Formula 1: The GOAT - Chapter 206: Silverstone

Chapter 206: Silverstone

Fwuh Fwuh Fwuh Fwuh Fwuh!

Two individuals could be seen running on the bike path lit by the morning twilight around Milton Keynes. They paced themselves so as not to exert too much energy at once, but despite that, their clothes were already covered in sweat, evidence of how much distance they had already covered.

“Why do I have to run with you when you are the one who lost the bet? If I was going to come with you, why bet on it in the first place?” Fatih complained, but despite it, he maintained the pace with ease. Alex, who was running beside him, on the other hand, looked to be on the verge of dying from suffocation due to his lungs not gathering enough oxygen despite him breathing with as wide a mouth as possible.

“We only agreed on the final position, but we didn’t agree on what point of the event we were going to take those results, so both our bets at some point were legitimate results,” Alex had to come to a full stop and bow to place his hands on his knees as leverage while taking deep breaths in order to be able to say a few words between each deep breath.

“Shouldn’t the final, officially accepted result be the one we check?” Fatih asked while also coming to a stop, as he knew that Alex couldn’t continue anymore.

The reason both were running, despite the bet only needing one of them to do so, was because in yesterday’s race, when the cars crossed the checkered flag, Max Verstappen was in a podium position, having finished third, meaning Alex was the winner of the bet. But by the time the drivers went to the podium for the ceremony, Max had received a penalty, dropping him from the podium position finish, and was replaced by Kimi Räikkönen, meaning Fatih was the winner of the bet. However, Alex managed to argue on the technicality and only compromised when Fatih gave up and agreed to run with him since, at one point in time, he had lost the bet.

“Let’s stop here today and resume when we return from testing. We can’t have you too exhausted before your first real-world drive,” Alex said, as if he was the one giving up resuming the run for Fatih’s sake and not because he was about to die if he pushed himself any further.

“Thank you for your kindness, but I won’t carry you back, so come at your own pace while I go and prepare myself,” Fatih said with an amused smile before he turned in the direction they came from and started jogging with a slightly increased pace compared to the previous one, disappearing from Alex’s view within just a few seconds, leaving him still heaving.

“Why did he have to be so athletic? With that stamina, he could run a marathon,” Alex said as he dropped to the ground, lying and looking up at the sky with his chest rising and falling frequently, not planning to stand up from there for at least twenty minutes.

……

“You got ready quite fast,” Alex said when he returned to their shared house. Unlike in Austria, where they had different accommodations, in Milton Keynes, they shared accommodations, but each had a different room.

“It took me an hour to finish getting ready; it just took you that much time to return,” Fatih said as he flipped to the next page of the documents he was going through.

The documents in his hands were the manuals for the car, containing all of the information that a driver will ever need. Being a car from the lowest open-seater feeder series and made specifically for cost-effectiveness, it didn’t have too much that the driver could actually do from the steering wheel, like all the available options in an F1 car, but Fatih still read it diligently, as if to remind himself, despite having already read and memorized it for the theory exam.

“I came late to give you the space to get ready and not get in your way. I should be ready to go in ten minutes,” Alex said as he rushed to his room to gather his toiletries to go and wash himself. He knew he was never going to finish everything in the promised ten minutes, but Fatih didn’t bother to correct him.

And he was correct, as it took him an entire half an hour before he was ready, despite rushing as much as possible while still not skipping anything, before finally heading for breakfast.

“Are you sure we can take our time here and not rush there?” Fatih asked as they headed for the cafeteria.

“Don’t worry, as long as we are there at 11, there won’t be any problem, and it is only a half-hour ride from here to Silverstone. On our current pace, we should be able to arrive way before that time and allow you to finally get to know the other two with whom you will be practicing,” Alex said while looking at his wristwatch.

Red Bull had gone ahead and booked Silverstone for three days for all three of their drivers to have enough time to get used to the car. To keep up with their ruthless nature, they made sure that the track times were intertwined so that each driver could watch another driver on the track while knowing that they were being compared against them to see who adapts faster and bests the other two. The culmination of that plan would be on the third day, where they will have multiple mock races against the three of them, with even Helmut Marko slated to appear on Wednesday, the third day of the first round of on-track training.

As if deliberately, Fatih hadn’t managed to meet either of the other two drivers who were undergoing F4 transitional training, as their training location was not Milton Keynes; they used the simulator of Arden Motorsports for their simulator training, unlike Fatih, who used the second F1 simulator for Red Bull.

“Well, if we arrive late, I’m throwing you under the bus.”

“How can you say that you will stab me in the back so openly?”

“It is not backstabbing if I told you; it’s front-stabbing, one that you know will be coming, so your argument is irrelevant.”

“Wow, I can’t believe what I’m hearing, man. I’d better start praying that it rains today just as your track time starts so that your wet time is compared to the other two’s dry track time.”

“I would welcome that with my whole heart, as it will be quite an enjoyable challenge.”

“What if I pray for a puncture?”

“I have confidence I can beat them even with that handicap.”

“Look at this guy, playing tough.”

As their back and forth continued, they arrived in the cafeteria, had their breakfast as fast as possible, and immediately finished their final preparations before finally taking their assigned car and starting their journey to Silverstone.

……

After going through security, where their identities were verified to be among those permitted to be on the track today, they were finally allowed to enter the track, heading to the parking lot that was the closest to the pit lane, before they got out and headed to the pit lane with their luggage.

“Ah, the favored son arrives at last,” Dennis Hauger said to Jack Doohan when he saw Fatih and Alex finally arriving at the pit lane.

He and Jack Doohan were on the first floor of the Silverstone pit lane building, already fully suited in their racing kits, looking down at Fatih, who was walking at a leisurely pace. They weren’t looking at Fatih too favorably due to the blatant favoritism Red Bull had been showing between the three drivers.

While Fatih received an in-depth education with selected teachers from the F1 team, they were left under the supervision of Arden Motorsports. And although that wouldn’t have been much of a problem, the simulator situation didn’t alleviate the feeling at all. Fatih was allowed to use the state-of-the-art simulator that was previously used by Red Bull for their F1 car simulation, but they were left to use the simulator at Arden Motorsports, which was just slightly better than a gaming setup.

As a result, while Fatih could have high-fidelity, specific, and targeted training with better feedback from the simulator, they were left with the same targeted training but on a lower-quality simulator. And worse, there wasn’t even an attempt to hide this information from the two of them, having learned about it quite early in their transition training.

When they lodged some protests with their higher-ups for the blatant favoritism, the only explanation they received was that Fatih was using those resources because they were coordinated way beforehand, before the two of them had even been signed. Everything was already booked, and by the time they were signed in September, there was no time for changes to be made to the prior preparations, so they were left with the second option. Since they had just been signed, the two of them didn’t try to fight back on it too much once they were promised additional resources once they started showing improvements.

Although through all of those explanations, it wasn’t explicitly said, they already felt that the level of importance between them and Fatih was of a different level entirely. And with drivers in motorsports having the belief that they are the best, being made to feel inferior wasn’t something they were going to take sitting down. So the moment they saw Fatih walking leisurely, arriving last of all of them, they locked on him with the intent of showing him that they were better than him in all aspects and also showing headquarters that they were wasting good resources on a driver no better than them.

Unknowingly, and as if by someone’s deliberate machination, Fatih now had two drivers ready to give their all to beat him.