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detroit-grand-prix · 8 months

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thistle and weeds - susie wolff x oc

i. in the wind and the rain

Summary: Maree McInnes is finally content with her life, she thinks. She felt stuck in a marriage that made her feel lonely, and in a job that made her feel horrible. Two years later, she's divorced and content with the place she is in her career, until a surprise reassignment at work leads to her to working directly under the person that indirectly made her realize that she didn't have to accept the circumstances she was given and that she could ask for more out of life.

Tags/warnings: brief mention of suicidal ideation, later implied polyamory/polyfidelity, no infidelity involved

Author’s note: A new series has landed. A few of you requested more stories with Susie and her assistant!Reader continuing at F1 Academy, but I actually find F1 x reader stories sort of clumsy to read and write, so instead, we have a new OC. This is intended to be a more mature, grown-up sort of fanfiction, and there probably won't be any drivers involved because it mostly centers around Susie and the F1 Academy.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. Please let me know what you think!

Maree couldn’t sleep.

Her body was crackling with the kind of feeling that she used to feel on the first day of school every year, as if she was a loaded spring, poised to fling her headlong into the unknown.

Tomorrow wasn’t the first day of school, or even the first day of a new job. She would be driving to the same expensive-looking building in Bromley that she’d been commuting to for five years now, charmingly called Sapphire House, though it was neither sapphire in color, nor was it a house. She’d park her Volkswagen Golf in the same spot in the car park she always did, say hello to the same receptionist she always saw, scan her badge at the same doors to go into the same office, and sit at the same desk in the same office she always sat in.

But she was still stepping into the unknown.

Two weeks earlier, the day she returned to the office after the holiday break, Maree’s boss called her into his office to discuss a future project.

After they discussed their holidays, Maree’s boss, James, told her that she had done outstanding work for Formula 2 and Formula 3, and a new feeder series needed a programme manager with her talent and experience. He told Maree that the managing director needed someone who could make things possible when the circumstances were impossible. Apparently, James said, hers was the first name that came to mind.

“As of January 31st, you’ll be working on the F1 Academy project.”

Maree could feel her face blanch. “Why is this happening so soon?” she asked, surprised. She tilted her head, trying to remember the planning meeting they’d had to discuss projects for the 2024 season, when The F1 Academy series was discussed. “I knew the Academy series was in the pipeline, but I thought it wasn’t planned to go live until next year.”

“I asked Stefano the same thing. He said that with the W-Series going into administration, there was a gap in the market that needed to be filled right away. And, they said with the right managing director, it would be doable to start in the spring. Fortunately, we found the right managing director.”

She remembered hearing the news that the W-Series, an open-wheel racing series just for young women trying to break into the higher echelons of motorsport, was insolvent. The series’ financial issues had been the industry’s worst-kept secret, but even Formula 1’s upper management expected the series to last for one more season. They came up with the idea for a similar series, under the Formula 1 umbrella as Formula 2 and Formula 3 were, to start in 2024.

“Oh, who did they hire? I didn’t even know they already had candidates lined up. Was it an internal hire?”

“They’re bringing in Susie Wolff.”

Hearing the name felt like someone had poured ice water down the back of Maree’s neck.

It wasn’t as if she was starstruck by the prospect of working with her. Maybe if someone had told her this two years ago, but she’d met Susie a few times since she’d started her current job. The world of Formula 1 was small, and they’d been introduced at some point by a mutual professional acquaintance who thought it was funny, for some reason, that he now knew two people from the Scottish highlands. But Maree was from Inverness, which was on the opposite side of the country from Susie’s native Oban, so it’s not as if they’d grown up together or were probably distant cousins, as the man introducing them implied. Their interaction was limited to a handshake and shared confusion at the things a Londoner found funny.

No, her nerves, the sinking feeling in her stomach… it came from the realization that she would now be working directly under the woman who was, without even knowing it, the catalyst for the avalanche of changes Maree’s life had seen in the past half-decade.

