Formula 1: The GOAT

“Congratulations on adding another win to your list. Do you ever get used to winning?” the post-race interviewer asked Fatih moments after he came to a stop in front of the No. 1 board, having completed the interviews of the other podium finishers.

“Eh?” Fatih asked, not having fully understood what he meant.

“Ah, you don’t speak German? I completely forgot. Where is the interpreter?” the interviewer misunderstood his response, thinking that Fatih didn’t understand, and started looking for the interpreter whom the event coordinator usually hired due to the international nature of the event.

“No, I can speak German. It’s just that I didn’t understand exactly what you meant by your question,” Fatih answered in clear and native-sounding German, causing the interviewer and everyone listening to the interview to pause as they tried to see if they were hallucinating.

Many who knew Fatih knew that he could speak Italian, having done so since his international debut, and French, which he spoke after attending one of the FIA international races a few years ago. Many of them thought that the four languages he knew were the maximum, as he really didn’t have that much time to be learning new languages while still remaining at the top of the karting world. But it looked like he was a Russian Matryoshka doll, with more languages revealed the more you opened him up, having now added German to the list.

“Oooh, your German sounds very good! Just to clear the air, are there any other languages you know that we don’t know about?” the interviewer finally asked, wanting to see if he had more of them, having already exceeded their expectations.

“I can speak Arabic, but since I’ve never spoken it in public, you might not know about that. There are a few more that I’m in the middle of studying, but since I haven’t mastered them yet, I won’t count them among the languages I can speak,” Fatih said calmly, as if it were a matter of fact.

“Looks like karting is not the only thing you are good at, but we are limited on time, so let’s return to the main point of the interview and to my previous question. I meant it in the context of human adaptability, how we get used to the situations we constantly find ourselves in. So when I ask if you get used to winning, I mean, is the excitement of winning you feel now the same as what you felt when you won your first major international trophy, or is it just as normal as breathing to you now, having won everything there is in karting?” the interviewer, once finished, finally moved the microphone to Fatih’s mouth, waiting for his answer.

“No, the excitement is the same, or rather, the high keeps rising with each consecutive win, in conjunction with the pressure to continuously perform at the level I have been doing all this time. The hunger for the win is still there, and although it might seem like just another Tuesday for those who watch me, I consider all the races that I participate in to be a public trial of all my behind-the-scenes hard work. And who wouldn’t be happy to win a trial that proved all of his hard work was correct?” Fatih answered with a smile on his face after taking a short moment to think.

“What a good answer! It reminds me of something I read about you on Twitter. The user had said that despite all of your trophies, you drive as if you are starving and the only way to earn your food is through a race win,” the interviewer said before chuckling at the analogy.

“Yes, I’m hungry,” Fatih said, before finishing in his mind, ’for SP points.’

“It is good to be hungry for wins, for titles. And going from there, I would like to ask what it would take to fully feed you and satisfy you in karting? How many titles do you envision? What more do you have as a target in the karting world, where you have been paving a new hall-of-fame path?”

Fatih took a moment to think about how he should answer the question, as depending on the option he chose, the reactions would be completely different. After a while, he finally made a decision to go with what he was feeling, finding that there was really no harm in keeping it hidden. So he said, “I think I can say with confidence that I have had enough of it, and it is time I move forward to the next step and the next challenges.”

His answer caused those who heard him to pause for a moment, a second time in an interview that had already exceeded its question limit, but no one bothered to intervene and bring it to an end.

“To me, that answer sounded as if you are retiring from karting and moving to single-seaters. Am I correct in understanding it that way?” the interviewer asked, and despite trying to hide his surprise and excitement, both still managed to slip into his question.

“Yes, this was my final race in karting, and starting next year, I will be moving to F4,” he answered as a matter of fact.

“Wow, I would like to ask more details, but I’m being told that we are out of time. Congratulations on your move up the ladder, and I wish you continued success at those echelons. What a career it has been,” the interviewer said in a rushed tone, having just received a direction that he needed to speed up, as they were on a schedule. The next event needed to start on time, and if they continued, it would definitely cause a delay, pushing all following events behind schedule.

“Thank you for that, and I would like to use this moment to thank all of the fans who have supported me throughout my karting career. I hope to keep meeting your expectations as I move to the next part of my career. Thank you very much, and see you soon,” Fatih said before returning the microphone he had taken from the interviewer and walking back to the waiting area. Soon, he was called to the podium to receive his trophy, which was met with louder-than-usual cheers from both the attendees and even the other drivers and their teams, making some wonder if they were celebrating him finally leaving the field he had been dominating and opening up opportunities for them, or if they were just celebrating a good driver finally having the opportunity to move to the next stage of the difficult and cutthroat motorsports career.

After receiving the trophy, Fatih, now doused in rose water from the podium celebration, found the team waiting for him outside their tent. His kart was waiting for him, with rows of chairs arranged behind it.

It was obvious to anyone that this was for a team photo, the kind teams take at the start and end of the season, but since this was going to be his last race, they had arranged for it to be taken now.

Adjusting his outfit, he walked over, shook hands, and hugged everyone on the team before they all sat or stood behind the chairs. Fatih sat in the centermost chair, with Ricky Flinn on his right and John on his left, all of them feeling emotional about it.

However, the silent, funeral-esque, and emotional part didn’t last long, as other teams and drivers started joining them to take final celebratory pictures with Fatih and his team, taking an entire hour before Fatih could finally be freed from the picture-taking spree to go and clean himself, change into his usual clothes, and finally join his family.

……

“Unfortunately, Enes won’t be able to join us. Something urgent came up, and he had to return home to deal with it,” Hatice said, informing all of the relatives who were now around a large picnic table, doing the final preparations for the barbecue that had just finished being prepared and was about to be served.

The rest of the adults reacted as usual, having only been told about the possibility of Enes’s wife being the one who contacted Fatih’s grandmother. They just took his leaving as him going to deal with the situation alone with his wife, not wanting to do so while they were far from home.

Hatice was the only one who knew that the reason was the furthest from what they were thinking, but she didn’t try to correct them on their assumption since it was something that Enes would be the one to make the decision to disclose. From the look of it, it seemed like the marriage was coming to an end due to Seda being caught cheating while trying to prove she hadn’t contacted Emine.

Putting the phone back in her purse, she joined the family as they enjoyed their meal, followed by them spending time together and getting to know Fatih even further, as there was a tank’s worth of stories about him that Rümeysa and Güldane had seen over the past fourteen years of raising him.

But every good vacation has to come to an end, as Fatih and his family boarded their plane back to the UK after spending a full additional week staying with different relatives daily.