Formula 1: The GOAT

”There is definitely an issue, so you better find it,” Max Verstappen could be heard on the radio that was being replayed on the screen as he complained of a possible problem with his car that the team had told him there wasn’t.

The race had finally resumed after one lap under the Virtual Safety Car as the marshals cleared up the dirt that Mick Schumacher had brought onto the track, and thankfully, there wasn’t any more interruption to the race.

Gasly had somehow still managed to keep his P3 position for five straight laps, keeping Bottas at bay, while Yuki, on the other hand, had dropped down to P9 after being caught off guard on the VSC restart.

........

”Something is weird,” Fatih said as he looked at the telemetry coming from Gasly’s car.

His voice was low enough that no one could hear what he had said, but he didn’t care as he looked at the telemetry again before he added, ”Why are you doing this now?”

From Gasly’s telemetry traces, he could see that he was trying to imitate his driving, but it was still at rudimentary levels due to the different ways he was emulating him.

”That will damage the tires more,” he said when he looked at the type of different lines he was taking through the corners. It seemed that although he looked at the data of Fatih’s driving, he had yet to understand why Fatih was driving in a certain manner through each corner for each lap.

He was still mixing the racing lines, yet to understand that the way he took turn one determined all the remaining corners. Still, he was just missing things and taking lines in some corners that overstressed a certain part that he had already stressed a few corners ago.

It was the reason he didn’t explain it fully, even when the simulator engineers had asked him, and only gave them basic answers. He knew that with drivers’ hunger to extract every bit of performance from the car, they would try to emulate it as soon as possible, and he wanted to do it gradually. But it seemed that was a mistake since Gasly was trying it under race conditions while having a faster car chasing him.

With his brows raised, he couldn’t help but just watch since there was no way for him to radio the team on the track. Although he could use one of the team members’ radios, he didn’t want to interrupt others, but also because he wondered if Gasly would realize his mistake or continue with it until it was too late.

Due to the safety car and VSC, these tires should have been able to go all the way to lap 18, if not 20, but with his actions, they were going to get chewed up very fast. Not even half a minute later, Bottas, who had been biding his time, overtook him on the long straight, with him not having an answer to the move.

{I have no grip! What is wrong?} Gasly shouted on the radio as he slid into turn one, having to counter-steer, with Bottas now ahead of him.

{We are checking. We will be back to you,} his race engineer, Pierre Hamelin, answered.

Following the answer, Fatih could see a few people clicking very fast and moving from one page to another as they looked through different data points, trying to pinpoint the cause of the reported loss of grip.

.....

”Do you have an answer?” Gasly asked on the radio again as he went through Turn 10. Due to the lack of grip, it reduced how tight of a line he could take, losing him time to the Ferrari chasing him.

In a bid to regain control, he got on the accelerator faster, which, thanks to the wide line he was forced to take, meant he didn’t have wheelspin as the car started rapidly accelerating on the long straight. As he reached the middle of the long straight, he could see Leclerc’s red Ferrari in his rear-view mirrors, knowing that he was going to suffer if they didn’t find him a solution fast.

”Why are we not pitting when I’m losing time?” he asked again on the radio when there was no answer from the team, which irritated him more than anything. As he turned into turn eleven, the car immediately oversteered, and in his attempt to counter-steer, he went wide, hitting the curbs and into the gravel before he tried returning to the track.

”Fuck!!!” he said before even rejoining the track, knowing that he was fucked as he could feel clearly that the front right had suffered a puncture. ”I have a puncture?” he said before he slowed down and started the long journey into the pit lane.

...

Fatih watched, still with his brows raised, as Gasly, who was now being shown on the main feed, drove slowly as he went through the corners, having already reported a puncture. He didn’t know how he should feel, but the most dominant feeling was that he was not happy at all for the team losing points needlessly because someone tried to experiment on the track.

But on the other hand, he knew the only reason Gasly tried it was most likely because he had seen a podium on the table, and he knew that by being able to replicate the feat Fatih had shown was possible in the simulator into the real world, he would have a chance in the battle against Bottas. But unfortunately for him, he couldn’t do it well, and with what he was trying to do, not doing it perfectly was the same as deliberately doing it badly, and he was now living the consequences of it.

With Yuki in P9, he now remained the only driver from the team with a chance of coming out of it with points.

.....

”HAMILTON LOOKS LIKE HE’S JUST DONE ENOUGH. EXTRAORDINARILY, HE HASN’T WON THE OPENING RACE OF THE SEASON SINCE MELBOURNE 2015. HE’S WON THE CHAMPIONSHIP IN SIX OF THE LAST SEVEN YEARS. HE STARTS THIS YEAR GOING FOR A RECORD-BREAKING EIGHTH WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP.

HE HAS BEEN PUT UNDER IMMENSE PRESSURE BY MAX VERSTAPPEN AND RED BULL HERE TONIGHT. SIR LEWIS HAMILTON, AS HE IS NOW, CROSSES THE LINE AND WINS THE BAHRAIN GRAND PRIX, WITH MAX VERSTAPPEN FROM RED BULL COMING HOME TO TAKE SECOND PLACE.

THEY WERE THE PRE-RACE FAVORITES, BUT BY THE SLENDEREST OF MARGINS, JUST SEVEN-TENTHS OF A SECOND, THEY’VE BEEN BEATEN BY MERCEDES TONIGHT. VALTTERI BOTTAS IS GOING FOR THE FASTEST LAP OF THE RACE TO TRY AND STEAL AN EXTRA POINT AWAY FROM RED BULL AND VERSTAPPEN, WHO HAS THE FASTEST LAP AS IT STANDS AT THE MOMENT.

BUT THE FIREWORKS ARE GOING OFF AROUND THE BAHRAIN INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT, AND MARTIN BRUNDLE, THOSE LAST FEW LAPS HAVE LIT THE SPARK FOR 2021,” Croft commented excitedly as the leading two, who had been fighting for the five final laps straight, crossed the finish line.

”Yeah, what an epic end! It looked like Verstappen had it all under control, but as soon as he got close, he went for the big move but finished it while he was out of the track, forcing him to give back the position, and from there on, Hamilton controlled it perfectly,” Brundle said as the feed replayed the overtake that Max had done into turn one.

”As you can see, Valtteri Bottas takes the fastest lap of the race and 15 points for finishing third, ahead of Lando Norris. Great time from him as he comes home fourth for McLaren, with Sergio Perez on his Red Bull debut going from the pit lane to fifth place, ahead of Charles Leclerc, Daniel Ricciardo, and Carlos Sainz. It’s a very good night for McLaren and for Ferrari as well. Yuki Tsunoda claims points on his Formula One debut, becoming the 65th driver to get points on his debut in the sport.

And Lance Stroll comes home to take the final points place ahead of Kimi Räikkönen, Antonio Giovinazzi, Esteban Ocon, George Russell, Sebastian Vettel, and Mick Schumacher, with Sergio Perez taking home the Driver of the Day trophy for the valiant recovery performance he had shown us today after a messy start.”

Fatih listened to the two commentators going through the list of drivers who finished, and he had a strange look on his face. Surprisingly, despite things going differently, the race came to an end in the same order it had happened in his previous life, throwing a wrench into his understanding of how things worked.

He wondered if it was either a coincidence or if some things were set in stone. Although he was leaning toward the former, the latter still held a slight chance of being true, and he needed a few more data points to either fully falsify it or to fully see if it was true, as he hoped it wasn’t.