Chapter Text
The first precise slice of the scalpel into the tender sheaths of Daniel’s pin-feathers almost makes him scream.
It is less the pain than the utter, wrenching wrongness; his pin feathers, still immature in their half-yearly molting cycle, sliced cleanly at their roots one after another as warm, sticky blood pools between his shoulder blades.
“Sir?” the surgeon says from somewhere far, far away. “Are you in pain? If you are, I must insist we stop. This is the earliest stage of a molting cycle in which I have ever attempted this procedure. Trimming too soon will damage the nerves.”
Daniel’s vision has narrowed into the pale grey-blue of the surgical drapes beneath him. The cut pin feathers throb in his right wing like individual, flaming blades.
The surgical drapes bunch under his hands. A cold and sterile blue, so unlike the clean azure of the Australian sky, where as a child, he would fly so high that he almost believed he could reach out and touch the sun.
An Australian Icarus, with wings silhouetted in flame.
But he is burning by his own choice for another reason now.
He has not placed higher than fifth in the first half of his season with McLaren. Even that single fifth place, in Silverstone with the roar of a home crowd for McLaren thundering down the stands, had seemed almost a fluke when he came eleventh a few short weeks later in the Hungaroring, and had to swallow the disappointment of returning to his team bereft of points.
The flickering whispers among the media that Daniel Ricciardo has lost his touch have already grown into a wildfire.
His wings – his pride and joy since his childhood – are too heavy. The glossy green-blue primaries weigh down the car; each thick-shafted feather adds a fraction of a second to his lap time.
He can’t afford this. The team can’t afford this.
So he clenches his hands, presses his face into the chemical scent of the surgical drapes, and opens his mouth.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he says through gritted teeth. “Just do it.”
The gloved hands at his back remain still for a long moment.
Then the scalpel bites into the next pin feather, then the next, and the world bleaches from grey-blue to white as Daniel’s wings are set aflame.
(:~:)
[Watch the latest clip from Sky Sports F1: Martin Brundle sits down with team principals to discuss the controversial history of wing trimming in Formula One]
Martin Brundle: Good afternoon. I’d like to thank everyone for making time for this interview. As you know, last season’s final race in Abu Dhabi was nearly interrupted when a protest group against wing trimming attempted to invade the track. It’s been a hot topic over the winter break on social media, and I’m sure the audience is curious to know what the team principals think – what are your opinions on wing trimming as a practice? Why don’t we start with you, Toto?”
Toto Wolff: Well, as I’m sure you know, there is the historical precedence of wing clipping – Nelson Piquet was among the last drivers to have his wings permanently clipped at the first joint, before the FIA outlawed the practice in accordance with EU health regulations. I grew up in a time where every new driver had their primary feathers trimmed by their own choice. It’s all about weight. It makes them faster. It has certainly been controversial in recent years, but at Mercedes it has always been simple. It is the driver’s own choice. We are not involved.
Christian Horner (cuts in): –Now wait a minute there, Toto. You’re saying this as the Team Principal of two drivers with trimmed wings. We all know how many hundredths of a second you get back from every trimmed primary. You’re seriously saying there wasn’t any pressure to trim their wings at all?
Toto Wolff: Christian, I believe my team has won the constructors’ championship in recent years because of the ability of our drivers and the pace of our car.
Christian Horner (laughs, wings shuffling): So if Lewis decided to grow out his primaries again you’d be okay with that?
Toto Wolff: If he wished to, yes. But I do not believe he will. He has never chosen differently since the beginning of his career, and I support him for it.
Christian Horner: Of course. It’s 2021. He’s not had untrimmed wings for over fourteen years.
Toto Wolff: (scoffs, wings flicking)
Michael Brundle (cuts in): Actually, coming to you, Guenther, if I could ask your opinion–
Christian Horner: –No, no, I think we’d all like to hear what Toto finds so funny.
