Formula 1: The GOAT

“So you are saying that Fatih is an actual self-made billionaire at the age of fourteen? Thank God he is mentally sound and has good behavior,” Güldane said as she released a sigh of relief after spending an entire hour listening to her daughter break down all of Fatih’s income sources. Even after not counting the unsold bitcoins, he was still a billionaire from just two sources: the eight hundred million in cash and the shares he held in the Formula One Group, which had also already increased in value from the initial four hundred million dollars.

Everything leading to him becoming a billionaire was a result of Fatih’s own actions, with no monetary support or initial investment from his family at all. All his family did for him was aid him in consolidating and making sure that the money was not wasted and was preserved.

“Yeah, I thank God about that every day as well,” Rümeysa said as she closed the laptop, planning to take a moment to rest before she started considering and planning for the family office creation. After all, it wasn’t like the money was going to disappear if she took time to rest and also had a conversation with her son to hear his input on what the family office should focus on.

“So who are you going to recruit, and is there a risk that they can steal from him?” Güldane, who didn’t trust people easily, raised the question.

“Most of their investment decisions will need my or Fatih’s final approval, and not a single individual will be able to move large amounts of money individually, as they will need a few people to co-sign. Depending on the size, it might need to receive a green light from us, and we will have an independent forensics accounting team do the accounting audit to see if there is any theft.

But at their foundation, these are people who know how ruthless rich people can be when it comes to matters related to their own money, and with their compensation being very good, theft will be very rare,” she explained, showing that she had already thought through most of the parts, and only a few things remained before she started recruiting and the family office began its operations.

“Haaah, I need to rest after all that,” Güldane said as she finally stood from the dinner table and headed upstairs to her room. Although it was good news, even good news could drain energy, and the scale of it was so huge that she needed time to fully digest it.

As for Rümeysa, she was now considering the side effects of the current situation. The moment it became known that Fatih had that much money, it would immediately increase the size of their relatives who had ulterior motives. She knew that to avoid all of that, she needed to make sure that things were done in a way that didn’t actually reveal his wealth too much, but at the same time, not do things that deliberately made life difficult just because they wanted to hide it.

She knew it was going to be a busy few months to set up everything, but she also knew that it was something that needed her to do as perfectly as it could be done, as it was going to be the strongest foundation for Fatih’s future. Once everything was set perfectly, it would sustain the growth strategy.

“Looks like this new year is going to be a busy one for both of us,” she said as she set the New Year as the time when she would have the talk with Fatih and see what aspects he wanted to be included in the family office before she determined whether or not to include them and how much to allocate. But with his father’s side of the family expected to visit, it was going to be busy anyway.

……..

“I heard you were preparing for F4.”

“Yes.”

“Is it going well?”

“Yes, we are in the track experience phase.”

“But is there a reason you are not posting videos about it?”

“The docu-series team has received the license to all the content regarding the training session, so I can’t freely post videos about it.”

“Aha, so looks like I will have to wait for it to come out in a few months.”

“No, I think it will come out in 2019 since the current season will be about my final season in karting, and the training will continue until a few months into next year, which is also the time for the new season to be released.”

“Aaaah, I will be looking forward to it anyway. Seraphina herself has been doing quite well, though, to your standard, it might seem no different than finishing last.”

“Finishing P12 in her first karting competition is very good since most of those she competed against have years of experience against her few months.”

“She doesn’t think so; she thinks it is a waste of your training if she doesn’t perform to your standards.”

“You don’t get full on the first spoon. So long as she improves, then that is what matters; if she stagnates, then that is when it becomes a problem.”

“I always wondered, does always being on top become stale or boring when you don’t have competition?”

“Not really. For me, dominating or not is not what is important, but the driving itself is what is fun, as it is the culmination of all the effort I put into practice and preparation. So it doesn’t really matter if there is someone to fight for the position or not.”

“That is good insight. I will try to have her focus on that and not end up fully focusing on results and end up forgetting the reason she started doing it in the first place.”

“Also, I heard you are planning to take the GCSEs. Are preparations for that going well, too?”

“Yes, I should be ready by the time the exam date arrives in May.”

Fatih was currently in the living room with Henry, Seraphina’s father, and Enes, his uncle, who was just listening silently while sitting with them. Fatih had noticed the silence from his uncle since he had arrived, and from the way the adults were accommodating him, it was very clear that they all knew what the problem was, which, unfortunately, he didn’t know and didn’t want to try and poke at. The only possible hint was that his aunt, Seda, who he had found very combative, hadn’t come. He thought that maybe she didn’t come because she didn’t like them, and it resulted in a fight, leading to his uncle coming alone to celebrate the new year.

“How about you, uncle?” Fatih asked, bringing him into the conversation.

“Mhh…” Enes looked at them as if he had just been absent for the entire time and hadn’t heard anything at all.

Fatih just brought him up to date with the situation as he tried to include him, to at least try to distract him from the problem he was facing. Though for that to happen, they ended up talking only about motorsports, which for him was going quite well. They already had three more track sessions on three different tracks around Europe that posed different conditions to give them as much experience as possible, though the outcome largely remained the same, with Fatih in the lead while the other two fought for second position.

It seemed like his domination and his technical breakdown of the situations he faced on track had caused the other two drivers to come to terms that he was better at learning and adapting than them, so they sometimes approached Fatih to ask him questions regarding certain decisions he made or why he made certain setup choices and how he came to that conclusion, which for Fatih was quite a welcoming situation, as he answered all of their questions.

To others, it might look like he was training his competitors or looking down on them, as if saying that even if he taught them, they would never reach his level. But for him, thanks to his adept senses and his teacher, he ended up not facing too much difficulty, leading to him not facing most of the problems that new drivers moving to a new platform experience.

And although that was a good thing, a program with only a positive loop risks ending up being miscalibrated, and although Apollo was there to make sure no such thing happened, he also wanted to gather the mistakes other drivers face so that he could gather failure data, even if he was not the one facing them.

Although those were his intentions, Apollo argued that he was doing this so that he could use the experience to teach Seraphina since she was going to face similar problems.

Thanks to Fatih’s intervention, Enes finally managed to join the conversation, and his expression brightened a little bit. They soon joined the rest of the family and invited friends for dinner before celebrating the arrival of 2018.

The next day, with the house quiet once again after all the visitors returned to Germany, the two of them sat in the living room. The time for her to update him on the situation in detail had finally arrived.