Formula 1: The GOAT

Every person has at least a moment in their life when they experience or see something that stretches the limit of their expectations or imagination, and Denis was experiencing one at the moment.

It had taken Fatih only half an hour to finish answering all of the questions on the paper and hand it over, but it had been twenty minutes since he had started grading them, and he was not even halfway through. He found himself stopping after every answer he graded.

In order to bring Fatih down a peg and make him realize that everything he knew was less than everything he needed to know, and to ensure that he focused on the lessons, he had gone so far as to put questions on topics that he had yet to go through with Fatih and had even included a few that required Fatih to use formulas that he had just momentarily shown him during the first lesson. But it seemed like Fatih was saying the same thing to him through his answers, as they were more detailed than he expected, but the explanations were always correct, and nothing was unnecessarily placed to increase the length or complexity of the response.

By the time half an hour had passed, he had realized that there was really no need for him to continue grading the paper, as the ones he had checked were already enough to give him the scope of Fatih’s understanding of the topic, which warranted the confidence he had to not take notes in the first place.

He was initially dissatisfied with Fatih’s behavior because it came across to him as if he were belittling the subject and not respecting him as its teacher. But now that he had proved that was not the case, all of the prior dissatisfaction went away, as Fatih had managed to show that there was no disrespect behind his actions.

“Let’s resume with the class. I will check the answers in depth later,” he said as he slid the paper to the side and brought his bundle of notes to the front of him before he added, “But since you showed that you can digest the information I provide very easily, I will increase the pace and intensity, so if you don’t understand any part of it, don’t hesitate to ask. Understood?”

“Yes,” Fatih said without any change of expression on his face, as if everything were going as expected. But inside, he was jumping while thinking, ’Finally, we can increase the pace and finish the theory faster and get to the car.’

For someone who could learn things faster, the pace Denis was previously going at was slow in his point of view, but he couldn’t just stand up and say it, as it would most likely be taken negatively. The best route he had come up with was to slowly show that he could learn at an even faster pace, and have the teacher realize it and increase his pace naturally. Teaching is always something that both the teacher and the learner influence until they reach the perfect state where the teacher can teach at the maximum possible pace that the student can learn and understand. But now it looked like that wasn’t going to be needed.

With the increase in pace, Alex, who was a bystander wanting to skim and learn a few things, which he had succeeded in doing during the first period, found himself being left behind as he couldn’t adjust to the new pace and the increased depth of the things Fatih was being taught. But when he turned to look at Fatih, he looked no different and was as comfortable as a fish in water.

For the next entire week, they focused only on the first main topic. If they had used the previously prepared curriculum in tandem with the pace that was now increased, they would have finished it in two days. But what chef would still want to cook mediocre food when he realizes he has gained premium ingredients? No one.

As a result, and in response to seeing how Fatih was still easily absorbing everything he was teaching him even with the ever-increasing pace, Denis had gotten greedy and wanted to teach him as much as possible, leading to him diving deeper into more complex topics of the main subject, taking an entire week to teach Fatih what would usually have taken three entire months, if not more, to teach an average person at the pace he had gone at in the first period.

As he looked back at Fatih, who was writing down answers to the end-of-main-topic test he had given him, Denis couldn’t help but remember everything that had happened on the first day.

……..

Back to the First Day.

When he finished everything he had planned to teach Fatih regarding aerodynamics, which would have initially taken him three days, in a span of four hours after the increase in pace, he found himself in a limbo. He wondered if he should move to weight transfer and other subtopics in the first main topic, but in the end, he decided against it and gave Fatih a two-hour break to buy himself time to think and come up with a solution. Though ahead of schedule, he decided to go to the one who had started this entire project: Helmut Marko.

“Did he cause any problems for you to come this early?” Helmut asked the moment Denis entered his office, once he told his secretary to let him in.

“Is this a normal occurrence for teachers to come and complain to you?” Denis asked, wondering if it was a normal occurrence because for him, this was the first time teaching anyone.

“Well, each driver has a different personality, and believing they are prodigies and causing problems is the norm. We only deal with the problems that are bad enough and leave the rest as a pressure release, because if we close all of them, we don’t know when they will blow up,” Helmut said, placing the paper that was in his hands down on the desk before looking back to Denis and asking, “So, what did he do for you to come now and not in the evening?” with a smile on his face, as he expected it to be too outlandish.

He had told Denis to come to him after all of his lessons with Fatih came to an end for the day to report on Fatih’s learning speed, behavior, and everything else in order to get a better grasp of the kid. So for him to come this early could only be because something interesting enough had happened to warrant it.

“It’s nothing like that,” Denis said before he handed Helmut a copy of the exam papers that he had stopped marking midway through, while also slowly explaining what happened from the start until the end, where he asked, “So what do you think? Should we finish the theory part according to the new pace?”

“No, it is impossible for the other schedules to be pulled ahead of time more than they already are being pulled forward,” Helmut said as he shook his head, his eyes looking out of focus as if he were thinking about something.

“It is not like we can slow down now that he has shown his ability to learn very fast,” Denis said, wanting to make it clear that doing that would be no different than torture.

Helmut didn’t say anything for a moment and only said, “There is no need to do that,” after thirty seconds of silence.

“Do you have something in mind?” Denis asked.

“Since he can learn faster, how many more things can you teach him if the planned three weeks remain the same?”

Although Fatih wasn’t told that his education was going to take three weeks, and was told that he could be stuck there if he didn’t get the approval from Denis, that was the period they had cut out. If it had passed and he didn’t show any progress, they would have still moved him to the next phase, which was simulator practice, since for a driver, not knowing anything on the theory side was not too much of a problem at the moment, at least, and could be dealt with slowly once he debuted, since that is what the lower Formula categories were for in the first place.

“At the pace we went after the test, if we maintain it for the initially planned curriculum, we can finish it in at most three more days.”

“He is learning that fast?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think will happen if Max Verstappen knew everything about the car’s characteristics and why it is doing those things like an engineer, instead of just using his intuition?”

“He would be a driver every engineer dreams of,” Denis said without thinking at all. Even with the crashes Max was having, he was already showing the amount of talent and potential he had. So if he knew everything about how the car worked, along with his monstrous instincts, then he could push the car with extreme confidence all the way to the edge of what it could physically handle and keep it there, extracting everything possible without having to wonder if there was any more that the car could give. What engineer didn’t want a driver like that?

“Then expand the curriculum to be enough to take the entire three weeks based on the new pace,” Helmut said upon hearing the response, because inside, he too wondered what the outcome of what he was doing was going to be. If it actually had the effect he wanted to see how the monstrous instincts of a driver like Max would compare to someone with near-equal instinct but with the understanding of an engineer.

Slowly, in his mind, he was already comparing and imagining the two drivers facing each other in equal machinery, and he couldn’t help but feel goosebumps and look forward to it, as even the thought of it was enough to make him want to see it through.

To him, Fatih was now the experimental ground of how good a fully educated and not-rushed talented driver could push the idea of a driver. But everything depended on how much Fatih could absorb and actually use in his driving career, so his plan of putting him under pressure was not interfered with one bit, as the new workload would also be aiding it, as it removed the breathing room these three weeks would have given him had they gone on at the normal pace that he had shown to be nothing but a slow tortoise’s run.

“Understood,” Denis said with a smile before he left, as that was what he wanted to ask in the first place, although from a different angle and with different intentions, he too was thinking of the same thing.

“I’m looking forward to it, so don’t disappoint me,” Helmut, now left alone in his office, said before picking up the copy of the test paper and trying to go through it himself.