Formula 1: The GOAT

{BOX BOX BOX} James called on the radio to Fatih as he was at the end of his cooldown lap. Knowing what the intent was, he didn’t ask for a reason, as the crane cam followed him from the entry of the pit lane all the way to the actively waiting crew for a live tire change. He entered the pit box and came to a stop with his car immediately raised while the now-used and battered tires were removed and replaced with similar but new ones.

He was then dropped, and the mechanic at the front moved to the side, clearing the route for him. He immediately engaged the clutch and left the pit lane, all within three seconds, as the crane cam continued following him into the fast lane and the pit exit.

As Fatih, with the brand-new tires, went around the track with the camera following, the feed now showed all of the prepared data regarding his drive as the commentators talked about it.

"His pace throughout the race was brilliant, which reveals more about his focus and concentration than anything else. His neck should have started screaming at him, but considering that on alternating laps he sometimes lifted and sometimes stayed flat-out through Turn 8, he gave himself and the tires a break.

What I think many people will be talking about is the 57-lap drive without changing tires or giving any indication that the tires were losing pace. What do you think made that possible?" the main commentator, Mehmet, turned to the only person in the room with active experience driving competitive cars for answers.

"I think the only one who can answer this question is Fatih himself, and you should definitely ask him in the post-session interview, as I’m curious about the answer myself. But from the amount of information I’ve managed to look at while he was driving, I believe he could have driven a faster lap, but he held back that additional pace for race-length consistent pace," Murat answered, making sure to present his answer very cautiously, as he was not fully sure about it either.

The situation didn’t make much sense to him, as everything he had seen went against the convention of what had been ingrained in his and many other drivers’ minds, so he wanted answers as well.

"So, what you are saying is that he could have driven faster laps, but that would have resulted in the pace dropping rapidly in the later parts of the race. If that is true, which of the two options do you think is the right style to drive a race: a long, consistent one or a very fast but later-dropping one?"

"There is no one definitive style, just like there is no one way to take a corner correctly. Which one you choose is all dependent on the position he is in, the pace of the car he is driving, the pace of the cars around him, the race conditions, and more. But having both of these options at his disposal is going to make him very versatile, so long as he can implement them during the race and it is not limited to drives when he is the only one on the track."

"Thank you very much for that, but now we have to return to the track to see what is waiting for us," Mehmet said as the data that was being shown on the feed disappeared. Fatih arrived on the start-finish straight, having slowed down when he exited the final corner into the straight.

His pace crawled for a moment before he suddenly accelerated, causing the rears to slip, and he started doing burnouts, sending massive clouds of smoke into the air as he let the car move very slowly toward the start-finish line. Everything was shown clearly thanks to the helicopter placing itself at the end of the start-finish straight at a very low altitude with its camera zooming in on Fatih from the front.

After letting the tires burn out and sending smoke into the air for ten seconds, he finally stopped, letting the car glide all the way to the middle of the track before accelerating rapidly but controllably to not lose grip, just before he turned the steering and started doing donuts.

The helicopter that was still at a low altitude recording this slowly started gaining altitude while remaining locked on Fatih, as it started moving to the center of the track to place Fatih below it, giving an upside-down god’s-eye view of him still doing donuts despite having done more than ten rotations, before finally coming to a stop facing the pit wall.

It was quite a spectacle, but a tamed one compared to what was actually planned had the audience been present.

As the smoke surrounding Fatih cleared, he could be seen removing his seatbelt and getting out of the car before standing on top of the Halo, raising his hands in a Y-shape into the air as he celebrated while the photographers allowed on the track took a deluge of photos. He then jumped down to the track, causing a few of them to nearly have their hearts stop at the possibility of him breaking his ankle.

Thankfully, none of that happened as he slowly walked to the portion of the start-finish wall that opened like a gate, thanks to the marshals doing it for him after he came to a stop. With a wave, he walked back to the garage before hugging Lisa, with both of them still wearing helmets and racing overalls, before going around fist-bumping the entire garage.

It was a very exciting event for him, as he had an entire track to enjoy for himself, but it was all thanks to these people, so he made sure to thank them properly.

After a short conversation with the FIA official, where they exchanged brief words, he finally left the garage to wash himself up before changing into a fresh race suit, as he had an entire interview to do.

......

The incident could be said to have been more successful than expected, despite the change in situation that required some aspects of it to be cancelled.

For Red Bull, they had the publicity they loved but also recovered quite a bit of their costs, as the limited-print event merchandise, which was initially planned for both on-track and online sale and then moved to fully online with a large amount of stock already in their warehouse, had sold out just an hour after the sale went online.

Turkish Airlines themselves got more than their money’s worth due to the high publicity they received from both having the naming rights to the event and their massive name on the car’s livery.

The returns on the event were the same for all other sponsors who either took a gamble on it or did it with those expectations in mind.

However, of all of them, the one who had the best return was TRT, as they had millions of people actively watching the event with full focus, providing them with one of their highest viewership ratings for the period other than special occasions like elections and a few other incidents.

To their surprise, quite a large number of them remained even for the post-race interview, where Fatih finally had the chance to answer the questions that many people had accumulated in the lead-up and even during his 300km drive. This was made very clear by the first question asked by one of the motorsports reporters, and the answer left everyone flabbergasted to the point that there were a few seconds of silence in the conference room.

"I managed to do it by knowing the amount of grip I had on the car and pacing how much of it I was demanding from the tire, and having it be in tandem with the amount of fuel I was burning so that I had around the same amount of pace through the session.

I used more grip at the start to compensate for the fuel weight, and in the final stints, the weight of the car was the biggest factor in my pace, considering the tires were on the end of their life cycle. If you top that with the track being continuously rubbered down by me the more I drove, that too helped as well," Fatih said as he answered the question regarding how he managed to maintain only a half-a-second gap between his fastest and slowest lap for the entirety of the event.

It was a question asked out of curiosity, but no one expected to receive a clear answer, since he either couldn’t really explain it or it was a secret advantage of his that gave him an edge on the track, making it impossible for him to reveal it. Having such a unique advantage on track is something every driver dreams of having, but Fatih just went on and revealed everything as if it was not such an important advantage, but a question of what his name was.

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