Toto Wolff (holding Christian’s gaze): Nothing, it’s just – I find it amusing, you know, that this is coming from a Team Principal whose star driver had his wings trimmed on his eighteenth birthday.
(A full ten seconds of silence, trimmed from the final cut of the interview)
Christian Horner (tilts his head, wings slowly flaring): That was a decision Max made on his own once he was legally allowed to do so, with support from his father. We all know how dedicated he is to racing, and he’s remarkably talented, whether or not he trims his wings.
Martin Brundle: –Oh, and indeed, there have been drivers in Red Bull in recent years with untrimmed wings – Daniel Ricciardo, for example, has famously never trimmed his wings, to the delight of paddock photographers and his fans. Do you think this affected his performance compared to Max when they were in the same team?
Christian Horner (looks at Martin): No.
(An awkward pause)
Martin Brundle (quickly): Alright then. Guenther?
Guenther Steiner (shrugs): Well, as I always say to my drivers, “Shut up and drive the fucking car.”
(Everyone laughs)
Guenther Steiner: And, as we all know, Italians do not believe in the practice of wing trimming. Mattia will tell you. (Grins, nudges Mattia Binotto with a wing) Not when your drivers are bringing in millions in modeling revenue, eh?
(The interview moves on to discuss Charles Leclerc’s astonishing white dove wings, the medical implications of long-term wing trimming, whether modern car technology has eradicated the advantage of wing trimming, and the generational differences in preferences for wing trimming between the older generation of drivers and the younger half of the grid).
(The camera pans back to Toto Wolff, whose black swan wings are still crested high and tense, and Christian Horner sat across from him, smiling, his golden eagle wings resting casual and unruffled over the back of his chair).
(:~:)
There was once a time that the name Daniel Ricciardo and the practice of wing trimming seemed so far removed that the mere suggestion of Daniel trimming his wings would have seemed absurd.
When Daniel Ricciardo is first confirmed as Toro Rosso’s reserve driver in 2011, the media has a field day – not because of his ever-present easy smile or his genuine, humble presence before the camera, but because of his wings.
The first real colour Formula 1 will see in a driver’s wings since Lewis Hamilton, the articles all read, below pictures comparing Daniel’s glossy macaw wings (red at the shoulders, gold at the mid-joint, and a beautiful, sky blue at the primaries) with Lewis Hamilton’s flamboyant birds-of-paradise wings (trimmed neatly at the base of his primaries, often with jeweled silver feathers replacing the shorn ones if he isn’t in racing gear).
When asked whether he will trim his wings before his first season, Daniel laughs. “Nah,” he says, absent-mindedly stretching a wing over his head and grinning sheepishly at the shrieks of delight from the fans lining the balconies of the Paddock Club. “I like flying too much. Can’t sit still. I hope to put some of that energy into racing, though.”
And race he does – out-racing his teammate in Toro Rosso the first two years he has a seat there, and then moving up to Red Bull. The first car reveal video of 2014 trends on every social media site for a week after Daniel dives down from the sky into the Red Bull testing track to thunderous applause, his wings flaring like a kaleidoscope of colours against the morning sun as he lands beside a laughing Sebastian Vettel.
“Your idea?” Seb murmurs in his ear, the elegant brown feathers of Vettel’s swiftlet wings brushing against Daniel’s. After years of trimming them every six months, Vettel had only started growing out his primaries over the winter break – for his first child, he said, who deserved to see their father fly.
“Marketing made me do it,” Daniel whispers back, still grinning from the adrenaline rush. “Can’t say I didn’t enjoy it.”
A year he races against Seb, on the track and in the sky; they make a game of it, their battles hard-fought and nearly always ending with clasped hands and smiles.
Daniel starts the year flying literal circles around Seb, the older driver’s flight muscles atrophied from years of little use. But by the time summer break rolls around Seb is twice as fast as Daniel is in the sky, Seb’s swiftlet wings nimble and ever-changing like the air currents around them.
