Formula 1: The GOAT

Chapter 210: Silverstone | Fatih Yıldırım II

He kept the car in first gear through the pit lane, maintaining his carefulness all the way onto the track. The moment he rejoined the track at The Farm (Turn 2), bypassing Turn 1’s Abbey corner, he immediately floored it.

Unfortunately, unlike in karting with its limited power, he overdid it. With the tires being cold, they instantly lost grip and began to wheelspin, sending the car out of control as it started to oversteer. By the time it came to a full stop, he was facing the direction he had come from.

Acting swiftly, he immediately engaged the clutch and let the car complete its turn. Since the track was wide and he was alone, he didn’t see the need to fight it on his first time out.

“Feeling it for real is different from the simulator,” Fatih said as he went back down to neutral before revving the engine. He turned the steering wheel leftward until it reached steering lock before he immediately released the clutch and brake, causing the rear to get out as it induced a full 180-degree turn, finally facing the right direction.

{Let’s be careful next time,} James’s voice was heard from the radio the moment the car finished turning.

“Let me figure things out first,” Fatih said in a weirdly neutral voice, catching everyone hearing it off guard as it was the opposite of how Fatih usually spoke.

Those who heard it just chalked it up to him being frustrated with the mistake he made from the start, especially when the two who went before him didn’t face any problems.

Not caring, wondering, or wasting even a second to consider what those on the other end of the radio might think, he continued.

{Okay, we’ll keep communication minimal,} James responded, but it seemed like his words weren’t heard at all. Fatih didn’t even bother responding as he once again released the clutch and started moving, immediately starting to push the car on the straight heading to Turn 3, the Village.

……

“Is he normally like this?” James asked, turning to his right to Alex, who was standing in the space between James’s and Jack Doohan’s chairs on the pit wall.

“No, I don’t remember him ever talking like that. Maybe it’s nerves or disappointment from the mistake he made?” Alex said, ending his response with a question, as he too wondered what the reason might be.

But before the two drivers watching the screen could chime in, they immediately focused back on it when they heard the engine screaming. It was clear to anyone that the car was being pushed, making them wonder why Fatih was doing that when the two of them had taken their first lap very carefully, going so far as to be more than thirty seconds off the fastest possible time on the current track configuration.

…….

The moment he started his push, he immediately moved up the gear ladder to third while simultaneously moving to the left side of the track to set himself up for Turn 3 (Village). He stayed on the left track line, avoiding the curbs, and the moment he reached the fifty-meter braking marker, he braked heavily on the straight before trail-braking into the corner. The trail-braking didn’t last long; the moment he reached the middle of the corner, he pushed to full throttle aggressively while releasing the brakes entirely. As he exited the corner, he brought the car to the center in preparation for Turn 4 before braking, downshifting to second gear, and turning left.

However, instead of waiting for the middle of the corner, he started throttling very early into the corner (The Loop), deliberately going wide on the exit. This allowed him to move back to third gear by the time he hit the exit curbs and was at full throttle before moving to fourth gear and taking Turn 5 (Aintree) flat out without braking. He finally entered the Wellington Straight, moving up to fifth gear the moment the car straightened, benefiting from the momentum, which allowed him to enter sixth gear just after passing the bridge.

For the entire straight, he had continued hugging the right side of the track, his eyes focusing on the braking markers. The moment he passed the fifty-meter marker, he braked at about fifty percent before downshifting to fourth gear and keeping it there as the car turned. He then went down to third gear, matching the car’s lowest speed at the apex of the corner before going back on power while cutting the curb as much as possible. He pushed it too far as the left tires touched the grass while the right tires exceeded track limits, but he didn’t react to it at all as he kept his focus on what came next: Turn 7, Luffield.

Coming out wide from Brooklands (Turn 6), he moved to fourth gear before downshifting at the start of the next corner, which was a double-apex corner. He hit the first apex early, followed by the car going wide all the way to the center of the track before he reined it in and hit the second apex while holding the throttle firmly. He went wide on the exit, still in full throttle, before taking Turn 8, Woodcote, without lifting in fifth gear, going wide on the exit before moving to sixth gear shortly after entering the straight. He kept the car on the left side of the track, gaining speed on the straight as the famous Copse corner came at him.

To prepare for Copse (Turn 9), he pushed the car even wider as parts of the left tires touched the grass before he induced the turn without braking, only braking slightly after the car started turning to use the downforce for stability. He downshifted to fifth gear, aiming for the apex before returning to the throttle, cutting the curb, and going wide on the exit while still on full throttle, managing to keep the right tire on the white line. He entered another straight as the famous corners of Maggotts and Becketts, spanning four turns from Turn 10 to Turn 13, which connected to Chapel Curve (Turn 14), approached.

Approaching the corners in sixth gear and at maximum throttle, he took Turn 10 deep, to the point of driving over the sausage curbs without lifting. He then lifted for a moment and, while still in sixth gear, braked slightly as he angled the car for a better entry into Turn 11, taking it in sixth gear before once again throttling to max on the exit. This time, instead of going wide, he kept the car in the middle of the track before he braked and downshifted to fifth as he took the left-hander, Turn 12, going all the way to the grass before getting back on the throttle.

The full throttle didn’t last long, as it was just for a moment before he lifted and once again downshifted to fourth gear while braking slightly, then going back on the throttle while on the curbs to finish taking Turn 13. He upshifted to fifth gear while taking the Chapel Curve, entering the longest straight of the track, the Hangar Straight, just as he moved to sixth gear.

…….

“Wow,” James found himself involuntarily saying as he watched Fatih’s driving. It didn’t look like someone who was driving for the first time at all. His pace, although not matching the lap record, was already more than twenty seconds faster than the first laps the other two drivers took, if the spin was not taken into consideration.

It wasn’t like there were no mistakes, but they were small enough to be ignored, even if it had been his push lap after an hour on the track. He was showing an unbelievable pace, to the point that James even wondered if Fatih had driven on this track behind their backs. His driving was like someone who knew the track very well but didn’t know the car well enough to take full advantage of his knowledge.

The same thoughts were going through everyone who was watching, whether it was the video feed, the telemetry data from the car, or the telemetry data from Fatih’s body, which was being measured to see how his body was reacting in this new environment. It showed no spike in heartbeat, which was around 150 to 160 bpm, the normal range for drivers in race conditions.

…..

“With this pace, what is his time expected to be?” Helmut Marko, who was nowhere near the track, asked as he looked at the screens in front of the room. The data from the track, along with the video feed, was being sent back to Milton Keynes in real-time, allowing him to monitor everything that was going on without the drivers on the track knowing about it.

“He would beat them by more than twenty seconds if compared to their first lap and would most likely hit the lap times that they put up after getting used to the car and tra…”

But before the engineer could finish speaking, everyone in the room went silent as their eyes focused on what was happening on the screen.

…..

Fatih, who had finished the right-left-right-left sequence of Maggotts, Becketts, and Chapel Curve and was on the straight, slowly moving to the left side of the track with only a few corners from finishing his lap, was still in full focus. He watched as the Hangar Straight slowly came to an end, reaching the highest speed possible on the track of 227 mph just as the straight ended.

The moment he reached the fifty-meter braking marker, he lifted and braked at the same time at nearly fifty percent power. But just as he started turning and downshifting, the rear tires locked and oversteered. The car, which was at the start of transitioning from straight into turning, started sliding sideways, going off the track, across the tarmac runoff, and into the gravel before…

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAM!

…it hit the barrier, raising a cloud of dust that covered everything in the surroundings.

In a span of less than a second, at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour, he went from being on the track to being in the wall.