Hello, human fella! It’s me again, with another question (it’s the last I promise 😅)
Well you’ll probably see it only tomorrow, unless you’re like me, perfectly awake in the middle of the night... anyway! If it’s not too spoilery, here’s my question:
Since MR Runaan is not the social kind and has a really few number of people who truly care about him, and when you see how startled he can be when someone takes care of him (*coughEtharicough*), well... how did he become such good pal with Sam? I mean, how did the latter even managed to approach Runaan in the first place? They’re concurrents, after all, no?
I guess you won’t answer yet so goodnight Rumo :D
For once I was actually asleep so this answer is a bit late. Anyhow:
Part of this really is too sppilery so I won't go into much detail (I'm sorry) but you'll probably find out in the next two chapters or so.
To explain this we first have to look at Sam's character. He is a competitive guy, yes but he doesn't have any true rivalries because he likes the other racers and respects them instead of resenting them if they are better than him. He genuely enjoys competing against almost all of them and is just generally a great sport. Sam's parents own the racing stall he drives for so some people think he's only there because of money even though he started in an independent stall before transferring and has earned his right to be there. He is relatively consistently on spots 3-7 so he definitely is a good driver. On tracks he knows well, he'll be a lot better because he has great analytical abilities of the tracks and conditions.
Now on to his relationship with Runaan. Sam is only a bit older than him and had been in the pro-leagues for maybe one or two seasons when Runaan suddenly showed up and turned this into a nightmare for the other racers. His style was different and it threw a lot of people off. Sam just saw a nice new challenge as he'd been steadily working his way onto the podium. They started out as friendly rivals, Sam being one of the few who could keep up with Runaan's race tactics because he was willing to adapt and then Sam just adopted that introverted new kid because he was curious and Runaan seemed to lack friends. He basically started to hang out at their pit during preps and bullied Runaan into getting food with him between races.
Like an extrovert claiming their introvert basically. At first Runaan was simply too polite to say no but after a while he got to like this lanky dork who was as interested in racing as he was and just let him ramble for hours at a time. Sam also allowed him to seek refuge in their tents whenever there were too many press reps present at his own and at some point they were friends instead of rivals. Runaan may or may not have helped with Sam's bike on multiple occasions as well.
I hope this more or less satisfied your curiosity until we get to that point in the story^^ However let me add that there will be more Sam in the future as he is one of my favorites to write!