“Susie Wolff?” Maree said. She felt like her head was buzzing. “I didn’t know she - I was wondering what she was doing after leaving Venturi, but I didn’t -”

It was an amazing hire, really. Susie was a former professional driver, was the first woman in almost three decades to come even close to a full-time F1 seat. After she retired from being a test and reserve driver, she moved on to being the team principal and CEO of a Formula E team. Nobody else had the history and experience she did to bring this series to life, and to give it the gravitas it would doubtlessly need to be taken seriously by sponsors, suppliers, teams, drivers, and even fans. If anyone else was leading it, there was a good chance it would share the fate of the W-Series, too.

“Yes, it was just finalized.” James murmured, glancing at something on his laptop. “Hasn’t been announced yet, obviously, but she’ll be here in early February, and since the first round of the series is scheduled for April, things are going to be moving quickly, but, I think you can handle it.”

Maree blushed a bit at the praise.

James and Maree spoke more about the particulars, and about the current projects in her purview, what could be wrapped up and what could be transitioned to other teams.

Not long after she’d gotten back to her desk and was focused on wading waist-deep into the mire of her expanded “to do” list in Jira, she was startled by an email notification from an “S. WOLFF”.

It was just a generic “welcome to the team” email, sent as a carbon copy to many other names (some of which Maree recognized, most of which she didn’t) with Susie introducing herself as the new managing director and a calendar invite for the first planning meeting attached, but it drove home that it was all real.

And so, as Maree lay awake, at 12:23 AM, January 31st, she let her mind travel back five years, to 2018, when Susie’s unknowing involvement in her life began.

She was visiting her parents at home in Inverness. It was the off-season for the Premier League, where she worked at the time, but a few behind-the scenes moves within the league’s middle management ensured that Maree had a new boss that, for some reason, seemed to dislike her, and showed it by not only significantly increasing her workload, but by offering her a stream of very-not-constructive criticism, usually in the middle of meetings when he could berate her with an audience. Eventually, Maree had a preferred stall in the women’s toilets to cry in, and began to weigh out the relative risks and benefits of stepping in front of the number 6 bus that she took to work every day. She needed a break, so she took a few days of holiday and headed home.

Rowan, her husband, opted not to join her, as usual. He frequently declined when offered the prospect of traveling outside of the confines of the home counties around London, never mind all the way up to Scotland. He usually moaned that it was too long of a trip and that there was nothing to do in Inverness, so Maree let it go instead of arguing. She learned long ago that trying to get Rowan to do something or go somewhere he didn’t want to was not worth the fight. She normally flew on her visits home, but decided to take the Caledonian Sleeper train. Seeing the country by rail over a twelve-hour trip would give her some time and space to clear her head, and not to arrive at her parents’ house wound up and agitated. Plus, it reminded her of her first journey down to London for University, when her life seemed ripe with possibility.

After a pleasant train ride and enjoying a giant breakfast that her mum, Moira, made before heading off to work, she joined her dad, Arthur, in his daily post-retirement ritual of watching The BBC Scotland in the sitting room until noon.

Maree was barely paying attention to the newscast when they announced an upcoming segment with an interview of Susie Wolff, a native Scot, as she was just announced as the team principal of something called the Venturi team in Formula E. Maree knew who Susie Wolff was, at least, she’d heard the name before. Neither of her parents liked motorsport, or sport in general, but the segment caught Maree’s interest when the interviewer started asking Susie questions about the challenges of working in a male-dominated sport at a high level.

For some reason, the interview was still on her mind even after she and her dad ate lunch together, and as she was joining him on his daily bike ride around the shores of the Moray Firth, where he would comb the beaches for interesting-looking rocks that had washed up on the shores.

“How’s work going?” her father asked, as he bent down to pick up something apparently worth examining. “Not so busy in the offseason? It is the offseason, right? I haven’t seen any adverts for football matches on the telly lately, so it must be.”

“Yeah, it is. It’s…” Maree sighed, turning her gaze out toward the lighthouse in the distance. “I’ll survive.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” he said, tossing the rock out into the water. “Just more limestone.” He mumbled.

