Formula 1: The GOAT

{Box for fuel and break,} James’s voice was heard on Jack Doohan’s radio as he tried to push more and more.

“What is the gap to Fatih?” Jack Doohan asked. Even though he was on the straight, his breathing was very clearly labored, showing how much he was pushing both himself and the car.

{Ten seconds,} was the only response he received, just as he took Stowe corner before immediately orientating himself to the pit entry, returning to the pit lane without saying anything in response.

As he passed the pit limiter line, he activated it, immediately dropping his speed to the minimum as he slowly approached where the mechanics were waiting for him before he came to a full stop. He immediately unbuckled his belt and slowly rose from the seat, getting out of the car as the mechanics placed dry ice-filled fans on the engine intake to prevent it from overheating. He took off his helmet.

“Whoooooooo,” he finally sighed as he took heavy breaths, his face and hair wet from sweat. His eyes turned to the pit wall, seeing Dennis still sitting there, not showing any intention of going to the track as he was supposed to. He was still in the middle of a conversation with their debrief teacher, who was now pointing at several parts of the screen, making it clear that they were still in the middle of a debrief despite having left the track more than fifty minutes ago.

“Is he not going to join the track?” he turned to one of the mechanics who were in the process of pushing the car, now already on dollies, into the garage.

“He said he wasn’t planning on joining the track until after lunch, planning to study Fatih’s telemetry during that time,” the response, instead of coming from the mechanics, came from their teacher, who was walking towards him from the pit wall, having already heard the question. The mechanic who was about to answer just nodded to Jack before he resumed pushing the car into the garage with his fellow mechanics.

“Do you need rest, or are you still energetic enough to start a post-race debrief?” their teacher asked him as he handed him a bottle of a handmade energy drink, specifically made for the test to allow for drivers to rapidly recover following each intense session.

Just as he was about to answer that he needed a moment to recollect himself, he heard Fatih’s car approaching. As he turned, he saw it entering the Hamilton Straight. He followed it with his head as it reached max speed, approaching the corner before taking Turn 1 flat out as he slowly disappeared from view, leaving only a sound that was also fading with each passing second. He immediately changed his mind, turning to their teacher and saying, “No, I’m fine, we can start immediately.”

No driver wanted to accept that someone else was better; that was the level of competitiveness they needed to have in order to survive the cutthroat world of motorsports, and even more so when in equal machinery and circumstances. So, all of the tiredness in his body disappeared as he now wanted to study every bit of telemetry from Fatih’s laps to see where he could improve and where he was making mistakes and losing time.

With his drink in his right hand and helmet in his left, he followed his trainer to the pit wall to start the debriefing. It seemed like Dennis was in the middle of individual observation, as his eyes were locked on a screen that had both a still camera view in a small window, another one showing the steering inputs, another showing the telemetry matched in real-time, with a fourth one having the track map with the real-time GPS location of Fatih. Dennis looked like a man on a mission, and Jack knew that was the level of focus he needed to have because Fatih was already a second a lap faster than them, meaning there was at least a second worth of lap time that they were missing.

…….

“Did Dennis join the track?” Fatih asked on the radio as he approached Maggotts and Becketts.

{Negative, you are alone on the track,} James responded.

With a clear indication that he was alone on the track, he was now already amidst the adjustment process of this new car. The moment he entered Hangar Straight, he closed his eyes, knowing he had at least eleven seconds before Stowe corner arrived. He pushed his Invictus to the limit, trying to see how many different things he could distinguish and feel individually in the car.

The moment he closed his eyes, the sensitivity of his Invictus senses increased by a few levels as he started receiving multitudes of feedback from different parts of the car. His first focus was on the tires as he slowly tried to isolate them as his main focus. He started feeling their compression over the surface as the tire surface stuck and unstuck over the uneven track surface on the straight. After about two seconds, he started to isolate the other forces that were being instilled on the tire, but as he tried to tap further into them…

“OPEN YOUR EYES!” Apollo shouted at him. He immediately responded by opening his eyes and braking on instinct, but despite the rapidity of the situation, he didn’t lock the tires as he took the corner entering Vale, though his entry line was compromised, losing him a few tenths of lap time. By the time he exited Stowe into the pit entry straight, he drove with his eyes open but still tried to overlay the senses he had felt on the tire.

For a moment, he felt them, but just as they were about to start making full sense, the Vale chicane finally arrived, which he took calmly, following the usual speed. He took the final corner flat out before entering the Hamilton Straight, where he once again closed his eyes and tried to lock in the feeling he felt, which he was sure was most likely the other forces the tire faces during a lap.

“Tell me when to turn,” Fatih said to Apollo, making it clear that he wanted to try feeling the forces on the tires during a corner.

“No, I’m not doing that for you. I will just tell you to open your eyes… AND OPEN YOUR EYES!” Apollo said, showing that he was not planning on fully indulging Fatih’s plan, as it was a very foolish course of action that had more detriment than benefits. But he wasn’t planning on putting an entirety of it to a stop.

It wasn’t much of a problem if he did it on the straights since he could intervene if he was going off track, but it was not the same for the corners, as the risk scale increased by magnitudes, along with the amount of harm that would be caused to Fatih if he were to try it in the real world and crash. He was going to have to take the corners fully focused on his senses in the simulation once he was done with the disassembly and reassembly of the car, but for now, doing it on the straights in the real world wasn’t much of a problem.

Fatih didn’t argue about it, as he realized that he had almost got too into it and put his life at needless risk. So he limited himself to doing it on the straights, seeing as how Apollo didn’t stop that, and with Silverstone having more than five long straights, it was the perfect track to focus on them.

……….

“Sir, Fatih is doing something weird,” one of the monitoring engineers in Milton Keynes said, reporting to Helmut, who was looking at a telemetry overlay between the three drivers’ fastest laps, which was showing where the other drivers were not matching Fatih’s pace.

“What is it?” he said as he raised his head to face the engineer.

“I don’t know if it is the angle or the light, but it looks like Fatih is closing his eyes on the straights for the past few laps,” the engineer said as he handed Helmut a tablet that had a video already selected and waiting for him to play it.

Helmut received the tablet with his eyebrows raised. He pressed play, showing the cockpit camera focused on the driver’s helmet. Thanks to the weather still being cloudy, Fatih had elected to go with a helmet with clear visors, making it easy to see his eyes at the right angle if the reflection of the light wasn’t too much.

After a moment, the septic Helmut paused and replayed the video from the start, as if he was having a difficult time believing what he was seeing. But no matter how many times he did it, it clearly showed Fatih closing his eyes at the start of the straight and opening them moments before he braked for a corner or just took a corner if it was a flat-out corner.

“What does the telemetry show?” he asked.

Instead of answering, the engineer just slid to the next video that had the screen recording of two different telemetries, making it clear that one of them was with his eyes closed and another one with them open.

“Tell them to tell him to stop doing that. We can’t have him kill himself before our investment is recovered,” Helmut said the moment he saw that there was no difference in telemetry. To him, it didn’t matter whatever the reason was; it was just plain stupid and dangerous driving.