Chapter 451: A Decision

"You are heartless. How can you beat your girlfriend like that? Shouldn’t you go easy on me or something?" Seraphina complained whilst holding Fatih’s hand as he drove her home after practice.

"That would be doing a disservice to you, but in anything else, I would go easy on you," Fatih said as he subtly squeezed her hand, quite enjoying the feeling.

They had gone through with the practice as usual, with Fatih acting as the attacker and defender multiple times as he tried to emulate what he had gone through from Apollo to earn the abilities of Hyper-vigilance and Race Craft before the practice came to an end at the agreed time. Only then did they finally talk about it.

Seraphina seemed to have delayed because she wanted Fatih to have time to think about his decision and be sure that it was not him just reacting to the moment due to the emotional state they were in.

If it really was that, they would need to make things clear as soon as possible so that the room for misunderstanding would die immediately, and because only that way could they retain their relationship as friends, which would definitely be killed if misunderstandings were allowed to go unresolved.

During the drive, along with excitement, she had also felt anxiety about whether her worry was true because, no matter the circumstances, she couldn’t see herself without Fatih in her life. Before loving him, she considered him the closest person to her other than her parents, and losing that would be devastating to her, despite having already formed quite a few friendships with other people as she came out of her shell.

To her surprise, despite the time she gave Fatih to sort his thoughts, he had acknowledged his feelings for her and asked her out immediately, wanting to make things official. Despite knowing they might be rushing things, she accepted it immediately, as in her mind, this should have happened years ago, and they had already wasted too much time worrying about what the other person felt.

When everything was done and dusted, they left the track together as an official boyfriend and girlfriend, having entered as two best friends—an outcome she hadn’t even daydreamed about in her fantasies about their relationship.

As the two of them talked while enjoying their new relationship high, they finally arrived at her house. Fatih came to a stop in front of it, but for a few minutes, neither of them got out.

"See you tomorrow," Fatih said as he leaned in to kiss Seraphina, who leaned in as well. They kissed before she opened the door to get out, but froze in the middle of it.

"MOM!" she shouted as she closed the door and turned to Fatih, covering her face as it turned red as a tomato. In contrast to her white hair, it made her red ears stand out even more.

"Hello, Miss Brunhilde," Fatih said shamelessly as he waved at her.

"Hello, Fatih. Looks like you have yourself a girlfriend," Brunhilde said as she leaned on the door frame with a smile on her face.

"Yes, looks like it, but she is very shy. I will introduce her to you later," Fatih said as he raised his hand to block Seraphina’s punches as she felt embarrassed by Fatih’s and her mother’s conversation.

"I would be happy to meet her. She is very lucky," she said as she watched the two fight one another, enjoying seeing her daughter acting that way.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise to her because it was very obvious that the two of them had liked one another for quite some time, and it had even made her frustrated at some point when she saw their relationship not developing in that direction, as it was obvious to everyone. But it seemed that the time for it had finally come.

"See you tomorrow," she said as Seraphina rushed out of the car and past her, running into the house, still hiding her face. A few seconds later, Fatih finally drove away, heading home, done with his outside schedule.

.......

"Why is everyone looking at me like that?" Fatih, ever the perceptive one, looked around the living room suspiciously as he saw how everyone in the house was looking at him.

"Don’t you have anything to say to us?" his mother was the first to ask as she tried to hide a smirk on her face.

"There may be, but there are quite a few, so can you narrow it down?" Fatih said as he started narrowing down things, and at the moment there were only two things that were of significance.

"Like a girlfriend, maybe?" Burak couldn’t hold it any longer and just blurted it out before he cried, "Ouch!" when Rümeysa slapped him.

"Oh, that. Yes, Sera and I are now dating, as of three hours ago," Fatih said as he looked at the clock on the wall to give them the exact time.

Although outwardly he behaved as if it were casual, Invictus, not on its home ground, was working overtime to try to allow him to keep his composure and was on the verge of failing at any time. He had just realized that with the two families being very close, Brunhilde must have called them to talk about it the moment he left her house and was on his way home.

"OOOOOOOH!!!" the entire house said, but their reaction seemed weird.

"Took you long enough," his grandmother said, catching him by surprise, but before he could say anything, his mother chimed in, "I even wondered if all his race blessings were to the detriment of him being dense in social things and obvious hints." Burak, not to miss a beat, added, "If it went on any longer, she would have intervened," as he pointed at his wife.

