Formula 1: The GOAT

”Is that all you wanted regarding motorsports?” she asked as the three of them drove home from practice.

Despite the COVID leniency for elite athletes allowing them to go out for practice, the social distancing rule still required them to be kept, which made it very difficult for people in some sports to have an effective practice, and motorsports was the same.

Although Fatih could repair the karts and change setups, these rules would have made it difficult for him to practice with Seraphina or even tutor her, since they had to retain the social distance. However, the rules were lax when the people interacting were from the same household, which as a side effect resulted in Seraphina staying with them a few days after the COVID lockdown started.

It also made it easier to go to practice since it only needed one parent and one car to send them to the karting track and back.

”At the moment, that is what I have in mind, but there is more that I want to do in the future,” Fatih, understanding what she was talking about, answered.

”Why not try and have all of it written down so that we can have the team go through all of that and come up with the operational plan, possible cost breakdown, and implementation timelines for when you want to go ahead with them?” she said, knowing that the cost and timeline of Fatih’s requests had been going higher and higher the more money was at their disposal.

As a result, she was able to deduce that it was not that these ideas were new, but he was just pacing them to go in line with the amount of funding each of those things needed. She knew that with the stock market now having stopped going down and shooting back up due to the unlimited quantitative easing, their wealth was multiplying thanks to entering the market at its lowest point, so now was the perfect plan to do it.

”Why didn’t I think about that?” Fatih said as he clapped his hands and realized that he was wasting time trying to think about many things and all the little details of things that he only knew very little about when there was an entire department responsible for the breakdown of his previous plans and their implementation. They would know better or could even hire someone deeply knowledgeable within those fields to do an even better job.

”I will do it,” he said, removing his phone from his pocket and opening the notes app to start noting down some things.

”Also, we are already looking for your tutors in those three fields you wanted to study, so we should have them ready to start teaching you at the end of this month, so prepare yourself,” she said, which finally made it clear to Fatih that he was now going to start going through the three fields’ curriculums before even graduating A-level.

But Fatih was too immersed in his notes app to respond, so he just nodded before resuming with noting down things.

........

While he was going home, Helmut was receiving a report about something related to him.

”Imaginary driver?” Helmut asked in surprise as he received the tablet from Michael Scott, who had been the head of the training program previously planned for Fatih for his F4 transition. Thanks to that, he had been made responsible for all the subsequent practice and training sessions related to Fatih, including the Testing of Previous Cars.

”Yes, as you had asked, we looked into the practice race footage, his onboards, and telemetry to try and see what the anomaly you described was, and we found something similar to him driving against an imaginary driver for the entire duration of the race,” Michael said as he pressed play on the video that had already been loaded onto the screen.

Helmut paused for a moment as he tried to remember when he had given such instructions until he remembered how Fatih was acting during his Silverstone race practice.

Just as he remembered, the video started playing. It began with a driver-facing camera, usually there to check on the driver’s conditions during crashes, and it showed Fatih looking at his right-side rear-view mirror, which showed nothing, just as the lights started going on.

The moment they had gone off, he had immediately veered to the right as if he was moving to cover a driver in the P2 position before he returned to the racing line just as the corner was approaching.

The video was edited very well to reinforce the matter as much as possible, as it showed telemetry for when he opened the DRS, used the overtake button, drove out of an imaginary slipstream, was pushed wide, and went wide himself to push the imaginary driver wide and retain the advantage.

Helmut looked speechless. From these actions, he could already tell that Fatih was definitely fighting against an imaginary driver, and a very good one at that, as it made him push himself to the limit for the entire race. The most reinforcing fact was when Fatih crossed the finish line; the driver-facing camera showed his eyes behind the clear visor were not happy at all.

Despite that, he still moved to the side to celebrate with the mechanics cheering for him on the pit wall, making it clear that he had lost the race despite driving at a very competitive pace for the entire duration, even in the rain.

”I’ve heard about people shadowboxing, but this is the first time I’ve seen someone shadow race another driver,” he said as he chuckled, but he knew deep down that this was not an easy thing to do. It seemed like Fatih’s imagination alone was coherent enough for him to sustain it throughout the race and even reach a point where he looked at his rear-view mirrors, was pushed wide, and more.

Usually, someone would just put themselves in an advantageous situation and have the imaginary opponent be weaker since they already know what they are going to do. For Fatih, it seemed like the simulated driver had the same capabilities, if not better, to the point he lost to his own imagination.

And to Helmut, he was very sure that this imagined enemy was definitely Max Verstappen, or at least that was what he believed.

”Keep this between us,” Helmut said with a smile. He didn’t want any of this to leak since there was no advantage to it, but he also didn’t want to let the situation get bigger than necessary when they had already secured the driver and might risk a possible reaction from the other side.