Formula 1: The GOAT

“Are you alright?” “Are you OK?” “Are you…”

One after another, as the marshals neared, they asked about the drivers’ conditions, wanting to understand the situation as quickly as possible. Despite their broken English, their questions were still understandable.

“…..” Vincenzo didn’t respond and just continued staring at Fatih. With his visor closed, everyone could only guess at the look on his face, but his heavy breathing was visible as his chest rose and fell.

“I’m fine. Just remove his kart so I can return to the pit lane,” Fatih answered in Italian, finally turning his head to the marshals. He stopped looking at Vincenzo, who had definitely broken his rib deliberately. But none of that mattered now; only the race did. He was sure the stewards would deal with Vincenzo appropriately, and anything he did on top of that might risk reducing the potential punishment.

The marshals who heard him immediately got to work. Two of them moved to the front end of Vincenzo’s kart, which was on top of Fatih’s left sidepod. They raised it carefully before pushing it back. The moment he was free, Fatih, who had shifted to neutral, put the kart into first gear and slowly eased it out from where it was stuck. He started the slow drive back to the pit lane, which was quite a distance away. It took him more than three minutes at the agonizingly slow speeds required by the red flag rules, his left sidepod dragging on the ground, dislodged and bent from the hit.

“Woooooo!” Throughout this slow journey, he could hear the crowd in the grandstand cheering for him, all the way from the moment he left the tire walls. Many of them had been heavily worried about the possibility of him being injured, especially so deliberately.

But unfortunately for them, he was too focused on bringing the kart back as soon as possible so that his team could start their repairs as fast as possible within the short red flag period.

…….

“What were your feelings after realizing that you were deliberately crashed into?” the reporter in the interview room asked the moment Fatih finished recollecting his feelings up until the crash.

“At that time, what went through my mind was, ’Ah, I need to get back in the race,’ and I did everything in my power to do so,” Fatih answered after a moment of consideration.

“Did you realize that you had a broken rib, or did you not feel anything at all?” the reporter asked, moving to the next most important question, which, depending on how Fatih answered, would change the narrative arc of this year’s docuseries being made about him.

“I knew I was injured, but I didn’t…”

…….

“I’m fine. I feel sore, but that’s all. I can continue the race. What about the kart?” Fatih answered John, who had asked about his condition the moment he arrived in the pit lane.

He knew the moment they learned about his rib injury, they would immediately pull him out of the race, and he didn’t want that to happen. Although it might be painful for many to have a broken rib, it was something he could handle, thanks to Invictus helping him with pain tolerance. He had also experienced pain that dwarfed this by several magnitudes, so this was something he knew he could handle. It wasn’t just something done out of his now very competitive nature, which had been boosted by a “steroid” of brutal training.

He was not competitive to the point where he would risk his life and career for a short-term win with a long-term problem, as his goal was grand. But he was competitive enough that he wanted to continue racing despite knowing he was injured. After all, other than just winning the race, he was also still on an active mission with the system, which meant he needed to accumulate as many points as possible. Karting was going to be the last place where he could gather wins as easily as he was currently doing, due to the increase in variables the moment he moved to single-seaters.

So, on the scale of things worthy of him ending his race, a broken rib was not among them. His sponge body, paired with Invictus and hours of experience driving in different conditions, gave him the confidence that he would still be able to clinch the race win. The race had just completed two laps, and he still had eighteen more to do his job. Although the injury would require him to change his driving style to avoid aggravating it, the loss of time was negligible on the scale of the remaining eighteen laps.

“All we have to do is straighten the left side of the chassis and place a new side impact structure, and you will be eligible to continue. But the bend, even if we straighten it, the car’s driving characteristics will change slightly since there might be other pieces in the domino that were damaged as a result, but they are too small for us to see or repair in the short window,” John said as he looked towards the race official, who was already raising a fifteen-minute announcement of the post-red-flag race resumption, as the cause of the red flag had already been cleared from the track.

“It’s fine; I can handle that,” Fatih said as he took off his helmet and started drinking water. While his head was raised, his eyes were already looking for Vincenzo, who had crashed into him.

“Ah, if you are looking for him, he was immediately sent to the stewards’ office. Everyone could see that it was deliberate, so Ricky went there to make sure there is no leniency at all,” Steve, who had finally arrived with a clipboard in his hand and a race official following him, said the moment he saw Fatih’s eyes.

Fatih just nodded in response and didn’t say anything, as he tried to look as normal as possible and not alert them to anything being wrong with him. The moment they suspected he was injured, they would pull the plug instantly.

The repair job started immediately, with a race official supervising. In KZ2 karting, unlike F1, only necessary repairs were allowed and had to be approved beforehand. Even a tire change was only permitted for safety reasons, and Fatih’s situation didn’t warrant one. So, they focused on the most visible and obvious damage.

They started by removing the dislodged sidepod and began the process of straightening the chassis. Fatih stood there, just watching in silence, his helmet resting by his right leg. A short distance away, a cameraman, one of those from the team following him for the docuseries, captured it all: his calm face as he watched the repairs, his stillness, the mechanics running up and down, all with the chaotic backdrop of other drivers and their teams dealing with their own situations. The only still figure in the entire scene was the unmoving Fatih.

“This is our money shot,” the cameraman said to the audio guy standing beside him with a long boom mic, who only nodded, his focus still on ensuring the captured audio was crisp.