Formula 1: The GOAT

The next day, the official testing finally began at exactly nine in the morning.

The tests they did on him were exactly in the order of what Alex had told him yesterday, starting with a general health check for his weight, height, and limb span before drawing his blood. They then moved to the next part.

At noon, he was finally strapped with an oxygen mask before he started running on a treadmill as they tried to discover how efficiently his body consumed oxygen, how his endurance was, and how his body handled fatigue, followed by recovery. He was finally free for the day to have dinner and do whatever he wanted, so long as it was inside the campus.

Alex had escorted him throughout the day, updating him on the schedule, preparing sportswear for him to change into before the physically demanding tests, and joining him for all meals in the cafeteria, making the day go as smoothly as possible for Fatih as he had someone to converse with and receive aid from at any time.

“Tomorrow’s meeting will most likely be in the evening, as all of the doctors will need to go through and write a detailed breakdown of your test results, which will be shared with the team to be discussed during the meeting. So tomorrow, I will come at around ten to pick you up for breakfast, and we’ll go along with what we can do until we are informed of the meeting time,” Alex said as he escorted Fatih back to his accommodation.

“Understood,” Fatih said with positive expectations, as he was curious about what those results would say about him. He wasn’t worried about any negative results due to him still being in the assimilation phase of the upgrades he had undergone because even if they affected him somehow and reduced the maximum he could push his body, it would still be above average. He was curious about those results, which he would use to compare his improvement at the end of the season when there would be another test like the one he did today to see all the changes he had undergone over the past season.

“I might look like I’m the one who is more nervous about it than you, but you should rest well for tomorrow and be calm during the meeting, since it is not like an exam or a trial or something,” Alex said, looking more nervous about the meeting than Fatih, who looked as if the meeting was not at all going to be centered around him.

As a former sports person, a failed one at that, medical matters were one of the most sensitive for him since they were among the reasons for his failure to achieve his dream, so it made sense. But for someone who didn’t know that story, it looked like he was just worried for the other person, which Fatih translated as a reason to smile slightly before saying, “I will take that to heart. Don’t worry about it. So, do you have something to do at the moment, or can we go out and tour the city a little?”

As a yet-to-be-adult, he could only be here after his mother signed the very thick consent forms that transferred the responsibility if anything bad happened to her son due to negligence to the Red Bull Junior Team. As a result, to reduce the number of possible accidents, which the team itself didn’t want to have, they had made it a rule that although he could freely move inside the campus, he couldn’t go outside alone and would need Alex or another adult who was overseeing him at that time to be on their side before going out and for the duration of their outside stay.

“We can go out but can only stay for an hour before we have to return,” Alex said after looking at his wristwatch.

“Sure then, let me take my bag,” Fatih said, entering the house before coming back with his bag about a minute later, looking fully ready to go outside.

As someone who in his previous life was confined only to his room due to his illness, he loved going around and touring new places, which was something his mother and grandmother had helped satiate that hunger, as they took him on tours around the track of where he competed and had even taken him on random tours when they were at home, so he wasn’t really starved of it. But now that he had come to a new place, at least in terms of touring the area, which he had yet to do since his previous attendances were about his health checks, with the latest one being a deep check following his injury in order for him to receive the approval to return to competing.

“But we will have to stop at my accommodation for me to gather a few things first,” Alex said as they started walking towards his accommodation once Fatih had locked the door.

And the tour of Salzburg began.

………

“What do you mean by that?” Helmut Marko, who had arrived at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center the previous day, asked as he raised his head from the document in his hand to look at the doctor.

“I think only a month of physical training is needed before he can move to the next stage of the plan, and even that is just about acclimatizing him to the conditions inside the cockpit. As for physical exercise, it is really not necessary for him at all,” the doctor said before raising the document that was in his hand and continuing to talk while looking at it. “I don’t know who his physical trainer was, but he did a very good job training and conditioning him. If possible, I would like to recruit him to the performance center.

If you look here at his endurance testing, he had the endurance capacity of an endurance competitor, and I don’t see him having any problem with a race weekend workload at all. His neck strength is already above the average needed to withstand the G-forces in his category and the next two. His height is above average for his age range. He can go at max power for long periods and recover faster than many athletes. His cognitive and mental capacity is way higher than any athlete that we have ever tested in this facility.

There are little to none of the negative psychological foundations behind his drive that are found in many top athletes, which most of the time is the reason for their rise but also their fall, as he has a very stable and loving family structure, didn’t face any financial problems in achieving his dream, and has excellent grades, removing the possibility of him being bullied, which even if he had bad grades, no one would bully him since his size is bigger than them. He is quite the opposite of Verstappen, psychologically wise, not talent-wise, since at the moment, we can’t really tell who is better than the other until they are in equal machinery, though their competitive nature might be the same, the way they express it is completely different.

In summary, he looks like his body and mind were created solely for racing, as everything in him seems to be revolving around that central point. Had I not overseen some of the tests, even I wouldn’t believe what is in these papers.”

Helmut, who silently listened to the doctor’s rambling about Fatih’s test results, opened his eyes wider when he heard Verstappen being brought into the equation. For Helmut at the moment, Max could be said to be his favorite person, as the more he continued performing in Formula 1, the more power he gained within the Red Bull family.

The prestige and power he had built for being among the people who discovered and nurtured Sebastian Vettel had previously started waning when the four-time F1 drivers’ championship winner left to go to Ferrari, and although he had nurtured others, none of them had matched the same level of talent that Vettel had brought to the table, leading to his power and influence slowly starting to wane as many considered his discovery of Vettel to be a lucky shot in the dark.

But his discovery of Verstappen and Fatih had started changing that from the year he discovered them, but even more so was Verstappen, who had been immediately sent to F1 as soon as the opportunity arose, which in return, Verstappen didn’t disappoint at all, while Fatih also continued dominating like never before seen, albeit in karting, leading to Helmut’s influence growing stronger with each passing day and with each passing stellar performance from Verstappen.

The reason he had also pushed for Fatih to be moved to F4 was to see if he would continue performing at the same level as he did in karting, and if he showed success in F4, many who were skeptical about it would immediately pivot to seeing him as another Vettel-level talent, if not bigger, and in return, increase his influence in the F1 world and even more so in the Red Bull team, as he would have a track record of discovering three trailblazer-level talents.

It would continue increasing until Fatih entered the F1 paddock, which, if he continued performing there as well, he might as well be the controller of things behind the scenes, as he would by then be more powerful than Christian Horner since both the drivers in the main team, who are talents desired by all, would be a product of his making and individuals he could always trust to be on his side.

He then returned his gaze back to the document in front of him, this time reading it more carefully than he had previously before he asked his secretary, “When is the introduction meeting happening?”

“At 15:00, sir,” his secretary responded from the intercom before he resumed reading the paper, but this time the smile that was on his face got wider and wider with each passing moment.