Sometimes, when they land back at the track and jog shoulder-to-shoulder back into the Red Bull hospitality suite, Daniel looks at his teammate’s happy, wind-chapped smile and wonders how Seb ever dealt with being unable to fly.
But it seems too personal a question, so Daniel does not ask. He throws himself into Red Bull and his team, instead.
Daniel had liked Toro Rosso, but he loves Red Bull.
Because Red Bull becomes his flock.
All Avians possess instincts like the birds from which their wings draw their shape. Should he wish to, Christian can speak with a voice as sharp and terrifying as a golden eagle’s cry. Seb drives with the precision and speed of a swiftlet in flight.
Daniel, though – Daniel may brake as late as a Macaw flares its wings in forest flight, and he might echo drivers’ names and sing to himself as the macaws that he flew with in childhood do, but above all, he needs his flock.
When he was young that had been his family, and all the professional karting and racing teams know that it is necessary to set aside space for their young drivers; to let them bond with teammates, with members of the garage. But while most drivers know the importance of sitting together after a race, their wingtips brushing even if they might hate each other, Sebastian is the first teammate Daniel has had who offers to help preen his wings.
It becomes a post-race habit, helping each other pick out broken feathers and rearrange squashed ones after hours in fireproof wing-covers.
It also helps them wind down from any fights on the track. Reminds them of the importance of teamwork, especially when Mercedes seem to be leaving everyone in the dust.
Red Bull have an entire room in the hospitality suites for team members to flock and rest and generally relax. Daniel loves that room in all its iterations, all around the world; he slips easiest into the mental zone he needs for racing sitting there among his flock, headphones over his ears and wings flicking to music.
When Daniel podiums he is embraced by arms and wings alike as he throws himself at his team, and Christian’s wings always wrap nearly all the way around Daniel when the team principal hugs him and yells praise in his ear.
When Daniel takes his first Grand Prix win at Montreal he takes to the sky after podium celebrations with Seb, both their wings heavy and sodden with champagne. To Daniel’s surprise Christian soon catches up with them, gliding effortlessly alongside with an almost conspiratorial smile, and Daniel only realises his mistake when Seb and Christian both dive into him at once and all three of them cannonball into the river together.
They surface laughing, and Seb and Daniel nearly collapse over each other with mirth at the sight of Christian attempting to drag his sodden golden eagle wings out of the river.
But then comes the news that Seb will leave Red Bull – and in November, with only Abu Dhabi remaining on the season calendar, Seb announces he will go to Ferrari.
Daniel congratulates Seb, because Daniel knows what Ferrari is to his teammate. Seb returns Daniel’s hug with one of his own, steady and firm, their wings briefly brushing, and they go on to race in Abu Dhabi together; their last race as teammates.
They fly together afterwards, the desert air cool and never-breathed through their feathers, and it is only after they circle back down to the track and Seb produces a few beers from his driver room that Daniel finally has the courage to ask what he has wondered all year.
“What was it like?” he asks as Seb pops open a bottle and hands it to him. “What was it like with your – with your wings trimmed?”
Seb’s fingers still on the bottle opener. His wings flatten behind him.
Daniel fights the urge to look away. The driver room is too small to avoid each other anyway; Seb’s possessions still clutter the floor, the walls, in that neat-but-homely way Seb organizes things. It is hard to imagine that in the morning the walls will be bare and Seb’s name scraped off the door.
Seb works the bottle opener under the cap, precise and deft, just like he races. When he is done, he raises the bottle and meets Daniel’s eyes.
Daniel takes the hint. “Cheers,” he says, clinking his bottle against Seb’s.
They drink.
It is late; someone has turned off the lights in the corridor beyond, and the only light that illuminates the room comes from a long strip of glass on one wall near the ceiling, where the perpetual daylight from the track floodlights spears through both drivers like a solid bar.
Seb lowers his drink.
“It was difficult,” he says softly. In the half-light his eyes are a deeper shade of blue than they usually are – the shade of a bottomless sea. “I wish I could say I got used to it.”
