Formula 1: The GOAT

Chapter 212: Silverstone | Fatih Yıldırım IV

While Fatih was at the medical center undergoing all the checkups, the repairs to the barrier were completed before the track was once again green-flagged. Jack Doohan was the first to benefit from Fatih’s crash, returning to the track for his second thirty-minute individual practice session. As for the mechanics, they were now assessing the damage to Fatih’s car as they came up with a plan to repair it as quickly as possible so Fatih could rejoin the track the moment he was cleared.

……

“The test shows nothing to be wrong, and although I would like to clear you, I suggest you wait for a few hours before we run the test again to check if there are some changes in the results, in case any aftereffects appear later,” the doctor said once he returned to the room with a clipboard in his hand.

“How many hours should I wait?” Fatih asked, catching everyone in the room off guard. They expected him to want to leave as fast as possible, and now that he was cleared, the request to remain was only a suggestion, one that he could decline, because drivers normally want to return to their cars as soon as possible.

“Three hours?” the doctor said, slowing his words as if he was ready to bargain with Fatih on the amount of time he needed to wait. He was ready to send him away and just tell him to report back the moment he felt something was not right.

“Let’s make that four,” Fatih said as he raised his legs that were hanging on the side of the hospital bed, placing them on the bed before he lay down and picked up his balaclava to cover his face, making it obvious that he was planning to sleep for that duration.

The people in the room looked at one another before the doctor closed his clipboard and turned around, not planning to do anything that would result in the young driver changing his mind. He swiftly walked out of the room along with his assistant, leaving Fatih and Alex inside.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaa,” Alex sighed as he looked at Fatih, who seemed fully intent on sleeping. At the same time, he felt relief that Fatih came out of that crash completely fine, as it wouldn’t have been a surprise if it had actually resulted in a worse outcome.

He looked at Fatih for a few seconds before he walked to a chair in the room, removed his phone from his pocket, and contacted the team with an update on the situation.

He then started browsing the internet, planning to wait with him for the duration he was going to spend here, completely unaware that sleeping was the last thing Fatih was planning to do. He had deliberately not logged into the simulation for his daily allotted time today, knowing that he was finally going to get access to the car and be able to register it. Now, he had just gained time equivalent to his maximum simulation time without any disturbance, and he was already inside.

…..

“You don’t really think of making me spend these four precious hours of practice to do that, right?” Fatih asked when he found himself in the Silverstone garage with his car suspended in the air.

“I’m serious. In order for you to fully understand the car you are driving, you need to know every part that makes it up. And what better way to learn than by tearing it down and rebuilding it again?” Apollo said with a smile on his face as he raised his hands, and the drawers opened all at once, revealing the tools inside.

Fatih’s head started slowly moving back and forth from the raised car to the open drawers as he imagined the process of dismantling the car. He connected this situation to the video of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton being made to assemble their car and slowly turned his head to Apollo, wondering if that was where he got his inspiration, and decided to play with him by making him recreate it.

“It is for your own good,” Apollo said, having heard Fatih’s thoughts, forcing him to immediately defend himself.

“How so?” Fatih asked. Although very confident that what Apollo was saying was true, he still wanted to hear it so that he could maximize the potential benefits.

“There are a few of them, but one is to help you in your mental simulation. Dismantling and building it up should allow you to know every single part of the car, making it easy to rebuild them within your imagination.

Then there is understanding how the car works, which should allow you to specifically pinpoint exactly what is happening and where. Should a failure happen, you will be able to pinpoint it with your Invictus. While it would get there even if you don’t do this, it would take longer and still won’t be utilized to its maximum potential,” Apollo said as the car started coming apart as if someone was reversing a 3D design, revealing the inside of the engine, which started working despite some parts that were covering it not being in place.

“This should make it very clear to you just how much of an advantage you will have once you are fully experienced in how it works,” he added, as it was clear to anyone with any semblance of understanding in motorsports how advantageous seeing the parts working with your own eyes was compared to just reading about it.

“Wooooooooooow, it looks like you were nerfed during my karting years,” Fatih said as he looked at the still disassembled and running engine in front of him. It was still running in full power in real-time, but the speed interface in front of him made it very clear that he could control the time at which the engine was operating.

To try it for himself, he reached out and slowed down the time around the engine. And there it was, in real time, he saw the engine that was at its idle 1,500 RPM have its time slowed down enough to the point that he could see the entire combustion process happening in front of his eyes: from the fuel-air injection, followed by compression, then combustion, before the chamber was emptied once again, and the process repeated itself.

He knew very well how broken this ability was. Even the companies that built these engines have no ability to view them operating the way he did, as they had to rely on sensors to try and see what was happening. This meant there was a chance that he would be able to understand the car better than even its makers and be able to find all of the small pieces that lead to a loss in efficiency and how they could be improved, so long as he had the relevant knowledge and understanding of the field.

“You don’t know how much I have been holding back,” Apollo said, making a face as if a child had finally realized the amount of sacrifice their parents had to take for them.

“How long do you expect this entire thing to take until I fully understand the car and can start practicing on the track?” he asked, because he knew that it was going to take a very long time, making him wonder if he would not be able to drive the car in the simulation during that time.

“Don’t worry. After you see every part of the car and memorize it to the point that you can use those memories to rebuild the car in your mind, then do the disassembly of a small part of it in your imagination like I did, we will move to a schedule of two hours learning the car, an hour on the track, and an hour of your sense calibrations. So, the faster you finish your disassembly and assembly, the faster you can hit the track,” Apollo said before disappearing, not wanting to answer any more questions.

He wasn’t worried that Fatih might destroy the car since the original data was saved in the simulation, so no matter what he did, there was no risk of such a thing happening.

Fatih, now alone in the entire garage, didn’t waste time. He picked up the wheel gun and started removing the five lug nuts on each tire, a configuration that came as a result of the F4 format not having mandatory pit stops due to all races being sprint formats, removing the need for pitting and reducing costs.

After removing the tires, he dropped the wheel gun and walked to the drawers with all the equipment he would ever need. Instead of choosing one, he started from the farthest drawer, picking one piece of equipment, which immediately revealed a small screen with a description of what it was called, what it did, and all of the basic information one would ever need to know about it.

He then placed it down and moved to the next one. To anyone who knew Fatih’s abilities, which now included a near-perfect memory thanks to Sponge Brain, it was clear he was now creating a tool database in his mind before he started disassembling the car. It would be very helpful for him in increasing his speed if he knew exactly what tool might be needed and where it was, removing the need for him to go through every tool before finding the one for the task.

Unknowingly, a driver with enough knowledge to rival the mechanics who repaired and the engineers who built the car was starting his foundational training. Although it would take a few years before he could fully bloom in this aspect, it was a future Apollo was looking forward to with excitement.