Formula 1: The GOAT

“You have to be kidding me,” Jack Doohan said, wondering if he was dreaming as a result of what he was seeing in his rearview mirrors.

Thinking he was hallucinating, he turned back to look ahead, focusing on his driving but pushing the car slightly more than he had grown accustomed to. The instruction he had been given was to slowly increase his pace the more confident he got in the car, which is what he had been doing since yesterday. He’d had more than the initially planned time due to Fatih’s crash, a direct consequence of him pushing the car too far before he could understand it.

As a result of that crash, both Jack and Dennis had chosen to take a more conservative approach by increasing their vigilance and reducing the speed at which they increased their pace. But even with that, he could say with confidence that he was already pushing to the maximum he could with his current experience, which had allowed him to clock the fastest lap ever set in the entire practice session.

Like any other driver, he knew that the current lap time was not enough to satisfy him because he knew that he was not yet at the maximum possible lap time on the track with the car he had. So he continued pushing more and more with each lap, which had resulted in his going off the track quite a few times. But in all of those times, he managed to rejoin the track without much problem and resume his pursuit of pace.

By doing that, he had lost a few seconds of time here and there each time he went off the track, but he knew that was not enough time for Fatih to catch up to him. That’s why he had chalked up seeing a car in his rearview on the Hangar Straight to be an illusion.

For the next few corners, his worries were quenched. At the end of the Hamilton Straight (start-finish straight), he tried to take the corner flat out but ended up being forced to lift for a moment, still failing to keep the car on track as it sent him wide onto the tarmac runoff before he rejoined. He immediately regretted looking at the mirrors near the end of the straight.

He drove looking forward with full focus for the next few corners, being more careful and conservative in his braking as he had broken his flow, until he reached the Wellington Straight. Only then did he get a moment of relief as he recollected himself, focused on what came next. But just as he was looking at the distance markers, his eyes drifted for a moment into the rearview mirror once again. And as if fate was messing with him, the car he had thought he was imagining was actually on the same straight as him, in a matter of just ten laps since he entered the track.

“What is the gap between Fatih and me?” he finally asked after going through the Brooklands and Luffield corners, his heart beating more than usual as he looked back and forth between the road and the rearview mirror.

{The gap is eleven seconds,} came the response from James.

“What? How did he reduce a minute gap in ten laps?”

…….

James himself found it unbelievable how that gap was reduced within that short period of time. The first lap Fatih had driven, starting from the pit lane, had shaved off five seconds. But that was a result of a mixture of Jack going off track and losing two seconds, with Fatih setting a lap time that was two seconds faster, allowing him to reduce the gap by five seconds.

If the initial lap was understandable, the second one was surprising. On Fatih’s first-ever full lap around the Silverstone track, he was only five-tenths off Jack Doohan’s fastest lap. On the second lap, he beat the time by more than a tenth; on the third, by three-tenths; on the fourth, by more than five-tenths; and on the next one, by seven-tenths of a second. That time was increasing with each lap as the fuel in the car was being spent, reducing the weight penalty he was carrying at the start of his track time.

The consistency he was driving with, along with Jack Doohan’s mistakes, combined to allow him to shave forty-nine seconds within those ten laps, and he didn’t seem intent on changing that anytime soon.

“You went off the track quite a few times and lost time in those areas, while he didn’t, allowing him to gain against you,” James answered Jack’s question, shifting all the blame to him going off the track, knowing that saying anything other than that would mess with his mentality and might result in him not being able to focus on finishing his session if he was told that Fatih was faster than him by more than a second on average and nearly all of the laps he had driven were faster than his fastest lap.

{Understood. I will be more careful,} Jack Doohan responded on the radio, showing that the answer had somehow managed to calm him, as it made him think that the reduced gap was a result of his pursuit for more time and not anything else.

James didn’t respond as he was now back to focusing on Fatih’s telemetry screen, showing how much confidence he was driving with, as if he knew the track inside and out.

……..

James’s thought wasn’t completely wrong about him knowing the track inside and out, as it was the first track he had bought since he entered the simulation, making it his default home ground. Although Apollo had him training on specific karting tracks, that didn’t prevent them from taking regular drives around Silverstone for more technical, back-and-forth battles, where the kart had enough space to be pushed to the limit of what it could realistically do.

It was forced to reach max speed and sustain it on the Hangar Straight, making it advantageous for the one trailing behind as they gained additional speed if they slipped into the slipstream. This led to him knowing the track like the back of his hand.

