Max tries to leave anonymous gifts like letters, cards, photos, mugs, shoes—each symbolic and intimately connected to Carlos.

It starts with a single red envelope, neatly tucked into Carlos's driver room locker in Monaco, with no name, only a tiny drawing of a chili pepper in the corner. Inside is a short letter—typed but unmistakably Dutch in sentence structure—talking about how Carlos’s laughter sounds like sunshine and how “he”—the mystery admirer—watches him smile after removing his helmet, wind-swept hair and all, and it makes his heart race faster than a 1:28 pole lap.

Carlos chuckles, recognizing the phrasing immediately. But he doesn’t say a word.

The next week, at Silverstone, there's a ceramic mug waiting at Carlos’s table in the Ferrari motorhome—sleek matte black with a goofy little doodle of a chilli and a bull high-fiving, and the words:
“You give my engines reason to overheat.”
Again, no name. But the bull? The handwriting? The painfully Max-like humour? Obvious.

Carlos uses the mug all weekend, sipping his espresso with a smug little smirk.

Then in Hungary, Max ups his game—leaving a custom pair of Nike shoes in Carlos’s driver room, embroidered subtly with the numbers 55 and 33 on each heel. They’re in Carlos’s exact size, in Ferrari red with gold accents, with a note that says,
"Thought these would help you run into someone’s heart faster. Or away from them if they’re annoying. Which, I can be. But you don’t seem to mind."