Chapter 414: Qualifying in Monaco V

With every other car done with their push laps in Q2 and having already seen the checkered flag, leaving only Fatih in the middle of a push lap, everyone on the pit wall was following his lap, going through the live data that kept coming in from the publicly available telemetry.

He was a rookie hyped up by Red Bull, who went so far as to sign him to the team and allow him a year off when he could have been gaining experience in F2. The moment he was eligible, they demoted a well-performing driver just to give him a debut days after he came of age on an unsuitable track, all so he would remain with them and not move to another team.

........

"LOOKING AT THE TRACK MAP, IT SHOWS CARS ALL OVER THE TRACK, AND ALL OF THEM ARE ON THEIR COOLDOWN LAPS, RETURNING TO THE PIT LANE. IT IS A NIGHTMARE SITUATION FOR FATIH, BUT HE PULLS OUT THREE-TENTHS DESPITE THE INTERFERENCE AS HE NOW STARTS THE FINAL SECTOR.

THE FINAL SECTOR IS GOING TO BE A MAKE-OR-BREAK FOR HIS WEEKEND, AND IT IS THE SHORTEST PART OF THE TRACK. HE HAS TO OVERTAKE NORRIS, WHO DOES HIS BEST TO MOVE OUT OF THE WAY, AND AS HE COMES OUT OF THE FINAL CORNER AND TRIES TO SHORTEN THE TRACK AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, DID HE SURVIVE?

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES, HE DOES, AND BY A HAIR’S BREADTH OF A GAP, AS HE BEATS GIOVINAZZI BY HALF A TENTH (0.050) OF A SECOND, TAKING HIS PLACE AND ELIMINATING GIOVINAZZI’S ENTRY INTO Q3, KILLING ALFA ROMEO’S FIRST Q3 APPEARANCE IN THIS SEASON AND NIPPING THAT HOPE IN THE BUD!

HE DROVE AN IMPRESSIVE LAP, AND DESPITE MULTIPLE UNOPTIMAL RACING LINES HE HAD TO TAKE TO AVOID CARS ON THE TRACK, HE STILL MANAGED TO GET INTO Q3 ON HIS FIRST WEEKEND IN FORMULA ONE, AND WITH AN IMPRESSIVE FEAT OF DOING IT WITH MEDIUM TIRES WHILE EVERYONE ELSE WAS ON SOFTS...." Croft went all out on the commentary, as he knew it warranted that level of hype. Something incredible had been achieved, and he needed to give the moment the hype it deserved.

...

{"YES!!!!"} Fatih said, pumping his fist as he took Turn 1 with his left hand only, without even waiting to ask the garage if he had made it through, since the system’s timing capability already told him that and was already comparing his time relative to Giovanazzi’s lap time and by how much he had beaten him.

{Yes, incredible. We could have gone faster if it weren’t for the traffic, but the only important thing is we got through,} James said on the radio, with the excitement around him very clear based on the clapping sound that could be heard.

......

"You know what Fatih reminds me of?" David Croft asked when they returned from the ad break.

"What? Is it Hamilton again?" Brundle answered, trying to guess.

"Lightning McQueen, who in the first movie was a super rookie, and Fatih seems to be heading in that direction if he manages to start on the top end," Croft explained while chuckling.

"And he did defeat that F1 car in a race that took place around Monaco or something; that is as far as I remember, and I would need to watch it again to be sure," Brundle added.

"His name was Francesco Bernoulli," Ted Kravitz, who was on the pit lane, joined the conversation in the commentators’ booth, having been listening to what they were talking about.

"And there it is, Francesco Bernoulli and the Italian F1 car, which at the moment there is no one who fits perfectly, but Charles and Carlos Sainz, the Ferrari men, can serve as him in this session as they fight against one another for pole position," Brundle added on top of it as they continued having fun, waiting for Q3 to start.

