Chapter 349: Silverstone XIV

{Outlap¹ critical,} James said on the radio.

Fatih, on the other hand, came out of the pit lane¹ heading to turn three with a smile on his face. He knew he had completed the overtake since Apollo’s pit stop was going to be the total of his pit stop time ²plus one second. He could be said to have completed the overtake and be the net race leader³, despite Apollo being 23 seconds ahead of him.

Despite being the net leader, he didn’t ease up at all, as he had no information on what Apollo was doing at the moment. Since he couldn’t ask the pit lane, the only option was to go out, guns blazing, as he started the process of getting the tires to temperature, but not going too slow as to lose time.

A single lap was all it took before the tires were finally up to temperature. He immediately started going for a full push and set the fastest lap of the session on LAP 22. He now had high confidence that his undercut ¹worked, as the new rubber² with less fuel than at the start of the race gave him a very big advantage.

Another fastest lap in LAP 23 as he improved by a tenth¹.

Another one in LAP 24, improving by another tenth.

...

"Can the tires handle that much pushing?" Horner asked as he looked at the list of fastest laps that kept being updated at the end of each of Fatih’s laps, showing that from when he came out of the pit on lap 21, he had set 10 fastest laps over the next ten laps.

"The improvement margins are very narrow, sometimes by hundredths of a second, so he is not just chasing lap time but keeping it within a manageable window," the performance engineer said as he looked at the telemetry ¹and other data from the multiple sensors in the car.

Helmut just watched the feed in silence as he moved the mouse to overlay the telemetry between two laps. Although everything looked very similar, that was only if you looked at the telemetry markers for the entire lap. When he zoomed in on only a section comprised of two corners, Brooklands and Luffield, he immediately noticed the difference between the two laps. Wanting to be sure, he overlayed two more laps on top of the already overlayed data and saw something interesting.

Fatih was deliberately changing his racing lines and the points where he was pushing before the corners, during turning, on the transition to the other turn, in the middle of it, and on the exit. But at the end of it, he always spent nearly identical times within these two corners, losing or gaining only thousandths of a second¹ in lap time.

"What do you think about this?" Helmut asked as he pointed at the overlayed telemetry for the performance engineer to take a look. His highlighting of it was also caught by the team that was still in Milton Keynes, so they too started taking a look.

It took them about a minute to look at the data and check to see if it was the same in other corners. And other than a few of them, the same phenomenon repeated in the remaining ones before they finally came up with a hypothesis.

{He is changing the amount of wear ¹the tire is experiencing to make sure it is used evenly, but also that the temperature is within the same window in different parts of the patch ²touching the track,} one of the telemetry specialists at Milton Keynes reported back, catching everyone off guard.

{Can you elaborate?} Horner asked on the radio, curious.

{Depending on what part of the corner you push more or less, different patches of the tire feel a different amount of friction and wear. So he is varying what parts he pushes by how much at the same corner in different laps so that different patches of the same tire experience it and wear equally,} the telemetry specialist tried to explain, but some still failed to understand, though it didn’t matter because the ones who asked already knew.

Helmut had a look of calm on his face, but his mind was not calm at all as he was praying for time to pass as fast as possible. He knew if someone was capable of thinking of something like that and implementing it actively without losing much time, then that person was going to be a scary driver to face on a track where tire degradation ¹had a bigger-than-normal effect. Even on days when tires allowed for a single stop², he would still be able to extend his stints ³if the situation called for it, or even turn a two-stop⁴ race into a one-stop race⁵.

What was even more interesting was that he was doing this despite his aggressive driving style, meaning he was balancing two opposite acts but still coming out of it with good lap times.

He wanted to see how long he could sustain this and not lose time, but it seemed like Fatih had a different plan, as it started raining. As if someone who had held back peeing for too long, the moment it started falling, it got more and more intense, while Fatih was still fifteen seconds from the pit lane.

{BOX! BOX! BOX!} James called for Fatih to come to the pits, not planning on testing him to see how he could drive on a wet track with slicks.¹

.......

"ARGHHHHHHHHH!" Fatih screamed under his helmet as he removed a tear-off¹ from it to clear his visor. He knew Apollo’s gamble ²of staying out had worked in his favor since he could now just pit for full ³wets and come out at the front, because he too had to pit or risk crashing or losing too much time driving on the wrong tire and be lapped ⁴by Apollo. His gamble had failed, or at least the guaranteed pit stop overtake had failed, and he needed to do it on the track after closing the remaining fifteen-second gap that still remained between the two of them.

He immediately entered the pit lane, knowing he was going to come out still behind Apollo.