“What are you looking for out here, anyway?” Maree said, looking quizzically back at her father. “Even I know it’s all limestone, and I’m not the retired geologist.”

“Retired marine geologist, thank you!” he said, standing back up with another stone. “And it mostly is, but once in a while you can find a lot of agates here, or things like pyrite or quartz crystals. See? I found this one a few minutes ago while you were down the shore.”

He stepped closer to the rock formation that Maree was sitting on to show her a gray stone from his pocket, glittering with sparkling square inclusions.

She nodded, recognizing the appearance of the “fool’s gold” in the rock.

“Now, scoot over, and tell yer dear ol’ da’ what’s bothering you,” he said, mustering up a stronger accent than he usually had, as he plopped down next to her on the outcropping. He took off his round horn-rimmed glasses to wipe the sea spray off of them with the sleeve of his woolen jumper. Between the jumper, and the salt-and-pepper beard he’d been growing out, and the wellingtons he was wearing, he looked more like the lobster fisherman she remembered seeing once on a family trip to the Orkney Isles than a geologist, retired or not.

“Oh, well, it’s just…” Maree said, letting her gaze drift off to the lighthouse at Chanonry Point once more. She took a deep breath of the salty air before starting. “I feel… stuck lately. I’ve done everything I should have, you know? Go to a good university, get a good industrial placement straight away, get a good job from that, move up the ranks and turn that into a good job somewhere else, get married to a nice man, get a nice apartment in a good location… neither of us want kids, so that’s fine, but lately, the thought of going to work every day turns my stomach, and Rowan says I should just deal with it, because it’s stable and it pays well. And lately, it seems like he’s been treating me like I’m invisible, you know? It’s not just been this trip, you know he doesn’t like coming up here, but…”

Maree’s throat started to tighten.

“I really do like the work I do. But it honestly feels like my boss is trying to drive me out. He’s been adding so much to my workload lately, and it seems like nothing I ever do is good enough, even after years of being told I’m doing great, it’s just… it’s awful. I don’t know what to do. I don’t think going to HR would help, and I can’t really request a transfer without people asking questions, so I’m -”

Without hesitation, Arthur interjected.

“Leave.”

“What?” Maree said, turning her head to look at her father. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. Leave. You’re an intelligent, talented woman, and you’ve got one hell of a CV. You went to King’s College, you worked at Chelsea, and then the Premier League. I don’t even follow football and I know those names, Mare. Every company and organization has programme managers these days, there’s no sense staying somewhere that makes you miserable. Life’s too short for that. Just leave.”

“I thought about it, but Rowan said I should stand my ground and -”

“Mare, I like your husband -” Arthur said with a heavy sigh, interrupting her again “- I’m sorry, I do, but Rowan is the last person I’d take job advice from, especially in this case. I know he has that issue with his wrist and can't play cello in the symphony any more like he’d wanted to, which I feel bad about, but he decided the next best thing was to rot upright at a desk somewhere in the bowels of Lloyd’s of London as an insurance broker. I couldn’t imagine a more boring way to spend your life. If I thought less of him, I would assume that he wants you to be as miserable as he is, but you don’t have to be. Life is too short, and if your boss doesn’t appreciate your talents, you can take them elsewhere. If your husband has a problem with that, he doesn’t have your best interests at heart, and he’s not the one.”

Maree knew that her father was right.

In an incident that seemed like destiny, a few weeks after her trip, a corporate recruiter

sent Maree an email, asking her if she was possibly interested in making a switch to Formula One Management. She agreed to at least meet with the recruiter in person over lunch, and Maree couldn’t help but be impressed as the woman answered her questions. There was one overarching, remaining question on her mind after the recruiter finished her pitch.

“I thought it was kind of a bit of an old boys’ club there. I haven’t ever really followed motorsport, but that’s the impression I’d gotten from the news for the past few years.”

“Ah, yes. It was, under Bernie Ecclestone. His way of doing things was… a bit antiquated, but the environment has changed a lot since he sold the organization to a new parent company. Under Mr. Carey, it’s a much more, ah, equitable environment. Still majority male, I will admit, but things are starting to improve.”

