The timing screen doesn't lie.

1:29.847. My number. My name at the top.

P1 - SANTOS

The engineer's voice crackles through my helmet. "That's pole position, Camila. Pole position." Elena sounds like she might cry, which is ridiculous because Elena never cries. She's British. They don't do emotions.

I do, though. I'm Brazilian. We do them loudly.

But not here. Not in front of the cameras already swarming toward my car as I pull into parc fermé. Not in front of the paddock that's been waiting for me to fail since the day I signed with Scuderia Azzurra.

I climb out of the car slowly, deliberately. Take off my helmet. Let them see my face, calm, controlled, like I expected this all along.

Fake it till you make it, querida, my mother used to say. Then keep faking it because they'll never stop testing you.

The first question hits before I'm even off the podium steps.

"Camila! How does it feel to be the first woman to take pole in Formula 1 in over two decades?"

The same question they've asked at every milestone. First practice session. First points finish. First podium. Like being female is the only interesting thing about me.

"It feels like one-twenty-nine-eight-four-seven," I say, keeping my voice flat. "Fast."

Laughter. Some genuine, some nervous. They never know how to take me.

Good.

I push through the crowd toward the Azzurra garage, where the mechanics are already swarming my car with data cables and fuel rigs. Tomás catches my eye from the back, my physio since the karting days, the only person who knows exactly how hard my hands were shaking on that last flying lap.

He gives me a tiny nod. You did it.

I did.

Then I see him.

Stefano Marchetti is standing by his car, identical to mine except for the number 1 on the nose cone and the fact that it finished qualifying 0.3 seconds behind mine. His helmet is off, dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, and his expression is...

Porco dio, that expression.

Like I've personally insulted him. His mother. His three world championships. The entire nation of Italy.

"Good lap," he says as I walk past. The words sound like they're being extracted with pliers.

I stop. Turn. Let myself smile, just a little, just enough to see the muscle in his jaw flex.

"That's your pit box view for the year," I say. "Might as well get used to it."

His gaze snapped to mine. Dark brown, nearly black in the garage shadows. "One qualifying session doesn't make a season."

"No." I step closer. Close enough to smell the sweat and adrenaline rolling off him, close enough to see the vein pulsing at his temple. "But it's a start."

I walk away before he can respond. Behind me, I hear something Italian and angry that I choose not to translate.

The debrief lasts two hours.

Marco Ferrari, our team principal, sits at the head of the table like a Renaissance pope dispensing wisdom. Silver hair, silver tongue, silver everything except the calculation behind every glance.

"The car was strong today," he says, which is his way of not giving me credit. "Tomorrow, we need to execute. No mistakes."

He's looking at me when he says it. Not Stefano.

"Tire degradation is high," Elena jumps in, spreading thermal images across the table. "We'll need to manage the mediums carefully in the first stint. Push too hard early and we'll be sitting ducks at the end."

"I'm aware." I keep my voice professional. Neutral. The model teammate. "I've been doing this for fifteen years."

"You've been doing Formula 2 for fifteen years," Stefano says, not looking up from his tablet. "This is different."

The room goes quiet.

I could respond. Could point out that my karting record still holds. That I dominated F2 so thoroughly they ran out of reasons to keep me out of F1. That I'm sitting in this room because I earned it, not because my father was a racing legend who bought me a seat before I could legally drive.

But Marco is watching. The engineers are watching. Everyone is waiting to see if the "emotional female driver" will crack.

I smile instead. "I'm sure you'll show me everything I need to know tomorrow. From behind."

Someone coughs. Might be a laugh. Hard to tell.

Stefano's tablet hits the table with a sharp crack. "Are we done here?"

Marco nods, dismissing us with a wave. Stefano is out the door before anyone else moves.

I take my time gathering my notes. Wait until the room empties. Then I exhaled slowly, letting my shoulders drop.

"He's threatened by you."

I look up. Elena is still there, arms crossed, watching me with those pale grey eyes that see everything.

"He should be."

"I'm serious, Camila. Three championships. Never had a teammate who could genuinely challenge him. Now you show up and beat his time in Q3 at your first race together?" She shakes her head. "He's not used to this."

"Not my problem."

"It is if he makes your life difficult." She pauses. "He has the team's ear. He's been here six years. They trust him."

I stand, shouldering my bag. "Then I'll make them trust me more."

"How?"

The answer is simple. The same answer it's always been, since I was six years old and the other drivers' parents complained that a girl was beating their sons.

"By winning."

My hotel room is small and aggressively beige. Team travel budget puts the number one driver in a suite and the number two in whatever's left over. I don't mind. I've slept in worse, karting trailers, airport floors, the back seat of my mother's car between race weekends.

I strip out of my team gear and stand under the shower until the water runs cold. Let the spray wash away the grip marks on my shoulders from the harness, the indent lines on my ribs from the HANS device.

My phone has forty-seven new notifications when I get out. Messages from my mother. My sister. My karting coach from São Paulo. Everyone who believed in me when no one else did.

And one from a number I don't recognize.

Don't get comfortable at the front.

No signature. Doesn't need one.

I screenshot it. Save it. Add it to the folder labeled "Motivation" that contains every dismissive interview quote, every skeptical analyst opinion, every "women don't belong in motorsport" comment from anonymous accounts.

Then I text back: Fast enough to take pole. Fast enough to take the championship.

I watch the three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.

Finally: Prove it.

Two words. A challenge. An invitation.

I grin at my phone like a lunatic, alone in my beige hotel room, hours before the most important race of my life.

Prove it.

I intend to.

I'm out within minutes. No nightmares. No anxiety spirals. Just the darkness and the engine sounds still echoing in my head, the ghost sensation of G-forces pulling at my body.

I dream about the track. Turn one. The long straight where I'll need to defend my position. The hairpin where everything can change.

In my dream, I'm not racing against the other drivers. Just one car. Just him. Two of us on an empty track, lap after lap, neither willing to blink first.

I wake up smiling.

Race day. Let's see who blinks.