Formula 1: The GOAT

{On the data end, everything looks good. What is the feel from your end?} James asked when Fatih had already driven four laps at about fifty percent pace and had just started the fifth lap.

Since it was an installation lap to just check on the condition of the car to see if there was anything loose, both hardware- and software-wise, before they allowed the car to go full push on a race distance and risk a failure while in the middle of it, which would result in the 300km test being considered a failure and would have to be redone again the same day if the problem was easily solvable, or the following day since Red Bull had the option to extend the rental of the track included in the contract, having considered that possibility.

{The car feels good; could go for a qualifying lap to check on the top end,} Fatih said on the radio as he slowed down on the start-finish straight, waiting for an answer to decide if this one became another installation lap or a warm-up lap for a qualifying test.

There was a silence on the other end for a short moment before the answer finally came: {On qualifying pace, we will have fuel for two push laps and one warm-up lap. With that in mind, you are free to go.}

The moment he received that answer, his hand immediately reached the engine mode dial and flipped it to qualifying mode before revving up the engine as he immediately swerved right and left, spiking the temperature on the tires.

.......

”HAHAHAHA, looks like driving at that slow pace has bored him, and he wants to go for a push lap,” Mehmet said while laughing when the radio conversation was played live.

Since it was not an official session but an exhibition publicly broadcasted, along with a car being from the 2018 season with an engine from the 2019 season, any intelligence gathered from it would be useless.

As a result an ungodly amount of data was being made available to the broadcast teams, ranging from the usual telemetry to live instant radio without delay or censorship, tire temperature data, engine temperature and data, suspension data, and many other things, keeping only the things that are still being used in the current season, like the steering data, and even that had a few things still made available to the public.

This also acted as another attractive point for those who were data nerds of F1, since this level of access was unprecedented. But it also had a second effect, which was attracting the F1 teams’ attention since they would finally be able to see Fatih go full-guns-blazing on the track with enough data that they could gauge the level of talent he had and if he lived up to the hype.

”That temperature build-up looks unbelievable,” Murat said as he looked at the live tire temperature on all four tires from the small top-down live image on the lower-left side of the screen. All four tires were gaining temperature very close to one another, meaning Fatih was deliberately making sure not a single tire was becoming hotter than the other, which was impressive considering the track was a loop, meaning one side of the tires will always be hotter than the other less-stressed one if the driver isn’t deliberately balancing them by putting more temperature on the lower-stressed side on the straights, which was what Fatih was currently doing.

.....

”What do you think?” Toto asked as he looked at his laptop.

”I need to see the temperature before he starts his qualifying lap and what he does in it to say anything conclusively,” Lewis Hamilton, on the other end of the Zoom call, said as he too was watching it at the request of Toto.

The engineering team was also watching it, but they were doing it at the home base with all their tools to get numerical data, which they would then use to report to him once everything was over. But he still wanted to hear what his driver had to say, unrelated to the data the engineers would be looking at.

”...” Upon hearing the answer, Toto returned to watching the live session from Fatih’s YouTube channel.

A few seconds later, Fatih finally came out of the final turn, going full power, approaching the start-finish line to start his qualifying lap.

”That is a nice temperature,” Hamilton said as he looked at the data on the screen just as the qualifying timer pop-up came out, starting to count as Fatih started his lap.

...

With the wind coming from the front, Fatih left it very late before he braked heavily and immediately turned in early without even seeing the apex due to the falling elevation before letting the car run wide all the way to the other side. This allowed him to get back on power earlier as he started going up through the shifts as he went through Turn 2 as if it didn’t exist.

As Turn 3 came at him rapidly, he braked very lightly and smoothly, carrying the brakes into the corner and coming out of it in fifth gear before moving into the middle of the track while still downshifting to third gear. As the track dropped down in elevation massively, he was already turning for Turn 4, a tight right-hander.

This time, unlike Turn 1, he didn’t let the car go wide, deliberately sacrificing the exit as he set the car up for Turn 5, which was more important. He hit the apex and let the car go wide as he upshifted early to fourth gear on the exit, finally starting to go up on the shifts on the straights.

With the wind on his back, he would usually have braked earlier, but with the track rising in elevation, it acted as a counterbalance to the wind, allowing him to brake very deep, just 60 meters from the corner. He dropped to fourth gear before starting the turn into Turn 7, getting back on power very early while letting the car go wide as it came to terms with the power he was demanding from the engine in preparation for the upcoming Turn 8.

He deliberately missed the first apex of Turn 8 by a wide margin as the car started turning flat-out. He got close on the second apex but was still a meter and a half from it before perfectly hitting the third apex as the corner tightened up, before barely missing the final apex, going wide on exit but not too much as he returned to the straight while still flat-out.

The entire Turn 8 sequence didn’t require Fatih to make even a single adjustment; the steering input he had done at the start of the corner remained the same through the corner all the way to the exit, which was only possible if he had threaded the needle through the perfect racing line of the corner.

.....

”THAT WAS PERFECT!” Murat shouted when Fatih zoomed into Turn 8 without adjustment, spending as little time as possible in the corner for its entire length.

The excitement lingered there as Fatih went through the long straight section of sector two following the exit of Turn 10. At the end of the straight, he activated the DRS, which he took it into Turn 11. Despite being called a corner, the FIA considered it a straight and one of only two corners that were taken with DRS open in the calendar, alongside Jeddah Circuit, which was still under construction.

...

As the final three corners approached, he braked at 100 meters, very early, while moving to the right side of the track and downshifting all the way to second gear before turning and hitting the apex of Turn 12.

He ran slightly wide before tightening again, staying tight on the exit of the corner, leaving him on the left side of the track before turning right for Turn 13 while upshifting to third gear, once again staying tight on the exit.

He moved a short distance before braking very smoothly and sensitively, being careful with the overheated front tire, and finally turned in, hitting the apex before aggressively accelerating out of the corner as he perfectly upshifted with his foot on the throttle all the way to the finish line, immediately starting his second qualifying lap.

While he was doing that, everyone’s eyes were on the timing tower, with a single name, curious about what lap time he had achieved on his first push lap and whether it was competitive or not.