Fatih, with a look of disbelief on his face, found himself speechless because the reaction was the same from his girlfriend’s mother as well. He started wondering if he had missed some obvious signs in the past that were so obvious that everyone around them knew.

As he started racking his memory, one by one, things that his mind had interpreted as a reflection of how close they were came to mind: how skinship-prone she had become with him, the constant hugging, and everything else, which, now viewed through the lens of her being interested, were very clear signs that he had experienced through a different filter.

And as he came to that realization, Invictus finally failed, and immediately his face started to redden.

The family, having lacked many chances to tease him in embarrassing moments, didn’t waste the opportunity and immediately started naming additional hints that he had missed, and with each one, he became redder and redder.

Rümeysa, on the other hand, while she was still teasing her son, inwardly sighed with relief, as this had happened now and it seemed to have allowed her son to move past the Red Bull matter very quickly, having expected him to take a long time to get over it.

She knew he wasn’t over it, but at the moment, the other feeling was stronger than the anger and disappointment he was feeling, so he was going through it without feeling the full brunt of the negative feelings.

She couldn’t help but be grateful to Seraphina, as she had gotten to like her even more because she had chosen a very strategic moment, having learned about the story of how things unfolded from Seraphina’s mother.

.........

"I don’t want to go to Red Bull," Fatih said to his mother the following day in the dining room as they ate breakfast together.

"So you want to terminate the contract?"

"No, not that. It’s just that I will not be going for my promotion to Red Bull."

"Giving up on chasing your title because you are afraid?" Güldane asked.

"MOM!!" Rümeysa called to her mother, as she seemed to want to avoid asking provocative questions.

"No, I spent last night thinking about it, and I realized that although we might have hardware parity guaranteed by the contract, everything else will be to Verstappen’s advantage. If it is limited to receiving the suboptimal strategy during races, that could somehow be mitigated by better driving.

But this can extend to everything else if they want to make sure I’m in no position to challenge Verstappen: more press conferences and sponsor obligations, more simulator time for things the simulator drivers could do, providing important information late when I can’t do anything about it.

They can scramble engine modes to look the same but operate differently to hinder my pace when I’m ahead of Verstappen, use team orders, force me to use more tires during Free Practices in order to get more data to apply to both cars while leaving me a small number of fresh tires for the race to remove strategic options, over-fuel my car during Qualifying to put me a few tenths behind him by having more fuel than the bare minimum Verstappen will have, mess with my setup, and many more things to make it physically and psychologically impossible to beat Verstappen toe-to-toe.

Depending on how much they want this win and see me as an obstacle, they are not going to shy away from that. I don’t want to be on a team and in a place where nobody wants me. But it is also because I believe we can be competitive in AlphaTauri if we have enough control."

"You want to buy AlphaTauri?" Burak asked, quite surprised as to how the matter had reached this point.

"No, but use it as a placeholder and have enough time for us to prepare as a new team entry, so until 2025 should be enough time for our new team to have all of the infrastructure and everything else ready to enter as full constructors."

"A new team?"

"Yes, I believe that is the only way to prevent something like this from happening again because no matter where I go and how much I am sought after, there is always going to be a chance of our interests not matching. In those situations, experiencing the same things is not out of the question. But having our own team will solve all of those problems, and five years should be enough to set everything up correctly and without rushing, I believe."

Everyone at the table found themselves speechless, as the logic that brought him to that conclusion made sense. He didn’t want to be on a team where his interests might go against the team’s, and the solution to that was easy: have your own team where your interests will always align.

But the leap needed to achieve that conclusion cost-wise was going to be massive and time-consuming. He seemed to have found another solution: just use AlphaTauri as a placeholder for those five years, and it would be the closest thing to owning a team for that period.

A good solution, too, but the only question now was not only a matter of cost but also a matter of how.

"And how will we do that?" Burak asked, as he was extremely curious. How were they going to convince Red Bull to give them control of the team for that period when they weren’t going to accept a buying offer?

"Just like they have the leverage to terminate our contract with them if we push for the promotion, we just need to find and have big enough leverage to make that decision the best option for them. As for what it is, we just have to find it," Fatih said, and as he reached the final parts of his sentence, he turned to his mother since the family office would be needed in this matter and billions were going to be spent, so her approval was absolutely necessary.

She had stopped eating and was resting her chin on her hand, deep in thought as she went through the possible options her son had brought to the table.