Formula 1: The GOAT

“Thanks,” Fatih said, his voice hoarse as he grabbed the bottle Burak handed him the moment he rolled into the pit lane. Knowing the drill, Burak had already opened it for him, so Fatih immediately started chugging it, trying to replace the water his body had used to cool down, as he was now drenched in sweat.

“How is the track?” Burak asked when Fatih finally dropped the bottle from his mouth, having drunk nearly half of it.

“Very grippy,” Fatih said while helping Burak carry the kart to its stand before they started pushing it back to the RFM tent to begin their setup work and additional optimizations.

Placing his helmet on the table, Fatih jumped onto a chair and collected a clean towel that had been prepared for him to dry himself.

“That was a good drive out there. Your pace is very good for a neutral setup,” Steve said as he and John arrived at the table, taking a seat after placing a laptop on it to start the post-session debriefing. They sat opposite Fatih and Burak.

Since it was just the first practice session, there wasn’t much to debrief, so they went through the basic information in about ten minutes before finally moving to the most important part: setup discussions.

“This is the basic setup that fits the track’s characteristics, which we gathered from yesterday’s sessions and our previous years’ experience on this track,” Steve said as he turned the laptop around, showing a file containing a setup recommendation. He added, as they started looking at the data, “As you already know, we encourage the sharing of data between our drivers, and this information is the result of the hard work of Lando and others. But keep in mind that each driver still retains a portion of the setup and driving tricks for themselves, so this is just a starting point for the optimal setup. It is very fast on its own and can put you at the top if you can exploit it fully, but if you manage to add characteristics that suit you, you can go even faster.”

Once he said that, he stopped speaking, letting Fatih and Burak, who had already gone through the data, look at it. Burak was ready to explain things if Fatih didn’t understand the reasoning or why something was done in a particular way.

’It really is a good setup,’ Fatih thought as he went through the document, one that he wouldn’t be against using on the track.

However, as he took the information and visualized the setup being implemented in a kart and driving it in his imagination –something he could do because of the more than five thousand hours he had spent in the simulation driving different karts on different tracks, paired with his Sponge Brain that was at a Genius level– it didn’t take long for him to see the lap times this setup was leaving on the table.

It was obvious that each driver was going to have unique additional changes on top of this setup to fit them and allow them to retain a competitive edge against their team members despite sharing the data.

If everything was made available to the other drivers, there would be no need for some of them to participate in more than one unofficial session, since that would be all they needed to get used to the setup that other drivers had worked hard to come up with. They could enjoy the fruits of others’ labor after doing basically nothing.

“So, do you want to go with it and test to see how it is and see if there are changes you want, or do you already have a setup in mind after your drive?” John asked.

Had it been Enaam or Lando, they would have suggested driving this setup first to get a feel for it and see if there were improvements they wanted. But they treated Fatih very differently after having experienced his deep understanding of the kart and the setup intuition he had shown across many tests and practices, to the point that they most of the time went with his suggestions as is and only rarely proposed additional changes.

Upon hearing the question, Fatih took a moment to consider the suggestion before he said, “First, let’s try my setup idea and see how it works. If we manage to fine-tune it early, I will also try this setup as well,” wanting to experience their setup suggestion in order to have a basic understanding of how Lando’s and Enaam’s karts were going to act on the track.

This would give him an edge if they were to go head-to-head, as he could use that knowledge to his advantage and force the other drivers to drive in a profile that was not suitable for their kart’s setup, giving him an advantage.

“Sure, let’s hear it,” Steve said, picking up a notebook and a pen, ready to write down Fatih’s setup suggestions.

“My previous setup was fighting the track, making the kart feel bound up and incapable of flowing. So let’s start with removing the front torsion bar and widening the front track by putting one spacer on the outside of each stub axle.”

