Formula 1: The GOAT

“As per your request, the information website and business have already been sunsetted a few weeks ago,” she said, starting the conversation.

“How was the reaction?”

“Not good. Nearly unanimously, they all wanted it to continue providing services since they had been benefiting from it for a long time. No one would want to give it up without a fight. But after pushing the blame onto those who took your information and created similar businesses, calling themselves gurus or something, we went ahead with the sunsetting. But we are still receiving emails, with some saying we can even double or triple the price for the monthly subscriptions.”

“There is no need for that. It is a venture that is going to be difficult for me to keep up with when my race season starts, and it’s better to end it while we are on top and not face the platform’s downfall due to poor service,” Fatih said, using his upcoming F4 season as an excuse to close his TC Analytics business.

Although it had given him millions of dollars, which acted as seed capital that resulted in him owning hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, he had decided to sunset it now. There were no more benefits to him risking drastically changing the future of F1, which had already shown some signs over the last year. Someone had leaked a portion of one of his predictions, which people initially took as just a guess, but when more than half of the things written in the post became a reality, it immediately went viral during the race’s final few laps.

A team even changed their strategy to gamble on the predicted situation as they were already out of the points contention positions. They decided to stay out when the safety car was deployed as a result of an accident, while everyone else pitted, as the post predicted a red flag would be issued, essentially giving them a free pit stop and letting them keep all of the benefits from staying out. Thankfully, they were still overtaken when the race restarted and finished in the same position as they did in history.

Upon seeing that, he had realized that he needed to stop it. Any other stopgap measures would not be fully effective, since someone could always create a new social media account and post there for clout. He knew that knowing how things went was one of his unbreakable advantages once he debuted.

Although his entry into the grid would result in the future itself being changed, things like weather and even some accidents that didn’t include the driver whose place he had taken would most likely happen, and that would be very helpful to him. So, to safeguard that future, he killed one of his moneymakers, as the money it generated at the moment wasn’t worth risking the future changing too drastically.

“I agree as well,” Rümeysa said as she slid a bundle of dossiers that was in front of her to Fatih while saying, “This is the loose structure of how I think the family office should be created. See if there is something you need to have included, and if you have a direction you want it to focus on.”

Fatih received the dossier and carefully started going through its contents. From the first page, he couldn’t help but smile, as this was something that was going to make it very easy for him to benefit from and exploit his basic knowledge about the situations he remembered. Currently, the only way he had utilized his knowledge was by creating the news company, the betting company, and buying bitcoins, which was the easiest when it came to exploiting.

But the situation would change in the future because nearly all of his exploitable knowledge, other than things related to motorsports and a few specific situations, wasn’t in-depth enough for him to know exactly what to do, since he only knew general situations that became big enough for him to hear about. This meant he wouldn’t even know how to exploit them.

It was the reason he had been self-studying matters related to the economy, so that he could understand how those major situations would, in turn, affect it and in what way he should position himself to be fully ready to benefit from them, just like he did with Bitcoin.

However, now, with a team of professional and experienced investors who were going to be recruited into the family office to focus on investing and increasing their wealth, he could try and brainstorm with them, acting as if it was a hypothetical situation, and from the impact study of the information, have the team invest boldly, priming themselves to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the situations while at the same time making sure there was no negative backlash towards them, as they were professionals who knew how to navigate the waters of the economy and politics.

“The structure is sound, but is there a way we can fund a research center?” Fatih asked as he continued going through the document.

“Research? About what?” Rümeysa asked, tilting her head as she tried to find any connection between research and anything Fatih did.

“I’m curious about a few things that are not being focused on in-depth, so I want to have a research center that can do the in-depth research on it, as it might be useful in the future,” he said, not directly revealing that he wanted them to research specific things that he knew would be game-changers. Instead of waiting for those who discovered them to appear later, he wanted to have a first-mover’s advantage and be the one who brought them to life in the current time and benefited from them.

“Mhh,” Rümeysa said as she thought about it for a few seconds while Fatih resumed reading the dossier. She then said, “Since it will require things like personnel, funding, buying, renting, or constructing a research center, how about we postpone that until the family office is up and running so that the new team can tackle it much better than us jumping on it now? It will be a few months at most,” she said, postponing it but not immediately striking it down.

She would need to read an in-depth report about what exactly Fatih’s research center idea entailed before she could make a decision on whether to veto it or not, and that report would be one of the first major tasks of the family office.

“No problem, it will give me time to create a list of the things I want to research, so it is better that way,” Fatih said as he set it aside as an unfinished task in his mind. He knew it was going to be costly, but since the cost would be spread over years and not just a lump sum, it wouldn’t be that expensive from the onset. And since the money would be invested and increased, he would not be burdened by it at all.

“Okay,” she said as she noted down Fatih’s request so as not to forget it later.

Other than that, there was nothing that he really wanted to be included, so the moment he finished reading and digesting everything, he gave his mother a thumbs-up.

“And here I thought you were going to jump up and ask me to buy an F1 team, and I was fully prepared to advise you against it,” Rümeysa said as she received the document back from Fatih, her voice carrying relief since none of her worries were brought up at all.

“An F1 team? It wouldn’t be a bad proposition since they are undervalued now,” Fatih said as he rested his head on his hand. But the moment he saw his mother’s expression, he immediately added, “But now is neither the right nor the appropriate time to do that,” to calm her down.

“So you really have thought about it. I’m the one to blame for even bringing it up,” she said as she slapped her forehead with the expression of, of course, it is something that you would have considered.

“I mean, in due time, it would be a very attractive investment, just not now, since I can’t really benefit from it immediately, and it would be years before I can put it to use or have the experience to run it well. And if we can do that, I think it’s better to wait until we are ready to enter as a new team and not buy an existing one,” Fatih explained.

“Good thinking, because our current amount is not enough to sustain an F1 team’s operations while at the same time focusing on other avenues, and since we are not yet fully free to focus on it, we’d better wait for when everything lines up correctly.”

“Though it is going to be very expensive later,” Fatih said in a whisper so that his mother wouldn’t hear what he was saying.

He knew that by the start of the budget cap era, F1 teams that finally started turning a profit would explode in valuation by multiple times. If there were no yearly additional investments required, he would have fought for it, but for now, that money was better utilized if it remained with them and they invested and multiplied it more and more. By the time he was deemed fully ready to enter F1 as a team owner, even if the cost might have ballooned to ten times the current costs, it would still be a cheaper entry relative to the amount of wealth he would have by then.