Formula 1: The GOAT

Fatih remained in a trance for the entirety of the four-hour simulation before Apollo logged him out into a deep sleep. His brain still needed time to assimilate the data it had received. With the data being high-quality and labeled, the brain didn’t waste time trying to figure out which was correct, allowing it to focus solely on assimilation.

The next day, he woke up feeling very tired but still went to school, as he didn’t want his mother to send him to the hospital again if he asked to stay home and rest.

When he returned home after school, he followed his routine by going to the karting track to practice with Seraphina. However, per Apollo’s advice, he didn’t drive the kart; he just watched her drive and gave instructions from the pit lane.

When it was time to sleep, the same thing repeated. He continued driving while Apollo kept changing the tracks after he had gone through all the different conditions for data gathering on a single circuit. Apollo went as far as to spend Fatih’s SP to buy new FIA tracks to ensure he had as many new data points as possible. This went on for an entire week before Apollo finally deemed it enough.

Fatih spent the following two weeks digesting and assimilating the information. Thankfully, the fatigue he felt decreased by nearly half with each passing day thanks to his Sponge Body, which adapted more and more until he could go on with his day as normal. Finally, once a month had passed, he finished assimilating and could now fully use his newly gained knowledge.

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Lap after lap, he delivered nearly identical lap times, differing by only a few hundredths of a second as he went around Silverstone. Anyone seeing this might think Fatih was driving these laps with new tires and an equal fuel tank each time, leading them to believe he was pushing the car to its limit.

Unfortunately, they would be wrong. He was currently driving in a race trim with maximum fuel, yet he maintained the same consistency despite the tires degrading with each lap. He managed to keep the laptimes equal by perfecting a balancing act he had been practicing since his F4 days. He managed the tire grip, which was constantly getting worse, while the car continued to get lighter. He used the initial grip to compensate for the heavy fuel load, slowly adjusting until the roles reversed. He then maintained the same pace despite the tires losing most of their grip because the car was now much lighter after burning through a lot of fuel.

Under the helmet, Fatih had a wide smile as he swerved left and right through the Maggotts and Becketts section of Silverstone. He slowly adjusted his racing line by only a few millimeters, but that itself was enough to change how the tire flexed, altering the spot where it was stressed and had a temperature spike.

Although this change lost him a few thousandths or hundredths of a second, the time loss was regained with a tighter line by a few millimeters in the next turn. This also stressed a different part of the tire, spreading out the wear and allowing the parts that were overstressed on the previous lap to rest and return to optimal condition before being stressed again a few laps later.

It was something he could now do thanks to being able to feel and control the car as if it were part of his body. As a result, on tires that he could previously only hold a pace on for twenty laps by balancing wear and weight, he could now manage for up to five or even seven more laps.

This was because the tire was operating within the same temperature range, not being overstressed due to his changing of how much and where they were stressed each lap, but the biggest reason was the improvement in his smooth inputs. These inputs eliminated as many small slides as possible, the major cause of tires overheating, hardening, or blistering, which starts the downward spiral of their pace.

This massive improvement in extending the tire’s life was a game-changer. It would allow him to push longer than expected and extend a stint without losing too much time, building a tire delta. He could drive even faster on a new set of tires because they would be fitted to an already light car, meaning they could be pushed much harder for the same number of laps.

Alternatively, he could extend them for even longer if he drove at the same pace he did at the start of the race. This made him someone scary to have on track when a race weekend was dictated more by tire degradation than anything else.

This new capability also massively improved his other abilities that were still at the Genius or Ultimate level. Abilities like Setup became even better despite remaining at the same level because he could sense the car much better; a few laps of driving now produced the same input as what previously took him a half-hour session.

His Aquaman ability, which was at Ultimate, benefited as well, as he could tell exactly when the car was about to lose grip. This allowed him to push the car under wet conditions without wondering if he was leaving a grip gap just because of caution.

Apollo, who had overseen this rapid improvement over the entire month, couldn’t help but have a sinister smile on his face as he watched the sharpening of a weapon that was going to tear through the Formula 1 grid when it was fully deployed.

However, while the sharpening was happening, the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom was officially initiated, and Fatih was about to realize his billions of dollars in earnings from his high-risk, high-return gamble that had put his mother under so much stress that she had lost weight from worry.