Formula 1: The GOAT

Within ten minutes of the press release, a breaking news announcement went out on TRT Haber, Turkey’s national public broadcaster, interrupting the ongoing news program.

”Good morning! We interrupt our scheduled programming for a historic, monumental sports broadcast that will completely rewrite our nation’s athletic history. It is officially over. The wait is done. For the first time in history, a Turkish racing pilot has captured a guaranteed, full-time seat on the Formula 1 grid for the 2021 season,” Can Esirdemir, the TRT news announcer, said with a smile on his face and excitement in his tone.

”Just moments ago, the Red Bull Group in Salzburg issued a stunning global press release confirming that 17-year-old Red Bull junior driver Fatih YILDIRIM has signed an overarching, multi-year driver services contract.

Bypassing every single traditional junior academy constraint, Red Bull has legally guaranteed Fatih a primary race cockpit starting at what will most likely be Round 5 of the season if we are to go by the traditional timing: the legendary 2021 Monaco Grand Prix! This matches the exact weekend he satisfies the FIA age requirements to receive his mandatory F1 Super License.”

As he delivered the news, the feed changed to a picture of Fatih wearing a half-worn racing suit up to his waist, looking at someone outside the picture. The image stayed there for about ten seconds before it moved to another one showing him at the top of a podium receiving his race winner trophy in British F4.

After five seconds, this picture was also replaced with one showing him wearing a suit, receiving his F4 title at the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony in Russia, then one where he was holding the F3 title at the Monaco Ceremony. With each new picture that replaced the previous one, it all showed him on top of the podium.

”This news comes just a few months after the FIA had announced the rejection of his application for an exemption on the age requirements, which had the push of both TOSFED and the Red Bull F1 team as well. But they have now decided to go ahead with the official contract, starting the day he is eligible.

If there are no changes in the timetable, this will make him the second-youngest driver to debut in F1 at 18 years and 4 days old, second only to another driver under the same group, Max Verstappen, who debuted at 17 years and 166 days old.

Had his request for exemption been allowed, he would have been the youngest driver to ever debut in F1,” the reporter went on, detailing things as the research team delivered him the points he needed to highlight, as this was something the entire country was going to be extremely proud to have achieved.

After a few more breakdowns, he finally said, ”Joining us live in the studio to break down the sheer scale of this achievement is the Senior Representative of the Turkish Automobile Sports Federation (TOSFED). Welcome, Mr. Yılmaz. Walk us through the atmosphere inside the federation right now.”

”Thank you, Can. To be frank, the phones at the federation headquarters have completely melted down over the last twenty minutes. My hands are still shaking. We have spent decades working, building tracks, and training young talents with the ultimate, distant dream of seeing our crescent and star flag flying over an F1 paddock. Today, Fatih made that dream a reality.”

”Does that mean TOSFED has a hand in raising and nurturing him to reach where he is today?”

”We can’t take full responsibility, but we can say with confidence that we have done the most we could from our part, and we are expecting to keep doing that in helping him have everything ready for his super license the moment he turns eighteen, so that by the next race, he will have everything required to remove any obstacle to him participating in that GP.”

”Can you break it down for the viewers what the requirements are that he needs to meet, other than the minimum age requirement?”

”Excellent question. The modern Super License system that the FIA designed was specifically designed to act as a gatekeeper, preventing under-qualified drivers from buying their way onto the grid, and age is merely the first checkpoint. To legally race, Fatih must meticulously satisfy four strict regulatory criteria.

The first and the biggest hurdle for junior drivers is the 40 super license points, which, for Fatih, is the easiest hurdle, an even easier one than the age requirement, since he already has more than fifty points from winning both the British F4 and Formula 3 championships.

The second is that the driver must hold a valid FIA International Grade A competitive license, but also a valid highway driving license. This is our jurisdiction as the national federation, and we have already fast-tracked his paperwork. Based on his flawless single-seater performance along with a clean disciplinary record, we are already in the process of issuing the Grade A license, which satisfies the second requirement. As for the driver’s license, that will be handled from our side as well in terms of theory and actual driving.

The third condition is the comprehensive theory and regulations exams, which the FIA requires the driver to pass, both written and oral, on the International Sporting Code and F1 Sporting Regulations. Considering he is someone who has maintained the top position in his class despite racing, we are confident that he will pass this exam without much difficulty, leaving only the final and the most logistically complicated requirement.

The final one is the requirement for the driver to complete a 300-kilometer real-world mileage test. This is a condition that the FIA put in place to act as the physical and undeniable proof that the driver can handle a 1000-horsepower hybrid car safely at a representative speed in a modern F1 car, and they must be completed within a period of two days.

And while the final condition has no minimum age, it has an expiration date of 180 days between the drive and the official super license application date. So we can’t do it earlier, and we will have to wait until 2021 to do it, but that doesn’t stop us from starting the preparations now. We are already in discussion with Fatih’s and Red Bull’s side to see when the perfect date to do it will be and where.

”When saying ’where,’ do you mean there is a chance that it can be done in Turkey, along with his driver’s license test?” the reporter asked with high expectations.

”That is not yet set in stone, though it is something within our considerations if we can make the logistics and the timetable for it to even be possible to become a reality,” the spokesperson said with a smile on his face.

The segment went on for more than half an hour after the representative bid farewell to the broadcast, as they now started discussing his driving history, showing videos from his YouTube channel of when he was just a five-year-old in his first race, including his rapid promotion under TOSFED’s supervision before he went international.

They gave a detailed breakdown of all the achievements he had managed to accomplish, showing pictures he had taken at his school where he was sitting in a kart with all the trophies he had won up to that point surrounding him, before reminding the viewers that he had won more than fifty of them since this picture was taken, and ending the discussion with the promise of a more detailed breakdown and history, along with a broadcasting of Fatih’s races he had driven in Turkey to see how the driver was when he was young, while also promising to provide more information before ending the program.

At the same time, the TRT SPORTS side of things was already on the move to make changes to their schedule. They went through the race videos they had received from TOSFED for any irregularities while also reaching out to Fatih’s side, trying to license his YouTube videos for broadcasting, along with Liberty Media, to try to license his docuseries for broadcast on the channel.

They were planning on blowing it out of proportion, more than they would have even done under normal conditions, as the country at the moment needed something that would raise their national pride.

In Turkey, sports success is deeply intertwined with national pride, and having a 17-year-old Turkish teenager bypass what has mostly been a European establishment was a big deal. For him to become both the first Turkish driver and also the second Muslim driver meant this was something that was going to be considered a source of pride by not only Turkish viewers but the entire MENA region, which was now increasingly more interested in F1, with some of them already hosting races while others were planning on doing so in the next season.

This also included countries like Azerbaijan, with about 97% of the entire population being Muslim and having a very close connection to Turkey; Malaysia, which had been hosting races at the legendary Sepang International Circuit and has more than 60% of the population being Muslim; and the largest possible single-country market, Indonesia, which is home to more than 240 million Muslims and a country where 62% of the local population actively identifies as passionate racing fans, and is also one of the largest F1 markets due to its population volume and interest in the sport.

They had the opportunity to turn all of them into fans of Fatih, so they were pulling out all the stops to make that a reality. After all, the bigger the support he had, the better for both sides, as that was also what TOSFED and a directive that came from the government practically stated.