"It is Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris, Valtteri Bottas, Lewis Hamilton, and now the rookie Fatih Yıldırım, who all look to be in contention for pole position based on the lap times they have shown in multiple sessions on this track. But it is going to be a tricky one for the two Mercs, as they had to wrangle the car around the track with their straight-line speed not helping them by much around here," Croft returned the focus to be fully about the session.

"The chances for Fatih going for pole are going to be very low, considering he is one of the few drivers who doesn’t have two new sets of soft tires, unlike the top seven who had managed to get through Q1 with only a single set, while Fatih had to burn two sets after his first one was flat-spotted by Nikita Mazepin’s failure to move out of the way."

......

While the commentators were wondering what the plan was going to be, Fatih himself was talking with the team regarding that at the same time.

{Eight-minute mark?} James asked on the radio, his surprise very clear as he turned from the pit wall to look at the garage in disbelief at what he heard.

{Yes, and fuel the car for four laps: two warm-up and push, and one for cooldown,} Fatih answered.

{You might already know this, but here all drivers enter the track the moment the session starts to have a banker lap due to the unpredictability of the track, and any red flag might leave you with no lap on board. You want to enter the track with eight minutes remaining; that would be a gamble, Fatih,} James said, trying to explain it to Fatih before having to escalate it up the chain of command.

{They all have nearly two new soft tires, and I have only one, so we don’t have any flexibility, and any lap with scrubbed softs is going to be useless for us. We don’t need to do what everyone else does because our circumstances are different from theirs, and imitating them will damage us,} Fatih explained on the radio, giving his side of the reason.

{But you will only have a single lap, and other drivers might have the opportunity to improve,} James said, trying to remind him what his decision would result in and how his situation would change.

{Then all we have to do is make it count,} Fatih said, and no more answers came, as he knew that James was reporting it to the relevant individuals who could make those decisions. But he was not planning on following their plans at all, since he knew driving on scrubs was going to be useless, and he needed to have his entire focus on a single push lap rather than trying the same route just because it was the safe one.

"What would you do if the team doesn’t agree with your strategy?" Apollo asked him amidst the silence.

"We’ll decide when that happens," Fatih said as he closed his eyes, mentally preparing himself for the single lap that he would be driving in this session.

He was remembering everything he had done in the simulation as he mentally went around the track, taking the experience he had on the real track and merging it with the one he had in the simulation, constantly adjusting his mental maps on how much he could push the car to the edge.

At the moment, it was going to be just a basic mental map of that, and he planned to refine it further during the on-track warm-up period and would do that all the way until he crossed the line and started his one and only Q3 qualifying lap.

...

"I can’t disagree with him on this one, and he has done quite impressively to even get through Q2. A banker lap at this moment has no advantage for him at all since all of the soft tires we have are useless for qualifying. What do you think?" Franz Tost said as he looked at the head of strategy, who seemed to be having a back-and-forth conversation with those back at base to get more details on the situation before he gave his answer.

"They say it would not be optimal, but if we time it perfectly, he should be able to have a go for a lap with two or two and a half minutes on the clock," Perrone, the head of strategy, said after around ten seconds of silence from his side.

"Two minutes on the clock? Why not go last like we did previously?" James interjected, pointing in the direction where it had worked two times for them in this qualifying session alone.

"That is the latest we can go and have the best of tire evolution while still having time before the drivers who now have their banker laps will go full-send to try and gain as much time as possible, with crashes still in mind, which would then increase the chance of yellow and red flags within around half a minute to the end of the session," Perrone explained the reasoning of why they needed to have Fatih go for his push lap when there was around a two to two-and-a-half-minute window on the clock.

"But can he handle it?" James then asked, pointing to the other possibility in terms of pressure, having sided with him at the start.

"It doesn’t really matter. Either way, he has already outperformed our expectations, so this is just a bonus. We can take the risk, and if he delivers, it is even better. Plus, he is the one who asked for it, so it means he believes he can do it, and we don’t yet have any evidence to argue against it," Perrone said with a chuckle. Once he received a final nod from Franz Tost, he pressed the radio and updated the mechanics on the changes in plan.

Helios AlphaTauri was taking a high-risk, high-return gamble.