“The team will adapt,” Toto says firmly. “We’ll give you as much privacy as we can. No one except the core team need to know until after winter molting.”

Lewis thinks about George, somewhere behind those double doors with bandaged wings and blood under his fingernails. He thinks about all the kids clawing their way up the ladder to single-seaters... See more

He takes a breath, thinks of the dozens – no, hundreds of young karting hopefuls and kids in the lower formulas whom he’s shaken hands with. So many of them had looked up at him in awe before their gazes inevitably drifted to his trimmed bird-of-paradise wings.

How many of those children had been mentally preparing themselves to saw their own... See more