Formula 1: The GOAT-Chapter 248: Race Weekend | Friday | Ghost of Croft

"It’s all yours, take us through it, Justin," Brad said the moment Fatih started upshifting, making it clear that he was keeping with tradition and going for a push lap on his first full lap.

"He is a man of tradition. He starts his first lap of the session, and the start-finish straight is long enough for him to reach sixth gear near the end of it before he brakes and rapidly downshifts to third gear as he takes the Clervaux right-hander. He remains in gear until he goes through the chicane, lightly braking and lifting, downshifting to second before he is back on power and slowly increasing the throttle percentage on the wide Hawthorn right-hander.

He gets onto third and fourth gear while still on the wide turn and takes the second chicane as if it doesn’t exist at all before finally entering the long straight into fifth gear. He lets the car gain some speed before he moves to sixth, watching the heavy braking zone come at him at high speed.

You can gain or lose time here depending on how well you take it.He brakes heavily, downshifts all the way to second gear on the straight before taking the Tower Bend corner while the car is still planted on the ground, gaining maximum rotation before he is back on power once he passes the apex onto the second straight, going upward through the gears.

He is driving with so much confidence, as if he has driven this track before, when it is his first push lap around this track. He goes through the Jim Clark Esses as if it is a straight and even moves up to fifth gear in the middle of it, continuing his drive on the straight before he moves to sixth. He goes through Barcroft, but that is only for a few meters before he brakes and downshifts all the way to third gear before taking the next right-hander, Sunny In corner.

He is now back on power, heading towards Sunny Out right-hander, and unlike its sister corner, there is no braking here, only a slight lift before immediately upshifting to fourth gear the moment he is out of the corner into another short straight. These three right-handers remind me of Turkey’s Turn 8.

He shifts up to fifth gear on the short straight before he is back down to third while braking lightly, then trail-braking into the Complex Corner sequence before he is back on power for a fraction of a second. He then downshifts to second gear into the tight right-hander, back on power but remaining in second gear on the short straight, followed by braking and downshifting to first gear as he takes the final corner, the so-called tightest corner in the UK.

Carefully, he is now back on the start-finish straight. It is a run to the start-finish line, and it’s a..." Justin, who was commentating calmly but still excitedly, froze mid-sentence the moment the timing graphics updated to show the final lap time he had set amidst the triple purple sectors.

"A 1:21.762!" Brad immediately jumped into the silence. "It is a tenth away from last year’s fastest lap of any session on this track! OH MY GOD, WHAT ARE WE WITNESSING? A RETURNING DRIVER, SETTING A TIME ON HIS FIRST LAP IN THE FIRST SESSION OF HIS RETURN, IS ONLY A TENTH AWAY FROM LAST YEAR’S FASTEST LAP TIME! WOOOW! AND HE DOESN’T LOOK LIKE HE IS PLANNING TO COOL DOWN THE TIRES AT ALL, AS HIS PACE IS ALMOST THE SAME AS THE PREVIOUS LAP! WHAT IS HE THINKING?" Brad shouted, finding it hard to believe what he was seeing.

Of course, he knew Fatih was talented; his karting career left no room for doubt, but for him to do such a thing when the pressure on top of him was so heavy, in a series where he didn’t have enough experience, was not something he was expecting or had imagined at all.

Amidst his jumbled thoughts, the camera feeds kept changing, but they were all focused on Fatih, who was in the middle of the second sector in what was now a very clear second push lap.

The feed then shifted to the T-cam, showing the cockpit. His eyes instantly went to the steering wheel as he was nearing a heavy braking zone after a long straight. And there it was, Fatih was casually adjusting the brake bias before braking, downshifting, and taking the turn, then getting back on power after the apex. As if on automatic, he once again adjusted the brake bias for the next corners that were still quite a distance away, as if it was his second nature.

The on-car feed remained for the remainder of the lap, showing every steering input, brake bias adjustment, and the direction his head was facing, which Fatih looked to be doing with ease.

Lap 2: 1:21.758. He improved, even though it was by a blink-and-you-miss-it margin, but Fatih seemed not to care as he was already on the start of his next push lap.

Lap 3: 1:21.750

Lap 4: 1:21.753

Lap 5: 1:21.767

"Oh my God, is the timing system broken?" Justin asked while Brad was speechless.

"I don’t think this is his qualifying simulation," Brad said in a tone of disbelief, as if his mind was telling him something that made sense, but he didn’t want to believe it.

"You are saying it is a racing simulation? But that wouldn’t explain the pace he managed to maintain. Shouldn’t the tires have started degrading already resulting in a time loss due to loss of grip?" Justin asked, as he too was having the same disbelief.

"It only makes sense if the current speed is a controlled pace."

"Stop kidding me," Justin said, as even he couldn’t accept that someone’s controlled pace was only a tenth from last year’s fastest lap. And what didn’t make sense was how Fatih was even keeping pace with a delta time and keeping it within that scary, defined window, since even experienced drivers can’t do it with that accuracy. Moreover, Fatih’s head didn’t look like it was looking at the steering wheel at all; most of the time, it was looking ahead.

"Do you know what they used to call him in Italy?" Brad asked, ignoring Justin’s previous words.

"What is it?" he asked, wondering what that had to do with what they were witnessing.

"’Ghost of La Conca.’ That is what they called him because his performance on that track dwarfed anything he did on any other. I looked into it when gathering more information about him, but did you know that of the top one hundred fastest laps set on that track, at least 90 of them in each category he had driven in are under his name?"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA," Justin laughed in disbelief at that new information.

"What’s more surprising was that in his first year there, he broke the lap record at least ten times in each session, from practice all the way to the final race, meaning the lap record was broken at least eighty times that day.

That is why I think he is holding this pace deliberately, like he had done on that day where he only broke the new record by a small margin and kept doing the same until the final race," he finally reached the point he was planning to make with his long-winded history lesson.

"So you are saying he is doing the pace and delta setting in his head?"

"That is what I believe, but this one feels different."

"Why?" Justin’s voice, while asking that, sounded hollow, as if he was feeling the disbelief of the situation himself.

"I’m just guessing at the moment, but this pace seems deliberate, as if it is the pace that he can maintain for a long period of time."

"What about tire degradation?"

"That will be offset by the fuel he burns. If it is really what he is trying to do, then the pace at which the tires degrade should be matched by how light the car becomes. But even to me, that sounds unbelievable, so take it with a mountain of salt."

And right he was, as the next ten laps resolved all of his worries.

Lap 6: 1:21.763

Lap 7: 1:21.764

Lap 8: 1:21.744

Lap 9: 1:21.760

Lap 10: 1:21.766

Lap 11: 1:21.743

Lap 12: 1:21.757

Lap 13: 1:21.745

Lap 14: 1:21.754

Lap 15: 1:21.757