Formula 1: The GOAT

”How does it feel?” Alex asked, leaning into the changing room as Fatih finally donned the official racing suit of Helios AlphaTauri that had his number, name, and flag.

”It feels quite good. Looks like the measurements aren’t outdated yet,” Fatih said as he let the upper part of the race suit hang at his waist, leaving only the long-sleeved fireproof undershirt.

”Here is your helmet,” Alex said as he brought in a box that contained the helmet the team had brought with them ahead of time.

”In the picture, it looked amazing. Let’s see how it came out,” Fatih said as he rubbed his hands, looking forward to the new helmet he would be using. It was different from the one he had used on his 300km drive, as that was a special one-off helmet.

”Oooh, it came out amazing,” he said as he opened the box and saw the helmet that had glittering all over it, as it was donned in a rose color.

”Why rose color?” Alex asked as he looked at the helmet, despite being very impressed.

”My mother’s name translates to ’rosebud’ or ’a petal of a rose,’ hence the color,” Fatih said as he ran his hand over the helmet.

”I assume the blue and pink lines are for the twins?” Alex asked, raising his eyebrows, as he was very surprised at the direction Fatih had gone with his first race helmet design.

”You would be correct,” he said as he returned it to the box.

”How many of them did they make?”

”Five of them.”

”They are going all out,” Fatih said with a chuckle, knowing that the team was footing the entire bill for the custom paint job, which cost thousands of dollars, while the teams themselves received the helmets for free as a high-profile promotion from the helmet makers.

”You are going to go through at minimum twelve of them this year, so this is quite a good start,” Alex said, carrying the box as they started heading towards the studio to start the shoot.

......

”Do you have any poses in mind?” the director asked Fatih as he stood in front of the large green screen that was being lit by large lights.

”I do have a few that I’ve thought about over my life,” Fatih said as he scratched the back of his head, as among those ideas were ones he had come up with in his previous life as well.

”Let’s hear them and see which of them we will shoot, and from that, we will later decide which one will be used on the intro and other video animation sequences,” the director said as he walked towards his chair, ready to listen to what Fatih had on his mind.

With the stage now left to him, Fatih started listing them one after another, spending five entire minutes going through them as he also showed mockups.

Everyone in the room was silent as they listened, not because all of them were focused, but because no one expected the number of different poses he had in mind.

Once he was done, the director looked at his watch. ”I like quite a few of them, but since we have only twenty minutes remaining, let’s start now in the order you spoke about, and we will stop once the time is over. Are you okay with that?”

He could really tell this was someone who had spent a lot of time thinking about these poses. He knew Fatih had come up with them after thinking carefully, and he looked very excited when he talked about them, so he just decided to shoot as many as possible.

”Yes,” Fatih answered, his voice still containing his childish excitement.

”Okay, Action...”

Thanks to Fatih having practiced all of these poses again and again, they managed to go through each of them very rapidly, repeating them only to get a different angle. This allowed them to go through about fifteen of them before their time came to an end, and Fatih had to head to the next studio to start his photoshoot.

Unlike in the video studio, in the photo studio, there was no freedom of poses, since these images were going to be used in very specific areas, requiring him to follow the poses as directed by the photographer. It took an entire half hour before they were finally done. Thanks to doing the signing of merchandise and the team content ahead of time, he finally had a short break window before he had to go for the FIA interview.

While he was waiting, another group of people was already getting to work the moment the pictures he had taken just moments ago were touched up and ready for use.

The Monaco race organizers took the pictures and immediately started printing them, while another team was already working on removing any and all of Yuki Tsunoda’s signage from every part of the track, even the parking garage.

Once the images were done printing, the team started working and placing them in all the places where Yuki’s had been removed, making sure it looked as if it had been like that from the start.

Pictures and videos of these people making the changes appeared online as fans on the track took and posted them, which was quite painful for fans of Yuki Tsunoda.

Fatih, who felt like he had only just started resting, had to wake up and leave the Energy Station, heading to the media pen to start his expected 45-minute interview session across about fifteen media companies.

Among them was TRT Spor, which, with Fatih’s debut expected to take place this year, had signed the broadcasting rights for F1 in Turkey. This also allowed them to send their reporters and TV crew to the track for all their planned shows in the lead-up to the different sessions, along with their commentators who would commentate on the Turkish feed in Turkish for the viewers watching for free.