Formula 1: The GOAT

“Thank God Mom could afford mechanics,” Fatih said as he dropped to the ground, covered in coolant and oil. He was completely spent from having spent the previous few hours starting the disassembly process, but hadn’t gotten far before only ten minutes remained of his four-hour daily simulation time limit.

He had spent the first two hours entirely focused on learning the names and possible uses of every tool in the tool drawers, memorizing every one of them. Once he was done, he could say with confidence that he knew the tools better than anyone in his current garage. Although the actual mechanics might know the tools, most of them wouldn’t know all of them, and for those who did, their knowledge was only a result of experience, not the detailed understanding he now had.

With renewed confidence coming from his tool knowledge, he immediately went a few rounds around the car, memorizing all of the visible nuts and bolts before he got to work. He started by removing the easily removable parts like the front and rear wings and body panels. Although he thought they were easy, it was only easy for those with experience, which, unfortunately, he had none of, leading to him taking an entire hour just for that.

After neatly arranging the disassembled parts, he finally started the slow and agonizing process of disconnecting the 1.6L Ford EcoBoost engine from the Sadev sequential gearbox. For someone with no experience, the process was excruciating. Even after spending more than forty minutes on it, the process was not yet complete or even halfway through.

He was not disassembling it just to disassemble it, but with the intention of returning it to its previous state, so he had to be careful with his every action as if it were the real world. This work ethic was a result of Apollo’s constant instilling in Fatih the idea of practicing as if he were in an actual race and racing as if he were practicing. Through repeated reinforcement, this belief had permeated all aspects of his life, and the current disassembly process was no different.

“I remember you feeling down when you thought you were from a middle-class family. If you hadn’t used that brain of yours, who knows, you might have gained this knowledge ahead of time,” Apollo said, finally revealing himself in front of Fatih, his face looking as if he was trying to hold his laughter back as he looked at Fatih’s current situation. He had been monitoring him, and although he didn’t verbalize it, he was actually impressed by the amount of progress made and the approach he took, but he knew doing that might inflate Fatih’s head, so he kept it to himself.

“Can you help with this?” Fatih said as he pointed to his oil-covered body. Although he knew that the moment he left the simulation, everything would disappear, the feeling of oil and all other liquids on his body wasn’t something he wanted to experience for longer than needed. If he could have them removed, it was an option he would choose ten out of ten times.

“Yes, young master,” Apollo said as if he were Fatih’s butler, waving his hand and completely removing all of the oil, grime, and his fatigue as if he hadn’t toiled for the last few hours.

“Thank you, Alfred,” Fatih said with a chuckle before he closed his eyes as the timer finally hit zero. His body disappeared from the simulation, coinciding with his eyes opening in the real world.

…….

“Do you have a timer in your brain or something? I was just about to wake you up if you continued sleeping for the next few minutes,” Alex said, standing next to Fatih while looking at him with an astonished face.

“My body is pretty good at keeping time, so long as I have a specific plan for that time,” Fatih said as he raised his body before sitting sideways on the medical bed, dangling his legs slowly as his body adjusted to waking up. It was a first for him to immediately wake up the moment he left the simulation because he had always used it immediately after going to bed, leading to him resuming his sleep for the next few hours even after the simulation timer ended, which allowed his body and mind enough time to adjust.

As their back-and-forth conversation continued, the doctor finally returned. The moment he entered and saw Fatih still sitting on the bed where he had left him, he released a sigh of relief, as he wouldn’t have been surprised if he didn’t find him.

“So, any new pain or a feeling that wasn’t there during our previous tests?” the doctor asked after the short exchange between the two of them, as he pressed a stethoscope to Fatih’s chest.

“Nothing new, other than feeling fully rested.”

After a few more physical tests, he finally said, “Okay, I can clear you with confidence that you are completely fine and are allowed to return to driving. So be careful so that you don’t have to visit me again,” the doctor said with a bright face. He had grown to quite like the kid who didn’t have any of the usual impatience he had seen in other drivers, but also for the mental strength Fatih had shown. It seemed like there were no visible mental effects despite having experienced a very heavy crash on his first-ever drive of the car.

Although that didn’t mean there was no possible mental problem that might require certain conditions to trigger or reveal itself, having no visible effects at the moment was a good sign. Plus, he was sure the team was going to keep a close eye on him to see if there were any signs, and if there were, they would immediately try to deal with it as early as possible.

After bidding them farewell, Fatih finally left the medical center and took the car that had come to pick them up, as the medical car was back on standby, ready to enter the track the moment an accident occurred and it was needed.

……..

“Why is he like that?” Lisa, the chief mechanic for Fatih and the head mechanic of the testing program, asked one of the mechanics who was on his way somewhere as he passed near her.

“I don’t know. He had been like that since he returned from the medical center two hours ago,” the mechanic said, briefly looking at Fatih, who was the subject of the question, before he resumed walking to his main destination.

Lisa stood there for a few seconds, looking at Fatih, who was sitting on one of the chairs used by mechanics, which he had conveniently placed just a few meters away from the car—close enough to see everything going on but far enough to not have his presence interrupt the hardworking mechanics. She then walked in the direction of Alex, who was loitering a few meters away from Fatih, typing rapidly on his phone.

“Do you have any idea what he is doing? Is he feeling guilty for crashing the car or something?” she asked him.

“Guilt?” Alex repeated the word while tilting his head to face Lisa.

“I mean, that is what I’ve seen young or new drivers feel when they have such a costly crash, but I’ve never seen one react this way,” she said as she pointed to Fatih with her chin.

“Per his words, the crash was a result of the brakes malfunctioning. As for why he is looking like that, when I asked him, he said something weird,” Alex said with a tone that showed he had given up trying to understand the current situation.

When they returned from the medical center, they were immediately briefed on the current condition of the car. As a result of the crash, an entire side of the car had been destroyed, and there was a crack on the gearbox casing, which now needed to be transported from headquarters, meaning that the car wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow, once the replacements for the parts they didn’t have arrived.

As a result, the decision on what they were going to do was left to them, and they were allowed to leave early for the day if they wanted, since he didn’t have a car, and any post-practice briefing on his short time on track was going to take place after the investigation into the crash was done.

When he heard that, Alex expected Fatih would either decide to return to Milton Keynes or go watch the other two drivers and try to learn from watching them. But to his surprise, Fatih just picked a chair, placed it a few meters from his car, and just started watching the ongoing work the mechanics were putting in.

“What did he say?” Lisa asked, fully curious.

“He said he was not planning on missing such a good opportunity to save time, and that is all he said, nothing more,” Alex said, showing that he had tried, but nothing worked.

“Save time?” Lisa tilted her head as she digested the response, trying to see the correlation between saving time and him sitting there watching the process, before she asked, “Maybe put pressure on the mechanics to increase their pace by watching them?”

“I don’t think that is it, because his expression wouldn’t fit that possibility,” Alex said as he pointed to Fatih with his finger.

When Lisa got a closer look at Fatih, she saw he had his head resting on his hands, his face in full focus mode, as if anything other than the car didn’t exist in his eyes. He was fully immersed, his eyes logging everything that was removed from the car as if he was going to be seeing it for the last time, and he wanted to etch it in his memory.

“Geniuses and their weird behaviors,” Lisa said, giving up on trying to find a reason before she left to resume her tasks. She had decided that as long as Fatih’s actions didn’t cause problems or interrupt the mechanics, she was going to let him indulge in them.