Formula 1: The GOAT

Chapter 334: Opportunity

January was a nightmare month for Rümeysa as the market continued to rise and all of their bets moved in the opposite direction. With every passing day, the stock market indices continued to rise higher and higher, hitting record highs in late January.The only thing keeping her sane and not making her give the order to start the sell-off before the market reached even higher was the fact that even this had been taken into consideration in the document, as it had highlighted that the market would likely ignore the announcement until news of the virus being discovered in other countries and the first deaths were reported from those countries.

But knowing something was taken into consideration and living with those considerations were two completely different things. She was having a nightmare that the market continued breaking record highs, which in turn increased the amount of debt they would have to pay if the fall didn’t come, to the point that she started losing weight from the stress.

However, despite that, she didn’t put a stop to the positions that the SPVs were still getting into. They had spread themselves wide enough to not attract the market’s attention, and since the possibility of ending up in billions of dollars of debt was almost fully guaranteed if they were to withdraw now, a few more billion of debt wasn’t that much of a problem, so she was still observing.

In her mind, if by the end of February things didn’t calm down, only then would she pull the trigger, but there was still a month until then.

Her son, on the other hand, sounded and looked completely unbothered or worried during their daily video calls, despite being the one who orchestrated all of this. He was in the middle of fully enjoying his life at Milton Keynes.

He had already started attending simulator practice at Red Bull headquarters in preparation for the "Testing of Previous Cars" rule that allowed teams unlimited track time for their cars that are at least two years old. As a result, he left for Milton Keynes on Friday after school and returned home on Sunday night, spending the entire weekend in a simulator.

........

"We can go ahead with February’s testing without a problem," Emanuel, the simulator supervisor of Fatih’s training, said as he handed Helmut the tablet that contained all of the data from Fatih’s last weekend’s drive.

He was the same person who had been responsible for training Fatih in the simulator during his transition to F4, resulting in them choosing him again since they already had a good relationship and it would remove the friction that would be there if he was introduced to someone new.

"Which one of these is Max’s?" Helmut asked as he looked at the telemetry data that showed two drivers’ telemetry overlaid on top of one another.

"The blue one is Max, yellow is Fatih, red is Daniel’s, purple is Albon, and pink is Gasly," Emanuel said with a look of pride on his face.

Even he knew that the data was something unbelievable to see from a driver so young and yet to drive an actual physical F1 car, but the data didn’t lie at all.

"Hahahaha," Helmut laughed without fully opening his mouth as he moved from one comparison to another, seeing how Fatih fared against actual F1 drivers.

The simulation practice was not limited to the car he would be driving on the track but also the 2019 car, which allowed them to compare his lap times to those who had driven it last year: Gasly, Albon (who replaced him in August), and the team’s number one driver, Max.

The data clearly showed him being the second-best driver in the unstable 2019 car, beating both Gasly and Albon, while also constantly reducing the deficit to Verstappen down to a single tenth from the more than half-a-second deficit he had at the start. This indicated clearly that with a few more days, he might catch Verstappen’s pace.

However, Helmut was not an idiot and considered the different conditions Fatih was driving in compared to the ones who drove on the real track. The biggest of these were the G-forces, along with the risk contained in driving an actual car that is not there when driving a simulator. The fact that nothing negative can happen to the driver gives them the confidence to push as much as possible. After all, he can just retry it again and again until he perfects it.

"Okay, let’s go with it," Helmut said before pressing the call button on his office phone and calling for his assistant.

When his assistant answered, he immediately got to the point, "Tell Michael to go ahead and prepare for the track testing."

And just like that, Fatih was finally given the chance to drive an F1 in real life.

"Understood," his assistant answered, and the conversation ended there. Helmut raised his head to Emanuel and said, "That’s it for now," bringing the meeting to an end as he handed the tablet back to him.

Now left alone in his office, he couldn’t help but have a wide, satisfied smile on his face, as his decision a few years ago was continuously proving him correct more and more.

"Handle this track test, and I will guarantee you the seat the moment you are eligible," he said as if he was talking directly to Fatih, before he resumed what he was doing before Emanuel came.

....

"Is something wrong with him?" Güldane pulled Rümeysa aside, asking her while pointing to Fatih, who was walking around the house with a wide smile.

"They have just informed us that he will be having track testing in Silverstone in two weeks," Rümeysa said as she forced a smile on her face.

Although she was happy for her son, she didn’t have the bandwidth to fully feel it amidst everything else.

"How are you, by the way?" Güldane then asked her.

"I’m still handling things well," she said as she patted her mother’s arm. The pressure and anxiety she was feeling were slowly dropping as the market had finally stopped rising and was starting to fall.