As a result, although the types of cars were different, the racing line was nearly the same, and with the lap times being only a few seconds apart, it allowed him to use his understanding to remove the track-learning phase and immediately enter the car-understanding phase, which for him was no different than the pushing phase.

He was fully focused as he tried to ingrain all of the new data his body was collecting through Invictus as he pushed the Hankook tires to their limit, wanting to see their durability and how much punishment they could handle, which also coincided with his intention of pushing the car to the limit. This resulted in him continuously gaining time against Jack Doohan with each new lap, and it wasn’t long before he found himself with a two-second gap between them.

…….

Helmut Marko was currently watching the ongoing live test, which was being broadcast all the way back to Milton Keynes. At the moment, he was fully focused on the main screen showing Fatih starting his twentieth lap, with Jack Doohan having started his thirtieth lap just two seconds ago.

To anyone watching, it was obvious that Fatih was definitely going to catch up to him on this lap, as he had been shaving a second each lap chasing Jack, which had dumbfounded everyone watching it happen. Helmut was currently sitting at the edge of his seat, wanting to see if Fatih was going to bring his aggressive attack style from the start or if he was going to be more careful now that the cars were more powerful and it was his first time driving them.

And from the start of the lap, things were already getting interesting as Fatih had immediately tucked behind Jack’s car, benefiting from the slipstream on the start-finish straight. Everyone watching knew that as the straight was rapidly coming to an end, Fatih, in the following car was going to lose time if he stayed in the slipstream while taking Turn 1.

Although it was an easy flat-out corner when the car was in clean air, while following another car, the front wings are not loaded with enough clean air to make flat-out possible, forcing the following car to lift for a moment or risk understeering and going off the track, losing more time. The other option was to get out of the slipstream before the corner, but that immediately placed one into a drag penalty as he would lose all of the advantage, and if you didn’t have good control, you might have a problem as well.

There was a third option, which was the fastest, but none of those watching even considered it an option a driver on his first try would take or even know in the first place. But that was exactly the option Fatih took. He moved the front wing outside the slipstream, but not all of it, only about fifty percent, which was enough to remove the understeer he would have had if he remained fully tucked in. But by doing that, the front wing was instantly met with a gust of clean air, and just as he started turning, the characteristics of oversteering appeared as a result of his choice, since the turning side was in clean air, giving it more bite than the side still in the slipstream.

Immediately sensing it, Fatih adjusted his turn, putting the steering angle differently than all of the other times he took the corner, saving the car from oversteering and sending him looking where he came from. At the same time, he took the corner at full throttle, benefiting from the slipstream, reducing the gap even further to only 0.8 seconds as he corrected his steering. The two cars approached the Farm curve with Fatih remaining in the slipstream, reducing the gap through the speed advantage through the curve and the following short straight leading to the village.

Everyone who was watching and knew about motorsports found themselves not having enough time to react to the skill shown on Turn 1, as they knew clearly that the entire sequence since Turn 1, Abbey, and Farm Curve was Fatih setting himself up for an overtake in Turn 3, Village, which was approaching fast.

Fatih, who had remained in the slipstream, immediately used the advantage he had gained, moving out of the slipstream to the right side of the track as the cars were now side-by-side heading into Village, approaching the braking markers. The Village turn was a heavy braking zone where the car needed to go from 140 MPH down to 70 MPH, so it was now a battle of nerves of who could brake later and keep the car on the track.

Both Fatih and Jack didn’t look intent on being the first to brake as they held out as the cars passed the hundred-meter brake marker, which was where they usually braked for a safe turn. Neither of them braked even after they passed the seventy-five-meter brake marker. As the fifty-meter brake marker approached, they both knew that if they braked at that point, they were going to go off the track.

This time, it was Fatih who braked first, the moment the car reached the seventy-meter marker and passed the hump on the track, which compressed the suspension. Fatih hit the brakes aggressively, taking advantage of the compression to get more grip to avoid the tires from locking up as he immediately started adjusting the brake force to match the loss of downforce.

But the same couldn’t be said for Jack Doohan, who braked later, at sixty meters to the corner, with the front tires immediately locking up as he had to compensate for the short distance. This allowed Fatih to pass him as he took the Village corner with ease. By the time he recovered and took the corner with the slightly vibrating car, Fatih was already in the lead, setting up for The Loop corner, completely cementing his lead.

“Wow,” that was what was going through the minds of all those watching the feed, at seeing the mental game the drivers were playing with one another, despite still being rookies.