Formula 1: The GOAT

”49. 50. 51. 52...” Apollo counted as Fatih, supported only by his head on a gym chair, looked like a hypotenuse as he trained his neck.

Fatih silently listened to the count as his hands were on his chest in an X shape, looking as if he was comfortable and not straining, but the sweat covering his body told a completely different story.

As the number reached the high eighties, his body started shaking slightly, but he didn’t move at all and listened to the number, waiting for it to reach the final count.

”98. 99. 99. 99. 99. 99. 99. 99. 99.” Apollo kept repeating ninety-nine as if he were a broken clock until Fatih just gave up and dropped to the ground, letting his neck rest.

”Are you trying to snap my head?” he asked weakly, as he had no power in his neck area at all, other than feeling the strain it was under.

”If this were a wide, fast corner, your head would already be banging the headrest, weak human,” Apollo said as he sarcastically enlarged his neck to be double the size of his head as if taunting Fatih’s neck that couldn’t match his.

However, Fatih’s neck was in no way inferior. Having started training not just his neck but his whole body since he was three and not stopping at any time in his life, while being supervised by Apollo, who knew his body better than Fatih himself did, he was always pushed to the limit of what his body could handle, and not a smidge above or below that. His body, which could be argued was designed for racing from the start, reacted positively to all the exercises.

As a result, his neck was already 17 inches thick, only an inch away from reaching the average thickness of fully grown veteran drivers, but despite that, it was still packed with muscles, looking like a tree trunk that sat almost perfectly flush with the width of his jawline.

The same could be said about his body, which was trained for endurance and power, not size. He was always coasting between 10% and 12% body fat, which was the sweet spot for a male athlete, allowing him to look incredibly shredded, as all of the thick and tightly packed muscles pressed hard against his skin, allowing for a highly visible six-pack, deeply etched vascularity in the forearms, and a sharp separation in the shoulders.

It all fit perfectly on his already considerable height, as he stood at a massive 1.80m at the age of sixteen, almost seventeen, making him the fourth tallest driver on the grid if he were to enter. Based on tests he had done, he was expected to gain at least 5cm more before his growth ended.

Fatih, who was still on the floor, didn’t complain anymore because he was fully focused on the upcoming on-track test with an actual F1 car. He knew, based on when the pandemic restrictions were going to be put in place, this was most likely going to be the only on-track test he would be driving in entirely this year, so he was looking forward to extracting as much as possible in those three testing days.

After allowing him to rest for five minutes, Apollo immediately made Fatih resume the training. He didn’t complain that much and immediately got back to work; he was too excited and looking forward to it to waste any more time resting.

His preparation continued.

....

Time moved fast, though for Fatih, it felt extremely slow, but in the end, he found himself in a car on a February Thursday evening, heading to Silverstone ahead of time for his driving session for the next three days.

He was accompanied by his grandmother, mother, and Burak and was expected to meet Elena, his manager, and Alex at the hotel they would be staying at for the duration of the driving session.

”Looks like you will be driving in the rain,” Burak said as he showed Fatih the screen of the tablet he had in his hand, showing the weather forecast for Friday all the way to Sunday. It showed only rain and cloudy periods, and nowhere in it was the chance of sun coming out long enough for the track to dry.

”I will be driving that car even if I have to paddle it like a boat,” Fatih said after looking at the weather app, causing everyone in the car to laugh, as they knew that although he was kidding, he was serious about driving it under any condition.

”But do we know how many laps you will be driving?” Burak asked. Since his graduation, he was currently working as a performance engineer in an F2 team and was already looking for opportunities to move to an F1 team, so he was finally knowledgeable enough not to be deemed unfit to teach or give professional advice to Fatih.

”The average should be around a hundred to a hundred and twenty laps a day, but it will be done in stints of fifteen laps and a max of twenty at once to try as many setup changes and improvements as possible for them to gauge the range I have and what my sweet spot is, so that we can focus on improving that in the upcoming simulator practice and track time.”

”You have a specific driving style?” he asked, surprised as if he was hearing something absurd.

As someone who had been Fatih’s first teacher, it was impossible for him not to know what style of driving the driver he taught preferred if he was any good at being a teacher. But that was only if he was teaching a normal or a good driver, because during the entire time he taught Fatih, he had never seen him lean on a specific driving style as his preference.

The only consistent thing he saw from Fatih was his rapid speed and his always going for the fastest setup the kart could do and driving the fastest in that setup with the driving style required to exploit it.

It was something that had made him a fascinating but also a very rewarding driver to train because he would only teach him one thing, only for Fatih to learn ten things in extension to that. This also made him a very scary driver to face, as he looked to be style-agnostic and only cared that the car was in its fastest possible configuration; as for the rest, he would adapt to it.

”That is their plan, and I’m curious to see if I have a subconscious bias, through their data at least,” Fatih said, as he was curious to see if, were it not for Apollo embedding driving style agnosticism into him since the first kart he drove, he might have leaned into a specific one, and if those tendencies still remained, even if just a little.

”Well, now I have one more thing to look forward to,” Burak said as he returned to using his tablet, looking at something else, but his face had a small smile.