Chapter 447: Hail Mary

"Do you have time after this?" Rümeysa asked Fatih as the family had dinner together in the kitchen.

"Yes, I don’t have anything planned for tonight," Fatih answered once he was done drinking water.

"Then we should talk," she said, without having to elaborate on what topic, since it was clear to anyone what the topic was going to be.

With a nod from Fatih, the family continued with their meal and their small talk to pass the time until the meal was done. Everyone then moved to the living room for the conversation to take place.

Since they were family members, there was no need for secrecy. Rümeysa, with a stack of documents she had collected from the printer Fatih had bought last year, joined Fatih on the large sofa as the time for the conversation finally arrived.

"First, I should bring you up to date on our investigation regarding the first article after Monaco. Although we don’t have direct evidence to point it out, we can say with confidence that it was the Verstappens’ side that sent it to the media, and Red Bull just turned a blind eye to it," she said as she handed Fatih a piece of paper that contained a history of Verstappen-centric articles written by the same reporter starting a few years ago, along with the exclusive news he had written. It made it clear that the two sides had a good and close relationship, and this time it would be no different.

"..." Fatih just nodded silently as he looked at the piece of paper in his hand.

Rümeysa, seeing this, just continued with her update, "We can say it is the same for the article that was sent out after the Baku qualification, as it came from the same reporter and was timed to match the press conference.

I believe it was an attempt to play mind games and reduce the probability of a podium from your side, and although it failed, it is clear that they wanted to prevent any chance of you completing the requirements for your promotion to the main team. Now that you’ve met the conditions, we can expect the Verstappens to continue acting the same and argue on the matter."

"What about Red Bull?" Fatih asked as he placed the paper in his hand to the side.

"Nothing connecting them to this at the moment, but their silence in this matter is something of interest. In a certain interpretation, we can even consider this as their support for what the Verstappens are doing and that they have played them as the vanguard," Rümeysa said, answering his question.

Burak then took this moment to add, "For Red Bull as well, a promotion at the moment is not the most welcome news. After all, their driver combination is working well with defined roles for each driver who are faithful to them, and bringing in a new driver will introduce volatility in a period where they need stability and consistency. It might throw a wrench in their chase for the drivers’ championship, so both sides have a reason to cooperate."

"I have had the lawyers look at the contract we signed again, and they say unless it is a mutual agreement, they have a choice of either promoting you or paying the doubling fines for each race week they do not. So, at the moment, we can rely on that, though we should still be careful," Rümeysa added to counterbalance the negative connotation Burak had placed on Red Bull since there was nothing they could point to directly as their full support in the matter.

After all, Red Bull had already reached out to her wanting to talk, and although she knew it was about Fatih’s promotion, she had decided not to announce it, to use it as a surprise after the meeting was over and his promotion was guaranteed.

"You still want to go ahead with the promotion, right?" she asked, wanting confirmation beforehand.

"Yes," Fatih answered without even thinking about it.

"But the environment would still not be very welcoming, you know that, right?"

"Yes, I know that. What I would be worried about is hardware parity, but since the contract guarantees that, then everything else is all a matter of positioning on the track and my pace; if it’s good enough, it should counter the suboptimal strategies they give me."

Burak, upon hearing Fatih’s response, felt like something finally clicked in his mind, as if the final piece of the puzzle was finally placed down. He said, "You are still trying to chase the driver’s championship?"

As someone who knew Fatih, having seen him racing since he was just five years old, he knew how competitive he grew up to be, but even to him, he had felt that Fatih’s chances for the championship, having missed five races, were at the moment nonexistent.

But to his surprise, Fatih turned to him, and with confidence, he said, "I had zero points before Monaco, but now I have fifty-two of them and am only forty-eight points behind Hamilton.

I just need to win two races and for them to either DNF or underperform from a mechanical failure that ends with them winning small points for me to be back in contention, and there are more than fifteen races still in the championship to kill all my chances for it. If I could bring together two wins in a midfield car, I believe I can do something similar in the lead car of the championship."

Not a single part of his face or voice showed any signs of uncertainty at all. To everyone looking at him, they could see he actually fully believed in what he was saying.

Burak found himself speechless for a moment as he started wondering if this was confidence or something worse, like arrogance, but that second option was thrown out of the window because he knew who Fatih was, and he had never for a single moment shown arrogance in his career, despite dominating every field again at every level of single-seaters.

"HAHAHAHAHAH," Rümeysa just laughed when she saw the expression Burak had on his face upon hearing Fatih’s answer. As for her, she wasn’t that surprised by his confidence, having seen it on his face from when he had pointed to the TV and selected who he believed was going to win that Monaco race. From there on, he just kept moving forward like a bulldozer with no steering control.

"Well, I have to make sure you have everything you need to make that dream true," she said as she laughed, but she was serious about that.

It took some time for everyone to recollect themselves before his grandmother asked, speaking for the first time since the discussions began, "Are you going to leave the team when your time ends?" going directly to the contract that had two years guaranteed and one year of expansion upon mutual agreement, meaning if things went as they were, he could leave the team by the end of the 2022 season.

"I have yet to make a decision at the moment, until after seeing how things work when I’m in Red Bull and who has the competitive car for the new regulations," Fatih said, avoiding making any decision at the moment, although he was leaning toward leaving. He was reluctant to fully put it in stone, knowing the monster Red Bull was going to have for the 2023 season.

Now that the important points had been addressed, their conversation moved into a lighter tone as they started talking about the Azerbaijan weekend, as all of them were curious for the inside info on how things started before they reached the point of taking that massive gamble of heavily under-fueling the car that brought them the win.

Fatih, not one to shy away from telling a story, started putting his eidetic memory to work as he started recounting all the events as the family enjoyed a moment of peace before it was interrupted by Ayla, who woke up and, upon seeing that she was still alive, decided to make it known to the world, and crying at the top of her voice was her only way of achieving that.

...........

"I beg your pardon, but what did you say?" Rümeysa asked for the second time as she looked at the man sitting in front of her, as if she had misheard what he had said.

The man in front of her, without missing a beat, immediately repeated what he had said a few seconds ago: "Due to the obvious circumstances of the championship fight and sponsorship commitments, we would like to come to a mutual agreement to postpone the promotion of Fatih Y?ld?r?m until the end of the 2021 season."

During his short pause, when Rümeysa didn’t say anything, he continued, adding, "In return for us reaching that agreement, we are prepared to compensate Fatih for deferring the promotion with 10 million dollars on top of his salary and guaranteed salary renegotiations for the next season without the rookie discount being taken into account."

When she heard what he said for the second time, and he proved to her that she wasn’t hallucinating the words from the man’s mouth, she found herself speechless and completely caught off-guard.

She had come here expecting to negotiate his promotional announcement and the pay bump that would come from him being moved to a bigger team and other miscellaneous matters, only for what she was told to be the complete opposite and something she hadn’t even considered due to the amount of the penalty that was on the table.

She slowly raised her hand and patted the back of her neck under her headscarf before sliding it over to the top of her head and tapping it there as she tried to absorb and digest the information while also trying to calm the anger that was threatening to erupt from her at the same time.