She wanted to accept the recruiter’s offer of an introduction to the programme management team, but she figured that she should discuss things with her husband, as a career change would affect him, too. It would be a different work environment, which Maree needed. It would still be working in the world of professional sport, which Maree wanted. However, it would come with a small-but-significant pay cut.

Rowan’s reaction to the news of her entertaining the possibility of her leaving her job was just as she’d predicted.

“I don’t mean this to sound rude, but I don’t think you should throw away the years you have in the league just because your boss is a prat. By the sound of it, he’s not very good at his job anyway, so you’ll probably outlast him. Hell, maybe they’ll even promote you to replace him. Just grin and bear it until then. Plus, it sounds like they want you as some sort of diversity hire.”

The last bit of it annoyed Maree, and was even beyond what her father had warned her about. The recruiter hadn’t even brought up gender until Maree had asked, and in the position she was in at the Premier League probably made her seem like a quote-unquote diversity hire, so the difference would be minimal.

As she sat down with her laptop to send an email to the recruiter to say “thanks, but no thanks”, she remembered the interview with Susie Wolff that she’d watched at her parents house.

The things Susie said to the reporter about knowing when to move on, and how you could never experience growth if you weren’t willing to accept change and take risks resonated with her. “But at the same time,” she remembered Susie saying, “You can’t lie down and accept being walked all over in that kind of environment. It’s tough, but you really need to demand the treatment you deserve.”

She sent a reply to say “yes” instead.

A few months and more than one shouting match with Rowan later, she packed up her office in the Premier League headquarters in Brunel building in central London, never to return again. She called her father on the way home to tell him the good news.

Her getting a new job wasn’t ultimately what caused her and Rowan’s marriage to crumble, but it was likely the wound that led to its slow exsanguination.

All of this was on Maree’s mind as she was at work on the Monday of the first meeting. She was at her desk, reviewing things for the meeting last-minute, and glanced up from her computer monitor just in time to see Susie breeze past her office door en route to the conference room on the same floor, flanked by Stefano Domenicali and some other members of senior management. Her elegant wool coat was unbuttoned, flowing behind her a little like a cape as she walked. Her blonde hair seemed to glow under the fluorescent ceiling lights. Maree wasn’t sure why, but she felt her heart catch in her throat. She couldn’t help but stare as Stefano led the group into the conference room, until a notification pinging her watch snapped her out of it.

“Shit,” Maree whispered. She was due to attend the very meeting Susie had arrived for, which had managed to somehow slip her mind in the past thirty seconds. Truthfully, she had given herself a few minutes in her calendar notification, but it suddenly didn’t seem long enough for her to gather up her notes, calm herself down, or figure out why the idea of a meeting with some motorsport executive had her feeling so off-kilter. It wasn’t as if these types of meetings were new to her, not at this point in her career. She’d had plenty of meetings with team principals, executives from supplier companies, drivers, team executives and footballers during her Premier League days, this was nothing new.

Maree sat back down at her desk, and pulled a small makeup compact out of her purse. She was suddenly very aware of how the blonde of her own hair looked almost dull in comparison to Susie’s, how her long, wavy hair had so many flyaways than the silky bob Susie’s hair was always styled into. She tried to coax the rebellious strands down and flounced the ends a bit while she did a last check of her makeup, wondering if she shouldn’t have gone with something more than the minimal application she usually wore. Someone once told her that the way her cheeks were rounder and fuller made her look young, and as she approached her mid-thirties, she preferred to keep it that way.

The only thing she thought she’d done right that morning was selecting her favorite blue cardigan to wear over her gray blouse. She always liked the way it brought out the light blue of her eyes.

“Why am I so nervous about this? Maybe it’s just because she’s my new boss,” Maree thought as she stood up, grabbing her laptop and her notes for the meeting before trekking across the office to the conference room.

She took a deep breath before knocking on the conference room door and letting herself in.

