Formula 1: The GOAT

Donning his team’s yellow kit, he arrived at the media pen, arranged like a production line to allow a driver to move from one TV station to another without wasting time. They were set up next to one another, with some drivers already there and some yet to arrive.

The first media pen, for F1 TV, was empty, and one of the on-track officials pointed for him to move towards it to start his interview. So, with Eve at his side, Fatih walked towards them and officially marked the start of his first official interview as an F1 driver.

”Welcome,” the F1 TV reporter said as Fatih arrived at their pen, raising his hand and waving at them. Eve removed her phone, opened the audio recorder, and put it close to Fatih’s mouth while making sure she was out of the camera view.

”Thank you,” Fatih answered as he leaned into the railing, using his hands to hold it for support.

”How does it feel for your first race?” the reporter asked, starting with an easy question to ease him into it before getting to the serious ones.

”Excited is the feeling taking up the majority of what I’m feeling.”

”Your first race is at Monaco, which most people consider the worst possible track for someone to have their Formula 1 debut. There are no runoff areas, walls everywhere, a car that is wider, longer, and faster than anything you have ever raced on this circuit before.

Are you approaching Sunday as a learning exercise, or do you genuinely believe there is a result available to you this weekend?” the reporter asked, immediately jumping to the serious questions, not planning on wasting too much time since they had less than five minutes with Fatih.

”Both the team and I believe that although the track is less than ideal to experience the car for the first time, there is still something to be gained during the three free practices we will have around here on Thursday and Saturday. Although the team is very conservative, I believe there is still an opportunity for good results, considering I have driven on this track with this car in the simulator, so long as the correlation feels good.”

”Many people argue that it was not a good move for the team to remove a rookie who was doing very well to bring in a new one. Some even argued that you should wait until after the Azerbaijan weekend, which is also very unforgiving, for you to make your debut at the French Grand Prix, which is a traditional circuit that is more forgiving. What can you say about that?”

”Everyone’s idea about something is limited by the amount of information regarding the situation that they have. The same is true for the team, which I believe made the decision to go ahead with me debuting here in Monaco based on the information they have. So, I choose to believe the team’s judgment rather than those who do not have the amount of information the team has regarding my performance, and I believe they will change their minds at the end of this weekend, so long as I perform well.”

Surprised by the way he answered, the reporter still moved to his next question. ”The tire temperature data from Istanbul had engineering departments across the paddock running simulations before the paint was dry on the press conference. Paul Monaghan, Andrew Shovlin, people who don’t get excited easily, were all looking at it. In your own words, what were you actually doing that produced that data?” he asked, moving from the Monaco-related questions to questions related to his 300km drive.

Following his drive in Istanbul, the data shown from it had caused and was still causing quite a frenzy in the paddock due to the number of anomalies and interesting things that kept being discovered by the teams. But among all those things, the temperature anomaly on the tires was the most interesting one.

”I just did my best to make sure the tire temperature remained within the operating window and didn’t exceed or fall below that window. It is something that I managed to perfect while working in the simulator, practicing on the current car since last year, giving me enough time and data to make adjustments until I could do it consistently across different profiles of corners...”

Fatih took his time answering the questions but stopped shy of explaining exactly how he was doing it, since it wasn’t necessary, as anyone who was curious about it would already know.

The reporter asked a few more questions before the interview came to an end, and Fatih moved to the next booth, where the Sky Sports crew was waiting for him with a smile on their faces.

Without much suspense, the questions were largely the same, just phrased differently, and sometimes were almost one-to-one, since their audience was largely curious about the same things as well. He answered them as he previously had, with a smile on his face, but to his surprise, an unexpected question was asked by the ESPN reporter.

”Is there a reason you specifically chose number 95?”

”I wanted to choose 99, but it is still being used by Giovinazzi, so I had to settle with 95, which is also the number of one of my favorite characters in movies who is also a driver,” he said with a smile, as he was finally asked a question he had wanted to answer.

Following that, he continued moving to the next channel, until he finally arrived at the non-English-speaking channels, starting with one that he had a good relationship with but also one that was always going to be on his side: TRT Spor. To live up to that expectation, their questions were quite respectfully and enthusiastically worded to give him the best opportunity to answer in a favorable light, as he answered them with the same level of respect and enthusiasm they provided him while speaking Turkish.

Once he was done, he moved to Canal+, where, to the surprise of a few individuals, he answered their questions in French that sounded very fluent and no different from a native speaker.

He did the same for Sport Bild/Sky German, who also reacted with nearly the same level of surprise to his German that sounded native.

However, none were as surprised as beIN SPORTS when he answered their questions in fluent Arabic, causing nearly everyone who heard him to drop their jaws. The interview paused for a moment since the reporter couldn’t come back to themselves to resume asking the questions he had prepared.

Thankfully, that didn’t last long, as they managed to slightly recover to continue with their interview. Finally, Fatih finished his interviews, and now only the FIA press conference remained, one that would take at a minimum half an hour with both Max and his teammate, whom he had yet to see due to conflicting schedules, Pierre Gasly.