Formula 1: The GOAT

”We wouldn’t know for sure until qualifying on Saturday, so I can’t say we are in the competition for the top position. More so, it is Ferrari who is in it, considering how they are redirecting the attention to the other two teams while ending the session leading it one and two,” Fatih, standing in the media pen for his Thursday post-session interview, said, answering the question regarding the possibility of them fighting for pole.

”We have seen you constantly driving very close to the walls on the track, which many drivers usually build up to, but you keep doing it from the get-go. Are you not worried about crashing?” the Sky Sports reporter asked him.

”Not really. Each driver and team has their plans that they follow, and for me, this was the plan from the get-go along with my team.”

”How does your first day in F1 feel, having driven these cars across two sessions?”

”Quite good, and it lives up to my imagination, though it would have been better if I could have experienced it in the Bahrain testing week.”

”You are under extremely heavy pressure of expectations from both the team and the fans. What sort of expectations can the team and fans have for qualifying tomorrow?”

”As Vettel said, I have got balls, but none of them are crystal, so I can’t really give a definite possible result when not only is our car pace going to be a determining factor, but things like traffic and other drivers’ crashes are all going to be a factor in my position at the end of the session,” Fatih answered in a calm manner, but his words nearly caused Eve, the press officer holding her phone next to him, to have a heart attack, while at the same time catching the reporters off guard as they started laughing. He remained with just a smile on his face.

He had imagined using that line since his previous life, and an opportunity had presented itself, and he couldn’t miss it.

The interview went on for half an hour as he shifted to the next TV channel every five minutes before he could finally return to the team’s garage for a post-session debriefing.

...

”We have noted everything and will spend today and tomorrow coming up with solutions and implementing them, and you can rest without worries,” Franz said as he brought the FP2 post-session briefing to an end.

The two drivers could now finally leave the garage and head wherever they wanted for the rest of the day, so long as their schedule allowed, and would have a free day tomorrow to complete all of their off-track obligations.

This was quite a large number of them for Gasly and Yuki, who was still in Monaco as a reserve driver in case either Fatih suffered an accident that ruled him out of the race or the same for the other three Red Bull drivers.

When everyone else left the meeting room, the two setup engineers, along with Lisa, Fatih’s chief mechanic, remained in the briefing room with Franz, as they had to come to a decision today so that they could plan how tomorrow was going to take place.

”So the simulation side says we can’t go ahead with it, as it requires a certain type of driver and a large amount of experience to pull the setup off, while the setup side says they are okay with going ahead with it?” Franz asked when he finished hearing what the two telemetry engineers had to say and revealing what the simulation side had reported to him during the FP2 session after spending a few hours driving in the simulator with the setup with both their simulator drivers.

Tap! Tap! Tap! Franz tapped the table rhythmically as his other hand supported his chin, deep in thought, when no one said anything following his summarization of the situation.

With two sides both giving opposite responses, it left only him as the final voting power to decide the direction they would be going, and it wasn’t an easy decision to make at all.

”Can I say something?” Lisa said after about thirty seconds of silence in the meeting room.

”Go ahead,” Franz said, looking at her with slightly hopeful eyes, hoping that she had a reasonable solution.

”From my experience with Fatih since the junior series, he has never asked for a setup that he ended up failing to drive when it was implemented as he requested. This was the same in his first-ever F4 race and remained the same even during his F3 stint. It was as if he had already driven the setup before he came and asked us to implement it for him.

So, rather than being septic about his request, I would suggest we go ahead with it by trusting him, and if he fails to adapt to it, from then on, we can decide whether to veto his requests or not. We should at least trust him first before going against his request. After all, even if he underperforms due to it in FP3, we can just return to the slightly changed setup he had driven in FP2 and go to qualifying with that one, and it won’t be too late then.”

As one of the few people who had experienced firsthand Fatih’s mechanical sense and sensitivity to the car, she couldn’t help but advocate for the team to trust him, as she had a very high confidence that, like in the past, Fatih was not just asking for this to attract attention or without having considered it carefully.

”Mhhh,” Franz hummed upon hearing the answer as he weighed it for another thirty seconds before he finally spoke. ”Let’s go ahead with his request and implement the changes tomorrow, but make sure the mechanics are ready to revert to the previous setup as fast as possible in case things don’t work out. We should at least see what caused Helmut to promote him and make him an official driver as soon as he was eligible.”

Although it looked like it was an easy decision to make and that he was just complicating it without reason, it was not. He was going to be under the scrutiny of both Horner and Helmut based on how the outcome turned out at the end of it.

If Fatih delivered, then it would be good, but if he failed to do so despite following his request, they were going to use it to question him on why he went ahead with such a request from someone who had just driven the car for the first and second time on the same day he made the request.

It wouldn’t lead to him losing his job, but it would chip away at the heavy boulder protecting him, and although a chip is not too destructive, it was still a chip that could be used against him.

However, he still committed to going ahead with it.

.....

Fatih spent an additional half an hour in the garage talking with the mechanics before he and Alex headed to the Energy Station where his father and Elena were waiting for him. They then took their tender and finally returned to their hotel to have dinner and rest for the night.

After spending about an hour video-calling his mother and grandmother, he spent another one talking with Seraphina, who looked more nervous and excited about him achieving his dream than even he might have been. He finally went to sleep and returned to the simulation.

”So how does it feel to truly become an F1 driver?” Apollo asked the moment Fatih joined him in the simulation, as the two of them stood in a carbon copy of the Monaco AlphaTauri garage.

”The interview parts are tiring, but the driving part has definitely lived up to the imagination and even broken it, despite it being only free practice. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of pressure and anxiety I will be feeling compared to the one I felt when I was just watching the drivers in the qualifying session from the other end of the screen,” he said as he remembered the feeling of your favorite driver being at the bottom and in the middle of his final push lap of Q2 with no additional time on the session, making the lap a do-or-die.

It made the viewer pray for there to be no problem, as any yellow flag, red flag, or a car infront would kill the driver’s chances of going through to Q3, making it both a dreadful feeling but also an exciting one when your driver pulled it through and survived into Q3.

Within two days, he was finally going to experience it, but this time he was going to be the one in the cockpit who could either turn it into a bad or an excellent day for those supporting him on the other end of the screen, and the opposite for those who for some reason hated him or didn’t like him.

”Well, time to practice to make that an exciting session and not a nightmare,” Apollo said as he teleported both of them into their cars, ready to start another four hours of driving around the track. He did everything to hinder and be an obstacle on the track for him to keep experiencing the nightmares of qualifying around Monaco with other cars around.

Both Apollo and Fatih were not leaving anything to chance for their approaching qualifying session, since he had a system mission to make his debut with a bang, and that was the target. Nothing below that would be satisfactory.