"Please maintain the current state and switch the car to Mode 2," Gaëtan Jego's voice echoed in the radio earpiece.
After pressing the rotary dial on the steering wheel, Dominik began to push the car forward. Mode 2 was the defensive energy recovery mode for the FW44, but Dominik immediately realized something was wrong.
"I can't charge. Please check the car's battery harvesting system."
"You are still in Attack Mode..."
Gaëtan's single sentence almost made Dominik, who was wrestling the car through the long Renault corner (Turn 3), lose his grip. He glanced at the dash, and the red ATTACK LEDs were indeed still blazing.
Exiting the corner, Dominik quickly stabbed the button again. First time, no response. Second time, no response.
Is this plastic car giving me trouble already? Dominik thought, frustration bubbling up. It's a brand new chassis, it hasn't even done 100km.
He tried a third time, jamming his thumb hard against the dial. Finally, the display flickered, and the green PWR MODE 2 light illuminated.
"It took me three tries to get into Mode 2," Dominik reported, his calm tone belying his frantic inner state.
This FW44 was a handful. With low fuel, it pushed wide on turn-in, snapped into oversteer on exit, rocked like a boat on the straights due to porpoising, and now the electronics were glitching.
"Copy. Please continue to maintain focus and collect data. We will resolve this issue when you box."
Fortunately, the car held together. In less than an hour, Dominik completed 32 laps on the C3 tires.
By this point, Alex Albon had returned to the garage and was watching the timing screens. His expression grew solemn.
Dominik was cruising at a pace of 1:26.500, with a variance of less than five-thousandths of a second per lap. Metronomic consistency.
The garage was buzzing. The grassroots technicians were confused: Is this FW44 a fast car or a slow car? Why is the rookie consistently faster than the experienced driver?
But the senior engineers, including Gaëtan and Capito, were ecstatic. They looked at the telemetry traces that the juniors ignored. Beneath the lap times—which were competitively close to McLaren and Alpine—Dominik was working overtime.
The steering trace was a mess of jagged spikes. He was constantly sawing at the wheel in low-speed corners to kill the understeer, catching slides on exit, and bracing his neck against the violent porpoising on the straights. He was dragging a slow car to a fast time by sheer force of will.
"Dominik, stay in Mode 2, relax a bit," Gaëtan said, his voice softening. "Reduce the number of corrections. Drive to the tire delta. Do two more timed laps."
It was a coded instruction: Stop over-driving. We see what you're doing. Save the car.
Dominik understood. He smoothed out his inputs, delayed his throttle application, and stopped fighting the front end.
The result? The lap times instantly dropped by over a second. That was the real pace of the car. The previous pace was all Dominik.
Returning to the pit lane, the technicians pushed him into the garage. Dominik jumped out, unbuckling his HANS device.
"The bouncing on the straights is a nightmare," Dominik told Gaëtan immediately.
"We will modify the ride height. Don't worry, the top teams have it too. We will fix it."
Dominik nodded, but he kept the handling balance issues—the understeer-to-oversteer snap—to himself for now. He knew that complaining about fundamental chassis balance on Day 1 wouldn't solve anything. It reminded him of the stories about the 2014 Ferrari F14T—a car only a genius like Alonso could drag to the podium.
In the distant Alpine garage, Fernando Alonso suddenly sneezed twice, looking around in confusion.
Dominik peeled off his racing suit and downed a bottle of water. His hair was matted to his forehead. He checked the timing screens: 1:19.947. P3 overall.
The paddock was already whispering. A rookie in a bottom-tier car putting in top-three times? It was a headline grabber.
Dominik didn't let up. That afternoon, he dragged his trainer to the circuit gym.
He strapped on a specialized neck harness attached to a pulley system. The weight stack was set to 45kg. As he pulled against the resistance, mimicking the G-forces of Turn 3, his face contorted in a grimace of pure effort.
Reporters gathered outside the glass doors, snapping photos. By evening, headlines like "Morning Speed, Afternoon Pain: The Hungarian Rookie Means Business" were circulating online.
Dominik returned to the hotel around 4 PM, exhausted. He collapsed on the bed and video-called home.
"Oh, you still remember to call?"
The voice was familiar, but the face on the screen wasn't his mother. It was Hanna, holding an apple, looking smug.
Dominik's eyes went wide. "Hanna? Why are you at my house?"
"I'm keeping The Empress company," she said, biting the apple. Katalin walked into the frame, took the phone from Hanna, and set it on the table.
"Don't mind her, Dominikó. She's been asking about your neck all day," Katalin teased. Hanna turned bright red in the background.
After a brief chat, Dominik hung up, put on a fresh white shirt, and grabbed his key card. He had plans to meet Zhou Guanyu for dinner.
As he walked down the corridor, he saw a door open. George Russell stepped out, dressed in smart-casual dinner wear.
The two stopped, locking eyes in the narrow hallway.
"Dominik," Russell acknowledged, his tone cool. "I saw the timesheets. P3. Not bad for a glory run on empty tanks."
Dominik didn't take the bait. "We had fuel, George. But thanks for watching."
Russell's jaw tightened. "It's just testing. Don't let it go to your head. The real world starts in Bahrain."
"I'll be there," Dominik replied simply.
Russell scoffed and walked toward the elevators without looking back.
A moment later, Zhou Guanyu stepped out of his room, grinning. "Ready for food? I found a place that serves actual food, not just Spanish ham."
Dominik smiled, the tension of the encounter fading. "Lead the way, Zhou."