aerodynamic drag the extra weight will cause on your straight-line speed."

The four of them dissolved into quiet laughter, a shared bubble of youth in a sport that forced them to grow up entirely too fast.

Gabi unbuckled his seatbelt the second the captain turned off the fasten-sign, instantly migrating over to perch on the armrest of Kimi's seat. He dumped a crinkling bag of bitterballen-flavored chips onto Noah’s tray table.

"Alright, rookies," Gabi announced, his eyes gleaming with mischief. "First official race weekend of the season. Let's set the stakes. Who is going to get chewed out by their team principal first?"

"Noah," Ollie said instantly, not even opening his eyes from beneath his sleep mask. "Ten euros says he drops a sarcastic bomb in the FIA press conference on Thursday and gets a formal reprimand before FP1."

"Hey," Noah said, leaning his head back against his headrest, a slow smirk playing on his lips. "I only speak the truth. If they ask stupid questions, they get stupid answers. It's public service, really."

"It's a liability," Kimi corrected with a laugh, pausing his game. He reached over, snatching a chip from the pile. "My engineer already gave me a list of words I'm not allowed to say on the team radio. I think half of them are just things Noah says normally."

"I am a terrible influence," Noah agreed smoothly, taking a bite of a chip. He adjusted the heavy silver chain around his neck; the familiar weight grounded him. "But admit it, if I wasn't around to absorb all the media heat, you three would actually have to learn how to do PR."

Gabriel laughed, leaning back. "True. But seriously, Noah, how is it sharing a garage with Max? Is he as terrifying as he looks on TV?"

Noah’s expression softened into something more genuine, his cynical edge slipping away just a fraction. "He's blunt. If you're slow, he tells you. If you screw up the data, he tells you. But he doesn't play games. Honestly, I'd rather have Max telling me I suck to my face than a paddock full of fake media praise."

Ollie finally pulled his eye mask up, his expression turning a bit more serious. "Yeah. It's the fake stuff that rots your brain out here. Everyone smiling to your face, then writing articles about how you're a flop if you miss a single apex."

"Which is exactly why we don't read the articles," Noah said cleanly, locking eyes with each of them. "We stick to the data. We stick to the sim. And we don't let the paddock into our heads."

The four of them shared a quiet, understanding nod—a silent pact born from being the youngest four guys on a grid full of old men. The four of them shared a quiet, understanding nod—a silent pact born from being the youngest four guys on a grid full of sharks. The cabin lights hummed with a quiet, safe warmth that Noah knew wouldn't last past touchdown.

Eventually, the shared bag of chips vanished, the laughter dwindled, and the exhausting reality of a twenty-four-race calendar settled back into the bones of the four rookies. Gabriel migrated back to his row, Kimi clicked his Switch off, and Ollie pulled his eye mask back down.

Noah stared at his dark reflection in the cabin window. He reached down, checked his phone one last time, and locked it. No messages from his dads. He slid it deep into his pocket, his fingers brushing the cold metal of his car keys. The armor was back on.

🏎️. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁˖ .⁶ᯓ★

The transition was a violent shock to the senses.

The climate-controlled, exclusive silence of the first-class cabin was instantly replaced by a wall of heavy, suffocating desert heat. The Bahrain paddock was a blinding labyrinth of corporate hospitality buildings, hyper-stylized team kits, and a relentless sea of humans.

Noah walked down the main paddock pathway, flanked closely by his Red Bull PR Manager. He wore his tailored, crisp Red Bull team kit, the logos sharp against his pale skin. His long blonde hair was tucked behind his ears, his sharp graphic eyeliner giving him the look of an indie rock star dropped into a high-stakes sporting arena. His hands were stuffed deep into his pockets.

He could feel the eyes tracking him. Every camera lens within a fifty-yard radius pivoted toward him. The whispers were audible.

"Is that the Bakker kid?"

"Eighteen? He looks like he belongs on a vinyl record cover, not a Red Bull seat."

"Let's see if he survives sharing a garage with Verstappen."

Noah kept his gaze locked straight ahead, his jaw clenched, his expression a mask of cold, unbothered indifference.

Suddenly, a clear, distinctly American voice cut through the generic paddock noise.

"Noah! Noah Bakker, over here!"

Noah stopped. His PR Manager immediately stepped into a defensive, shielding stance, but Noah’s eyes had already locked onto the source.

Standing on the edge of the media pen barrier was Andrea "Andy" Warren.

Andy looked immaculate despite the sweltering heat, wearing a perfectly sharp, tailored neutral linen blazer over a crisp white shirt. A premium digital audio recorder was securely clipped to his belt lanyard, and a classic leather-strap watch caught the harsh desert sun. His green eyes were sharp, calculating, and fixed entirely on Noah. He didn't look like the older, seasoned journalists around him; he looked like someone with everything to prove.

Andy held up a microphone emblazoned with The Grandstand logo. "Just two questions for The Grandstand, Noah."

The PR Manager checked her watch, looking annoyed. "We're on a tight schedule for the engineering briefing, Noah. We have to go."

Noah didn't move. He looked at Andy’s sharp outfit, the high-quality recording gear, and the subtle, hyper-focused tension in the journalist's posture. A dark, sarcastic smirk slowly crept onto Noah's face.

"Give me a minute," Noah muttered to the PR Manager. "I want to hear what New York has to say."

Noah took three steps forward, stopping right at the metal barrier separating the drivers from the press pen. He leaned his forearms against the rail, looking down at Andy with a lazy, challenging tilt of his head.

"You're a long way from the city skylines, Warren," Noah said. "Hope you brought enough sunscreen. What do you want?"

Andy didn't flinch. He pressed the record button on his device, his voice steadying into a professional, sharp cadence that caught the attention of a few surrounding reporters.

"The paddock is full of rumors that your driving style is too erratic for a top-four team, and that you're refusing to listen to your engineers regarding your entry speeds," Andy said, holding the mic steady. "How do you respond to critics who say Red Bull made a massive mistake signing an unproven eighteen-year-old over experienced drivers?"

Noah’s smirk didn't fade, but his blue eyes turned entirely icy. He leaned in closer, his heavy silver chain clinking against the metal barrier.

"Tell your critics that if they want to talk about my entry speeds, they're welcome to get in the second car and try to keep up," Noah replied smoothly. "Until then, they can watch the back of my helmet from the grandstands."

Andy raised an eyebrow, a quick-witted spark of sarcasm returning to his eyes. He didn't let the rookie intimidate him. "Defensive. Is that your standard PR response, or are you just trying to convince yourself?"

Noah let out a short, breathy laugh, entirely cynical. "I detest PR, Warren, everyone knows this. You want a real story? Show up at the Red Bull garage after the tonight. If you're still looking for a scoop, maybe I'll show you what real pressure feels like."

He straightened up, turning on his heel before Andy could respond, and walked briskly toward the team hospitality building. Andy watched him go, his heart hammering against his ribs as he hit stop on the recorder, realizing he had just landed his first real lead.