Formula 1: The GOAT

“Avoiding crashes is good, but depending on a situation, crashing might be the best outcome. A crash can be used as a warning to all the drivers on the grid that if they don’t have a certain level of awareness around you, they will know with certainty that you are not crash-averse. It is a strategic weapon, and like any strategic weapon, the more it is used, the more it loses its value, so make sure you use it in the most multiplicative situation if that were ever to come so that you don’t have to use it again,” Apollo said inside the simulation as he walked back and forth, hands behind his back with a stick in hand, waving it as if he were a teacher, which, for the current situation, he actually was.

Although he spent most of his time physically teaching Fatih to drive and constantly putting him in challenging situations on the track, he also dedicated a large amount of time to his mental training. No matter how good the hardware you have, if you have inferior software, your computer will never be able to run at its maximum capability. Thanks to his long years as an F1 fan in his past life, he was very interested in the mental aspect of it, as he had seen people in championship-contending cars and leading the championship crumble and lose due to them not being able to handle the pressure of their position.

“Isn’t the best time to do it in the first race of a category I’m joining? Mistakes would already be expected of me as I assimilate, and it will cause the least amount of problems in my championship fights since I will have the most amount of races to deal with the point deficit,” Fatih asked after taking a moment to think.

“Yes, but don’t go around deliberately crashing just because it is the first race. After all, it has to be a byproduct of the other driver’s actions, not your own. You will have to do your best to avoid them and only go for it when there is no other choice left. Even then, the final crash should have the other side taking the full blame, as any penalties are not a good thing for you, though it will be good for the docuseries. But that is for the director to worry about; you only need to focus on your racing,” Apollo said moments before he once again teleported them back to the track to continue their practice.

Thanks to these repeatedly taught, demonstrated, and directly experienced teachings, he could say he was the most experienced thirteen-year-old on the planet when it came to motorsports, and no one would argue against it. He didn’t have to wait for years before he was put in a situation where he had to use this knowledge.

“…….. Vincenzo makes a very late move to cover Fatih, forcing Fatih to slow down on the straight to avoid crashing, losing him speed as a very fast corner approaches. As Fatih, who had regained some of the speed through slipstreaming behind Vincenzo, makes an attempt to move to the outside line, Vincenzo once again moves very late to cover it.

BUT FATIH, HAVING ALREADY EXPERIENCED IT, IS NOT GOING TO SUFFER FROM A SIMILAR SITUATION! HE RECOVERS AND NEARLY INSTANTLY TAKES THE LINE THAT VINCENZO WAS IN, AND THEY ARE NOW SIDE-BY-SIDE HEADING INTO THE CORNER! WHO IS GOING TO BRAKE LAST? WHO IS GOING TO TURN FIRST? FATIH, WHO IS NOW ON THE INSIDE, HAS THE LEVERAGE, AND THE BATTLE OF NERVES STARTS!

OOOH, THEIR CARS BUMP FOR A MOMENT AS VINCENZO ATTEMPTS TO TURN, BUT IS MET WITH FATIH’S NON-COMPLIANCE! BOTH OF THEM MANAGE TO CONTROL THEIR KARTS AND PREVENT THEM FROM GOING OUT OF CONTROL!

AS THE CORNER APPROACHES, VINCENZO BLINKS FIRST AND BRAKES, FOLLOWED BY FATIH A FEW METERS LATER! BUT DUE TO THE DISTANCE, HE IS NOW FORCED TO GO ONE GEAR LOWER THAN THE OPTIMAL APPROACH IN ORDER TO NOT MISS THE CORNER, WHICH HE EXPERTLY MAKES! BUT HE IS NOW DISADVANTAGED THROUGH THE NEXT SEQUENCE, AS VINCENZO, WHO HAS A HIGHER SPEED, IS NOW THE ONE CHASING,” Matia shouted excitedly at the battle that had taken place and was about to happen in the following parts of sector one.

“Track position is always better than having an advantage in speed, as you always have the option to defend. For someone who is known to mirror your driving style during a battle, he is the worst driver for Vincenzo to have pulled those shenanigans on. We are going to see a masterclass in dirty driving without breaking any rules from Fatih for the next few corners,” the secondary commentator said, sounding excited for what was to come from the young prodigy.

………

Fatih momentarily closed his eyes for just a second, filtering the sound in his surroundings to map where everyone near him was on his mental map of the track. He instantly placed them in their actual positions with pretty good accuracy before fully focusing on Vincenzo, who was approaching fast on the short straight to Turn 2.

This had forced Vincenzo to enter the turn in a suboptimal line, as Fatih upshifted all the way to the optimal gear by the time he took Turn 2, managing to bring the speed deficit to near even. By then, Vincenzo was already on Fatih’s rear bumper, even hitting him for a moment before Fatih moved aside from the racing line, moving towards the center of the track and leaving the racing line on the outside to Vincenzo, who didn’t follow. He now had his front tire level with Fatih’s rear tire just as they were about to start turning.

Fatih “accidentally” braked harder, locking the tires just enough to send him wide and miss the first of the two hairpin corner apexes, taking Vincenzo wide with him as he had no other option. Fatih then downshifted, lifted, and got back into power at the last moment to be able to make the corner, forcing Vincenzo to enter a corner that was not included in this competition’s track route, as Fatih was now taking the corners and had already gained quite a large distance from him.

………

Vincenzo nearly exploded with anger as he was pushed out. Although he attempted to return to the track, he couldn’t, as he banged his front wheel with Fatih’s rear wheel, scaring him for a moment. By the time he realized it, Fatih was already a corner ahead of him. In a momentary fit of anger, without thinking of the consequences, he straightened the steering and plowed straight, using the unofficial part of the track and cutting two corners, meeting Fatih right in the middle of the kart and T-boning him despite Fatih’s attempts at avoiding him.

………

Fatih, who had already cleared Vincenzo from his mind and was focusing on the drivers ahead, immediately found a new oddity in his mental position map as a kart was heard in an area where there should be no karts. He immediately connected it to Vincenzo, so he shifted the brake bias to the front and braked heavily to load the front, providing him with an instant turning response as he turned off the track to avoid him. But Vincenzo did some steering correction, locking onto him before he was hit. They were both dragged into the tire wall that separated the straight he was on from the start-finish straight.

“Cough!” Fatih groaned as he could feel that, despite the tire wall taking most of the energy, his body had received a large portion of it as they were dragged a few meters into the tire walls.

Having experienced thousands of crashes in the simulation with Apollo, he knew his body best when it came to injury. Although he was thankful that the pain was pretty mild compared to some of the crashes he had experienced, he could already tell that one of his ribs was broken as he turned left to find Vincenzo’s front bumper on his seat.

He raised his head to look at the person who had just crashed into him, who was looking at him angrily, his chest still rising and falling. It was not obvious if it was from anger or from fear at the realization of what he had done, but Fatih didn’t care. He put the kart in neutral before moving it to first gear and hitting the accelerator, trying to dislodge himself, but due to the car being pinned on the tire wall from one side and Vincenzo’s kart from the other, it wouldn’t move.

All the traction he was getting was not enough, resulting in a wheel spin for a few seconds before he stopped. At the same time, the track was red-flagged, and marshals were already running towards them as the other karts on the track slowed to almost a walking pace, following the red flag rule as they returned to the pit lane, all of their heads looking in the direction of Fatih and Vincenzo.