Formula 1: The GOAT

PAH!

The moment they were alone in the room, Rümeysa slapped Fatih’s back. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” she said. “You go and close your eyes while driving at those speeds? Are you trying to make me lose my son, too?”

“I know it looks scary, but it is completely safe. But if you want, I can stop doing it,” Fatih said as he scratched his back, which now felt itchy.

Although the slap was not powerful, it still had its effect. It reminded him that things that were normal to him, due to his Invictus and constant repeated training, were terrifying for anyone else. Despite what he was still a child, he remembered the amount of time it took for his mother to decide to buy him his first go-kart, a decision she made despite her worries. For him to go and do something extra on top of the already dangerous sport didn’t help calm her down at all.

“Don’t do that again, or I will pull you from the sport,” she said in a serious tone.

“Yes, I won’t do it again,” Fatih said seriously, despite knowing that if he pushed for it or continued to do it, she would not pull him from the sport. She knew just how much he loved it and how much his life had shifted to accommodate it.

“Good,” she said, looking calm before turning to Elena and asking, “So what do you think about the situation?”

“Although the action itself can be interpreted as dangerous, hence making the reprimand rightful, it being done without hearing his side is the core issue here. Depending on how much they decide to stand behind their decision and not promise to hear your side before making decisions in the future, we have two options. But first, how far are you planning to take this?”

“It is a very small problem, and I’m sure to many it is childish, but the principle behind it is what I’m standing my ground for and can’t compromise. So we can take it as far as we can without worries,” Fatih answered seriously.

Red Bull was known to be the most cutthroat team in F1, with their no-nonsense attitude and zero tolerance for poor performance. But that complete performance focus is also what made them sometimes act very unreasonably or cruel to some of their drivers, sometimes going so far as to destroy their relationship with one driver in order to accommodate the best-performing one, while other times turning a blind eye to or even defending the bad behavior of their driver who was delivering results.

As a result, many drivers knew that they were very easily replaceable, and it could be done at the drop of a hat. Many drivers ended up on the weaker side, to the point that they sometimes endured bad treatment. It usually didn’t start at an absurd level, so the drivers didn’t say anything at the start, turning the situation into them being cooked very slowly like frogs.

For Fatih, this situation seemed like an increase in the heat in the cooker, having already turned a blind eye to some of the things Helmut had done previously because they weren’t inconveniencing him but would have, had he not had the system that ensured calmness under pressure. So for him, it was either he set a precedent today or took the second-worst option.

“Are you saying you are willing to leave if they don’t acknowledge that?”

“Yes, though it will be a shame,” Fatih said without any delay.

“Do I have to remind you of the reason you chose Red Bull in the first place when you are saying those words?” Rümeysa said, joining in before Elena could move forward.

Rümeysa wanted to make sure that Fatih hadn’t forgotten the reason why he chose Red Bull when he had other offers from other driver academies. Although Red Bull’s offer was the best among all of them, the reason he chose them was solely because of their culture of prioritizing performance over everything. As a consequence of that prioritization, they found themselves going through many drivers in a short period of time until they found one that could satisfy them, which they had the luxury to do because they had a very big talent pool.

Fatih believed in his abilities and saw Red Bull as the fastest way for him to get to F1 with a competitive team because they were the only ones who would trust him, even at a young age in the current time. If he wanted to get there as fast as possible, Red Bull was the best option. Mercedes would later change and allow a rookie to drive for them, but that was way later into the future, and he didn’t want to try to change that ahead of time.

“I remember, but if the alternative is them having the ability to arbitrarily do something without consulting our side, then the other one becomes the better option,” Fatih said calmly.

“What alternative are you talking about?” Elena, who found herself missing some context, asked.

“Privately funding his single-seater career,” Rümeysa said with a sigh, as if it was a problem, but not too difficult of one if that was the solution they ended up going with.

“Do you have that much funding to do that? F4 alone, for a competitive seat, is a minimum of four hundred thousand dollars. F3 moves to a million dollars, F2 to more than two million dollars, and for F1, that is a minimum of ten million and goes all the way up to thirty, but that is only theoretical if you can even get a seat in F1, much less in a competitive team.” Elena said, giving them a breakdown of how much it would cost them if they went private. And that was even without mentioning the cost of assembling a team of competent people to replace everything that Red Bull was currently providing, as they would need to pay them even more because they would be leaving competitive teams.

“Wouldn’t an F1 team just give me an offer if the performance I show in my junior career acts as the billboard itself?” Fatih asked, with his question immediately answering all of the ones Elena had just posed, as it meant the junior series was not a problem for them to fully privately fund at all.

“They could offer you that, but I have to remind you that top teams prioritize their junior drivers to see some return on their investments, but also because they know their drivers very well and have their historical internal data, so they can have some confidence in how they will likely perform.

Even those drivers first start on their junior teams or affiliated teams, so even then we would be back to you funding your first few years in F1 until you prove yourself. For my suggestion, the best option is for you to join another academy if push comes to shove and you end up leaving,” Elena found herself going on a long-winded explanation as more and more information kept coming to her mind.

“No, if I leave Red Bull, I plan to go private because Red Bull was the best option that met most of my requirements, and other teams meet even fewer of them,” Fatih said as a matter of fact.

“If so, then what do you expect as the outcome of this situation for it to resolve easily and things return to normal?” Elena asked, planning to return the discussion to what would happen if things went well, because they had focused too much on the possibility of leaving, and she was worried it might influence them.

….

“Them acknowledging the rashness of the decision that was made without my side of the story being heard, and them promising to always hear my side of the story before they make any decision. I don’t expect them to accommodate me if I’m really at fault, but they should hear my side first before they come to that decision,” Fatih’s words were heard through the conference phone in his room that was connected to the one left in the conference room that was in an active conference call.

“I initially thought that he was blowing this out of proportion because he needed to terminate his contract due to a better offer from another team, but it seems like we are on two different thinking planes entirely,” Helmut said with a resigned chuckle as he pressed the button that ended the conference call that had allowed him to eavesdrop on Fatih’s conversation without their knowledge.

As someone who was used to always being on the side with power, dictating what the other side could and couldn’t do, this was the second time that he was worried about the actions of the other side. The first time was when they needed to promote Max Verstappen to the main team earlier than the previously set-in-stone 2017 promotion after they received credible information that both Ferrari and Mercedes were circling Verstappen’s team, trying to poach him from Red Bull.

The moment Fatih escalated the situation and even brought his agent and his mother to the meeting, his mind immediately went to this being an attempt by the two teams to poach Fatih after they failed to get Verstappen. After seeing the monstrous performance Fatih had been putting in with less than an hour on the track, where he still beat the other two drivers with hours more of track time, he knew that he was just another Verstappen, but this time one that they would have years to nurture and perfect.

His heavy reprimand was a reaction to that line of thought, as he had already started reshaping Fatih’s aggressive driving tendencies, which included doing foolish things like closing his eyes on a straight under the guise of wanting to feel the tire forces.

As a result of hearing the phone call, he started questioning if Fatih’s reasoning was true, and not him just doing things to steer the situation to get worse and worse. And what that would mean if it were true.

“Now how do I deal with this situation?” he asked himself, as he needed a way to deal with the situation tactfully without giving up too much ground, while having the other side also satisfied with how it was resolved.