Daniel bites his tongue against the flood of questions and makes himself wait.
Seb tilts his bottle for another sip, and the glare from the reflected floodlights blinds Daniel for a moment.
“The first thing you are aware of is absence,” Seb continues. “They say you should feel lighter. They never mention how it makes you feel hollow.” He is looking away now, at the wall, to the framed picture of his first World Championship win. The Sebastian Vettel in the photograph is laughing, drenched in champagne, but Seb’s eyes linger on the empty space on his younger self’s back where his wings end abruptly, the primaries shorn into stumps.
“Growing up I loved to fly, you know,” Seb murmurs. “I loved it second only to racing. But I grew up watching Senna and Prost and Michael. I know I only started driving in F1 a few years before you did, but at the time nearly everyone trimmed their wings. It was expected.”
The alcohol curdles in Daniel’s gut. “I thought it was your choice,” he says, and hears the horror in his own voice.
“It was,” Seb says, and he is smiling now in that quiet way of his, despite the heaviness of the topic. “I wanted to be fast, Daniel. I chose it.”
Daniel swallows. “Did it win you your championships? Your wings?”
Seb lowers his drink. He is silent for a long moment, thinking, like he does in strategy meetings when everyone else is speaking but Seb is focused on one unnoticed detail.
“I don’t know,” Seb says eventually. He shrugs, an easy movement of his shoulders that has one of his wings whispering over Daniel’s. “How much of it was my skill, the skill of the team? My race engineer, the mechanics, the car? You never know.”
They sit silently for a little while, nursing their drinks, their wings jumbled together a little on the narrow couch behind them.
It must have been only a minute since Daniel last sipped his drink, but his mouth is as dry as a desert when he speaks again. “Would you do it again?”
Seb looks at him, and Daniel sees in Seb’s clear gaze that Seb understands the true meaning of Daniel’s question.
Seb places his drink aside and places a hand on Daniel’s arm. The touch is warm, feather-light, but something in Seb’s eyes speaks of gentle death.
“Don’t,” he says. “You must never, Daniel.”
Instinctive protest rises in Daniel’s throat, but Seb’s hand tightens on his wrist, and Daniel swallows.
“But you managed,” he says.
“I did,” Seb replies, each word careful. “But you are different, you know. Not in determination or skill,” he adds, perhaps seeing the flash of hurt in Daniel’s eyes. “But flying is like breathing to you. I can see it.”
“You could argue that about racing,” Daniel says, adamantly refusing to look away from Seb’s gaze.
“No,” Seb says, bringing up his other hand to hold Daniel by the shoulder. “It would kill you.”
Daniel stills. The words hang in the air, spoken with the soft certainty Seb always possesses.
“It would kill you,” Seb says, and there is urgency in his voice that was not there before as he shakes Daniel once, gently. “You must never, Daniel. Promise me.”
Daniel looks into Seb’s face, sees nothing but care and warmth despite the obvious memory of pain in Seb’s eyes.
Daniel nods, and brings his other arm up to offer a hug. This is one thing he knows he is good at, hugging.
They fold into each other’s wings. They both hold the hug for longer than they usually do, but neither of them mention it.
They do not speak of wing trimming again.
The year turns, and Seb goes to Ferrari.
2015 is not particularly a good year for Daniel, except for a third-place finish in Hungary. Daniel gets along well enough with Daniil Kvyat, but Kvyat has trimmed wings and there are no shared flights or preening sessions; Kvyat never becomes flock the way Seb was to Daniel.
Daniel is still keenly feeling the loss of Seb as flock until just before the Spanish Grand Prix a little over a year later, when Kvyat is summarily kicked down to Toro Rosso.
And suddenly, standing a little awkwardly outside the hospitality suite at Barcelona, with his peregrine wings just barely mature at eighteen years old and his primaries neatly trimmed down, is Max Verstappen.
And Daniel’s world changes again.