The McLaren Technology Centre looks unchanged from the outside.

Glass, water, symmetry. The kind of place that has raised me and taught me smallest things that ended up mattering in life. I've driven past it more times than I can count, walked through its doors half-asleep, half-excited, thinking about lap times and simulator runs and whether the car would finally do what I asked of it. Tonight, it feels unfamiliar.

The drive from the airport is quiet. The car is already waiting when I arrive, engine running, driver professional and distant. No jokes or a casual "long flight huh?". Just my name checked against a list, then the door opening, waiting to for me to get escorted.

Security at MTC is tighter than usual. Extra badges with extra faces show up. I register the FIA logos without reacting much, eyes on the way. Inside, the building is awake in a restrained way. Lights on, voices low, footsteps careful. I'm guided through the corridors instead of wandering them. It's subtle, but I notice. I always notice.

We pass familiar spaces: the simulator wing, the design offices, the meeting rooms where winter blurred into spring. Where Oscar and I sat for hours, arguing over steering weight and brake response, both convinced we were right.

No one mentions his name. That omission lands heavier than questions would.

Near the assembly floor, I can see tools being set down, equipment prepared but not yet used. The controlled quiet of people who are about to take something important apart.

The cars arrive an hour later with our numbers are still on, freshly out of Monaco Grand Prix.

They come sealed inside freight containers, metal boxes stamped and already documented before anyone touches them. I recognize mine by the number alone. Habit. Muscle memory. Even stripped down, I know what's mine.

The container is opened carefully, like the car might react badly to being exposed. The nose comes off first. Then the floor. The power unit has already been separated, lifted out with precision that borders on reverence. Someone calls out serial numbers. Someone else checks them against a tablet. Every movement is slow on purpose.

I stand a few steps back. Close enough to see everything. Far enough that no one has to ask me not to touch.

The steering wheel sits on a padded bench, detached, its screen dark. I know exactly where my thumbs rest when I'm nervous. I know which rotary I adjust without thinking. Seeing it lifeless makes my stomach tightened in a way I don't quite expect.

The steering rack comes next. Unbolted, removed, labeled. Sensors unplugged and tagged, each one marked with a timestamp and reference code. Brake-by-wire components are laid out in a neat row, like evidence in a case that hasn't been argued yet.

I follow the process automatically. Torque values. Mounting points. Data pathways. It's all familiar. Nothing looks wrong.

I catch myself leaning forward when they lift the seat out. My seat, molded to a shape I know better than my own mattress. It feels strange to see it handled by someone else, turned slightly, examined from angles I never consider.

This car has always answered me, immediately, faithfully, every input met with exactly what I expect. And now I hold its lifeless frame in my peripheral.

Engineers speak in low, precise sentences. FIA officials move between them, stopping occasionally to take photographs, to mark something down, to ask for clarification that doesn't involve me. The questions are technical, impersonal, and always directed at someone else.

"Confirm the sensor specification."
"Check the calibration date."
"Log the mounting variance."

I know every single answer. I know most of them before they're asked but I keep quiet anyway.

It's strange, watching my work reduced to lines and timestamps without any reference to how it felt. No mention of grip building through the corner, no sense of the moment when the car settles and everything goes quiet inside my head. I want to say something, but there isn't space for my opinion here.

They move us into a briefing room once the teardown reaches a point where conversation can no longer pretend to be optional. The screens are already on when I walk in. A timeline stretches across them, marked with dates I recognize before anyone explains. Pre-season. Simulator blocks. Winter development meetings that felt endless at the time.

Andrea stands at the front. There's no accusation in the way he speaks, but there's no comfort either. He walks through the car's evolution methodically, highlighting where drivers feedback influenced design direction.

All of it legal, signed off and tested. Then he brings up the feedback logs.

Two columns appear side by side. One labeled with my name, the other tagged Oscar Piastri. The wording differs, but the substance doesn't. Requests converge on the same outcomes. Adjustments aim for the same sensations. Priorities align in ways that are difficult to dismiss once they're placed next to each other.

In short, we both requested for the same changes, complained about same weaknesses and praised for the same strength of this season's car.

Andrea doesn't linger on it. He doesn't frame it as a problem. He just simply presents it.
"This configuration passed Barcelona," he says firmly. "And the subsequent recheck."

I nod automatically. Back then, me and Oscar didn't sit down and plan all of this. We argued hard, if anything, both convinced our perspective was different enough to put over each other's. Yet the result is the same.

Andrea clicks through the rest of the slides. The car complied with regulation. The changes fell within allowable tolerances, none getting into grey area like Mercedes or RedBull. The FIA signed off on every stage.

The unsettling sense that the most important influence on the car didn't come from a design office or a regulation document silently seeps in. The secret we need to find out came from two drivers who thought they were working independently — and weren't as separate as they believed.

It's us, hi, we're the problem.