“Ah, Maree, nice to see you again,” Stefano said, as Maree nodded to the group assembled loosely around the conference room. He rose from his seat to give Maree a handshake, gesturing for Susie to step over. “Maree, I’d like you to meet Susie Wolff, your managing director for this project. Susie, this is Maree McInnes, your new lead programme manager.”

Maree did her best to remain calm and collected as she shook hands with Susie. In the back of her mind, she made note of how soft and warm her hand was, even in their brief, businesslike clasp.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Susie said, giving Maree a pleasant smile. “Though, I believe we’ve met before, correct? I get the feeling we have.”

“Yes,” Maree said. She could feel herself blushing, pleasantly surprised that she’d made enough of an impression. “At the BRDC awards gala a few years back.”

Susie laughed, flashing a brilliant smile. “Oh, right, when Dan Ticktum’s father made a joke about us being cousins because we’re both from Scotland, or something.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re from Inverness, if I remember?”

They chatted for a moment as Maree eyed Susie up and down. She was dressed very smartly, in a well-tailored business suit, with a cream-colored boat neck sweater under her jacket, a chunky statement necklace that looked like a chain, with large links that looked like they were made of polished, pale wood, and a pair of diamond stud earrings. Maree couldn’t help but feel strangely slovenly in comparison, despite wearing the sort of thing she normally wore to work.

Eventually, Stefano called the meeting to order, and Maree and the other attendees each found an open seat. After a perfunctory round of introductions that reminded Maree of being in primary school again, they got down to the business of starting to form a new motorsport series. While Maree’s mother and father would likely think it was terribly interesting and exciting, despite not being fans of sport at all, they were both the sort of people that enjoyed the minutiae and details of things. Maree supposed she was the same way, otherwise she wouldn’t have gone into programme and project management.

As Maree was called on to present the proposed timeline and key dates of the project, thankfully, she felt as though the nerves and adrenaline she’d been feeling lessened their grip on her as she came into her element. This was her giving another presentation on another project she was leading, just as she’d done hundreds of times over the last decade and then some. She barely noticed the impressed expression on the face of her new boss as she talked through the separation of duties of each person assigned to the project. Who would be handling marketing, suppliers, sponsorships, driver recruitment, team relations, all of the little pieces and parts that needed to come together “...before we make it to pre-season testing in Barcelona in April.”

There was mild, scattered applause through the room as Maree clicked to the final slide on the presentation projecting from her laptop. “Any questions?” she asked, steeling herself for the usual barrage of critique. And questions.

It surprised Maree when Susie was the first to speak up.

“The first thing I have to say is that I am very thrilled to have you on this project, and I am impressed. I think Stefano and James chose the perfect person as far as our programme manager goes, and I’m quite excited to start working with you.”

Maree was only half-listening over the joyful ringing in her ears as Susie asked about some supplier dependencies, giving some answer that was maybe a bit more automatic than intended. All she could think about was Susie’s words, and how her Scottish accent had mostly reformed itself around Germanic phonemes after years of living abroad and being married to someone from Austria, much like her own accent had been pounded out of shape by her time in London, but much like Maree’s, Susie’s roots - their common roots - shone through when she said certain words, like the way she said the vowels person and perfect.

By the time she got back to her office, she could still feel her heart pounding. Almost 150 beats per minute, according to the sensor on her watch. But still, she had no idea why a first meeting with a new boss would make her feel this way when it never had before. She had also not felt such a desperation to impress her boss like this, probably since she started on with the Premier League. Susie praising her during the meeting felt like she was sinking into a warm bath, and she never wanted to get out.

And so, when an hour later, she received a calendar invite from Susie about a “planning lunch” for the next day. There was nobody else CC’d to the invitation. Not for the first time that day, Maree was grateful that she had her own private office, because that way, nobody could see the mixture of terror and joy spreading across her face.

#susie wolff x oc #f1 fic #my fanfic #my fanfic writing #formula 1 fanfic #f1 x oc #formula 1 x oc #formula 1 academy #series: thistle and weeds #yes the title comes from a m*mford and sons song... sorry... i like it though #and pardon my lack of scotland and london knowledge... i'm doing my best

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