“So you want to calm the front end down and help keep all four wheels on the ground,” Steve said, seeing the intention behind that setup change, the complete opposite of the setup that Fatih had applied at Whilton Mill, as this track, unlike Whilton Mill, demanded a smooth setup instead of an aggressive and biting one.

“Yes,” Fatih said, agreeing with his interpretation of the changes before he continued. “As for the rear, though at neutral it felt good, it could be better. On exit, I can feel the rear of the chassis flexing too much. When I get on the power, there’s a slight delay before the kart launches. I’m losing drive. We need to lock down the rear end and turn it into a solid platform for acceleration.”

“Stiffer rear, then. You want to add the rear torsion bar?” Steve asked after hearing Fatih deconstruct the problem caused by the rear’s current setup.

“Yes, let’s go with the stiff rear bar. And I want the widest possible rear track width, right to the 1400mm limit. We also need to switch to the hardest axle we have, the Type H. On a track with this much rubber and grip, I don’t need the chassis to generate rotation; I need it to provide a stable, rigid base so I can be aggressive on the throttle.”

A stiffer rear could be achieved through different means, so he went ahead and mentioned the exact things he wanted to be done to achieve that.

After mentioning a few minor additional changes, he finally finished giving the setup he wanted.

Steve took a moment to go through the suggested new setup and tried to imagine what it would do on the track. As he visualized it in his mind, he could see this setup making the kart feel like it was rolling into a corner with all four tires gripping tenaciously.

The setup would fully shine in the mid-corner, as it would be incredibly stable and planted, allowing Fatih to carry a shockingly high minimum speed and generate immense lateral G-forces, making him feel glued to the track and able to be incredibly precise with the throttle and steering.

On corner exits, like the tight hairpins, the combination of the wide rear track, stiff rear torsion bar, and hard axle would provide explosive traction. The moment he touched the throttle on exit, the kart would launch forward with minimal wheelspin, allowing him to be more aggressive and gain additional time.

It was an extremely good setup, as it would gain additional lap time by carrying momentum, allowing him to be smooth and maintain a high average speed across the entire lap. A less experienced driver might find the setup to be lazy on initial turn-in because it wasn’t pointy, but for a driver with a good understanding, like Fatih, it would be obvious that the setup was trading a fraction of a second of initial rotation for multiple tenths that would be gained through higher mid-corner speed and better exit traction.

“So, in summary, the new setup you want for the next session is to remove the front torsion bar, widen the front track, widen the rear track to the maximum, install the stiff rear torsion bar, and switch to the hard rear axle,” Steve read the summary of the things he had written in the notebook as he tried to hide the goosebumps he was feeling. It was unbelievable that this setup was something a ten-year-old kid had suggested after a single fifteen-minute session on a track he had driven for the first time. He then asked, “Is that everything, or is there more?”

“Yes, that’s it,” Fatih nodded before he started drinking the remaining water in the bottle, as he didn’t feel satiated yet.

“Okay then, you get some rest, and I will go and inform the mechanics of the setup changes you want,” Steve said as everyone other than Fatih rose from the table and left to talk with the mechanics.

“Starting with the next debriefing, we should add the mechanics to the table to reduce the need for repeating the setup changes he wants,” Steve said as he contemplated the fastest way to explain it to them.

As telemetry engineers, both he and John were used to being the ones translating the young drivers’ intuition and feel on the track into something the mechanics could work with, but with Fatih, there was no need for that, and they could save additional time if the mechanics joined them.

When they heard Steve say that, the three of them chuckled, realizing the absurdity of the situation they were in.

The setup changes took a whole hour to complete, resulting in Fatih missing the two unofficial practice sessions that were sanctioned by the track owners, not the competition organizers.

By the time the changes were translated into the kart, the fourth practice session was about to start, so they hurried Fatih to the kart after they made sure everything was as he wanted, with just additional ballast tanks that pushed him past the minimum weight by ten kilos to hide the improvements from other teams and prevent them from mimicking it, he was finally sent to the track for his second session.