Formula 1: The GOAT

“Are you nervous about it?” the man sitting in the front passenger seat asked as their designated driver drove, looking at the rear-view mirror of the SUV where Fatih was seated in the middle, flanked by bags on both sides, looking out the window.

“Not nervous, just looking forward to it,” Fatih said, shifting his eyes from the window to the man in front of him.

The man was in his early twenties, 23 to be exact, and was assigned to be his supervisor, secretary, and assistant during the entirety of the training camp. He was responsible for being the connecting point between Fatih and the entire training team to allow for as smooth an experience as possible.

His name was Alex, and it was his first time acting in this capacity as the lead and not as an assistant under someone, making it very clear what their intentions were: for him to get close with Fatih and allow for an ease in adaptation.

“That is a good outlook. If I were in your position, I would not be as calm as you,” Alex said, smiling for a moment before he asked, “Do you want to know your schedule for tomorrow now so that you can have more time to rest, or do you want to wait until we arrive at the APC (Athlete Performance Center)?”

“Will I be free for the rest of the day once we arrive?”

“Not immediately, as I will show you around first. But if we go with your schedule for tomorrow now, we can avoid doing that once the tour is over. After all, we need you to be in your best condition before we start the tests tomorrow to have the best results, not tainted by fatigue.”

“Then let’s hear the schedule,” Fatih said, as he had nothing to do for the rest of the journey.

“Okay,” Alex said before reaching for the bag on his lap, opening it, and removing a dossier. He said, “After we arrive today, we will go around the facility, getting to know where everything is, before we have dinner at the APC cafeteria,” pausing for a moment when he mentioned the cafeteria before raising his head and turning to Fatih. “Saying cafeteria might make it sound like average food, but I would be understating it when I say that the food is quite good. We have chefs,” but just before he could continue his side-ramble, he caught himself, realizing he was going off-topic. He immediately returned to the main subject. “After that, you will have free time to do what you want, but I would recommend resting.

Starting tomorrow, we will begin with baseline medicals and anthropometrics, then functional and neurological testing, then cardiovascular and endurance, before we finish with flexibility, mobility, and rehab markers. There are meals and rest periods between them. Following that, we will wait for the results before everything else is finally set in stone, as they are all dependent on the results of the testing. Because of that, I have yet to receive the updated schedule, though you will be attending a meeting where you will be introduced to all of the members of your training team to get to know each other.” Once he said that, he flipped to the next page to see if there was anything he had missed. When he found nothing, just as he had expected, having gone through these few pages more than a dozen times, he added, “That is all that is on the schedule at the moment, so do you have any questions?”

“What specifically will those tests be, if it is possible to know beforehand?” Fatih asked, wondering if things were going to be just as he had seen in those driver behind-the-scenes videos and videos of them training in his previous life.

“Of course,” Alex said, this time closing the dossier in front of him as he went from his head. “The baseline medicals will be things like height, weight, limb measurements, body composition for lean mass and body fat percentage, bone density, your resting heart rate, blood pressure, ECG, and finally, blood work. You can consider it a general health screening.

For the neurological testing, they will be checking things like reaction time, proprioception, balance, visual acuity, processing, and hand-eye dexterity.

For cardiovascular, it will be a VO₂ max test, which will be done on a treadmill with an oxygen mask, then grip strength, anaerobic threshold, endurance, and core and neck strength. This will be the most tiring part of the tests, as they will try to push you to your body’s limit so that they can know what your limits are.

For the final tests, it will be recovery tests to see how fast your recovery is, integrated with checking hamstring, quad, and shoulder range of motions, together with checks on your prior injuries to see how they are faring, what their recovery rate is, and if there is something they need to keep in mind to not risk re-injury. Those are the ones that the doctors told me when I questioned them for more details, but there might be more or fewer of them depending on their actual plan,” Alex said.

“You asked them?” Fatih was surprised by that part of the information, as he had initially considered that Alex was from the athlete performance medical department, but it turned out that he had just gone and asked them.

“Yes. If I’m going to make your life easy, then I need to know all of the possible questions. With no experience in that area, what else is there to do other than ask questions? Plus, I’m very curious myself, as I previously dreamed of being an athlete, which, looking at where I am, would be pretty obvious that that dream is dead, which led me to studying motorsport engineering and…” Alex once again started rambling, going a tad bit longer before he realized it once again, closing his eyes and biting his lip as he internally reminded himself, knowing that athletes hate any more information than what they need, even more so from their assistant’s assistant, as that was his experience when he was aiding the assistants to them.

“It is good to have as much information as possible,” Fatih said, not in the least bothered by his oversharing and over-curious nature. Although to others it might be too much information, for him, the more information, the better, since he had enough bandwidth in his mental capability to take all of that information and categorize it for use in the perfect situation. Plus, with Apollo as the best teacher ever, the more information he received from the outside, the more he could, in real time, help Fatih adjust to the real-world situation as it happened.

“That is the first time I’ve heard that,” Alex said with a look of surprise on his face.

“There is always a first time for everything,” Fatih said, causing both of them to chuckle.

It was easy for Fatih to get close to him because his mental age was within that ballpark before he died in his previous life, and he had previously been surrounded by people who were either beyond that age range or way below it, making it quite rare for him to interact with someone in their twenties.

“What sport were you in before pivoting?” Fatih asked, wanting to know him more.

“I have gone through your karting career, and I have to say it was quite exciting. I have a few questions I’m curious about, if possible,” instead of responding to Fatih’s question, Alex immediately changed the topic back to Fatih.

Though he reacted fast enough, to Fatih, that fast reaction was no different than an open book, as he caught the sadness on Alex’s face when he had asked the question before he masked it and turned the question back to him.

“Sure, ask them. We have all the time until we arrive,” Fatih said, acting as if he didn’t realize it and went with the flow, not wanting to blow a balloon of a complicated relationship on the first day, as he would learn about it one day if the other person was ready to tell him.

Alex started asking questions, sometimes even referring to his notebook, as Fatih answered them with as much information as he could, having learned that the other side also liked as much information as possible. Their conversation was quite enjoyable as the driver remained silent and fully focused on driving, not even bothering to chime in with a thought.

By the time they arrived at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center in Salzburg, it was already evening, but the sun was still in the sky, as it was expected to set at 19:07. It was autumn, making it the perfect weather for outdoor training, which for Fatih would be very little to almost none, since most of his profession-specific training would be done inside the specialized areas for in-depth monitoring and climate control.

Keeping to the schedule, they immediately registered their arrival at the entrance before Alex started showing him around the center. They then headed to have dinner in the cafeteria, where his words about the food quality also turned out to be true.

By the time the sun had set, Fatih was already fully acclimated inside his accommodation room, which looked more like a luxurious apartment than a basic accommodation room.

He called his mother and grandmother to update them on his current situation before calling Seraphina, as he had promised to call her. He did the same, and when the clock hit 10, he immediately went to sleep, wanting his body to rest as much as possible, ready for what awaited him tomorrow, though he didn’t miss his simulation time.