Chapter 425: The Monaco Grand Prix II

Brrrrrrr.....

The rear tires screamed as they went through a final burnout to clear all the dirt gathered during the formation lap, leaving the grippiest part of the tires as he came to a stop in his grid position, facing directly forward. He had a sixteen-meter advantage over Verstappen, who was behind him in P3.

He pressed the STRT button on the steering wheel to trigger the race start ECU setting as the cars in the lower positions still got into their grid positions.

As he looked in the rearview mirror, he could see smoke rising from the tires of all the cars behind him, but he knew that it was more disadvantageous for him since he was on a harder and slower compound.

The moment the last car got into its grid position and a track marshal waved the green flag at the back of the grid, the cars finally started revving.

VRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep

Fatih kept the revs within the optimal range, his foot heavily on the brake while holding the clutch, fully focused on the five red lights.

The moment they went out, he lifted his foot from the brake as he dropped the clutch smoothly, but only to a halfway point and not fully, while he modulated the throttle to deliver peak power of what the grip could handle without wheelspin as he started moving. Despite his fast reaction, he was grip-limited, making him have slower traction compared to Max, who used his grippier tires to aggressively launch his car.

As Max moved towards the open grid position in P2 using his superior grip, Fatih didn’t react and fully focused on his own race start, since he had the inside line and knew that in Monaco, so long as he had the inside line, no one could claim the corner. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

As Max gained and gained, his front wheels coming nearly level with Fatih’s cockpit, they started braking for Turn 1. Using his positional advantage, Fatih turned into Turn 1 with confidence and deliberately went wide, all the way to the left-side wall on exit, forcing Max to slow down heavily or risk being squeezed out of space and losing positions.

......

"He has survived the most important part of the Monaco Grand Prix, which was to keep his position. As he is now starting his second lap, he is followed closely by a Verstappen who is deliberately trying to overwhelm and pressure him into making a mistake so that he can open an overtaking opportunity. Now it is a battle of consistency, which Verstappen seems confident that he will not be able to do, but for now, let’s see the replay," David Croft commented as the feed changed to showing a race start replay.

The replay then started showing the car at a standstill before a small graphic appeared on the lower right showing the reaction times, and Fatih had beaten Verstappen and Bottas by half a tenth.

"OOOOOOOH, he really was confident that Verstappen would yield when closing that door on him, and it has worked in his favor, as he had managed to keep his lead despite being in a slower, and harder compound while driving on the less grippy side, out of the racing line..."

The two commentators reacted with surprise when they saw how much Max was squeezed by Fatih into Turn 1.

......

{This pace is good,} James said on the radio as Fatih went through the start-finish line, starting his fifth lap.

Fatih didn’t answer and continued with his driving as usual, but for the commentators, it was a completely different matter.

........

"He is a rookie, but he is not driving like one. He has finally broken past the one-second gap and broken the DRS that Verstappen had managed to maintain for only five laps as he is perfectly managing this race..."

As the Turkish commentator excitedly commented, focusing on Fatih since the race start, an air of excitement was palpable in nearly all the Turkish viewers watching him. After all, their driver was currently leading the race and slowly opening the gap to Verstappen and the rest of the pack.

It was not clear if Verstappen had pulled back to cool down the car and tires after following closely for five laps, but with each passing lap, Fatih was increasing the gap between them by half a second until the gap stabilized at a two-second gap through the first ten laps of the race.

That was until a radio message was highlighted and broadcast to the viewers just as Fatih finished his eleventh lap and started his twelfth.

{Our temperatures are optimal, so we can push,} James could be heard as his radio call was broadcast to everyone.

And as if to respond to that radio conversation, he delivered a sub-one-sixteen lap time, opening the gap by an entire second to Verstappen, who was still driving in the 1:16.600s.

.......

{What lap time did he do on the previous lap?} Verstappen asked when he saw clearly that the gap had increased in a matter of a single lap.

{Fatih is doing fifteen-five (1:15.500),} GP, Max Verstappen’s race engineer, updated him.

Upon hearing the answer, Max didn’t say anything because he knew there was nothing he could do in terms of response. The tires he was on were currently overheating, and he needed to pull back to cool them while also dealing with the soft compound in the middle of its graining phase, having already used up the maximum grip they could have given. Fatih, on the other hand, was just starting to hit the peak of his medium compound’s performance window while also being in clear air, avoiding the dirty air of those who followed behind him.

It was the time that Fatih’s qualifying nightmare gamble had played out to his advantage, as his pace was only going to improve from now on compared to those on the soft compound.

Lap 12: +2.960 seconds

Lap 13: +3.975 seconds

{We need some LICO to manage the front,} GP said on the radio to Max, who was trying to make sure the gap didn’t get too big to Fatih.

{We need to do something. The gap is opening,} Max said back on the radio, not liking the situation he was in at all. After all, he knew if this went on, the chance to undercut Fatih was going to disappear since he was going to manage to open an undercut-proof gap, and Lift and Coasting was not going to be helping him at all in closing it.

Although if he could pit now, as the opportunity to undercut him was still there, he couldn’t come out in clean air, as the track was still bunched up, and any pit stop at the moment would result in him losing positions instead of gaining them.

Lap 14: +4.925 seconds

Lap 15: +5.915 seconds

Lap 16: +7.025 seconds

{The rears are starting to slide on exit,} Max reported on the radio.

Lap 17: +8.055 seconds

Lap 18: +9.175 seconds

With each lap, Verstappen was left helpless as he watched the gap grow, and there was no response he could mount.

.....

"Fatih Yıldırım drives flawlessly, keeping up with the lap times again and again, making it look robotic as he is now on the verge of increasing the gap between him and Verstappen to ten seconds if there is no response from Red Bull," David Croft commented excitedly as the feed focused on Verstappen and Bottas, who was only a few seconds behind him.

"He is driving very well and to my liking, and it seems like he is still managing the medium compound very well. If his pit stops go well, then we might be seeing a first-time driver taking both pole and a race win on his debut weekend, and what a historical achievement would that be," Martin Brundle added.

"Are you not worried about the commentator’s curse?"

"Ah! It didn’t come to mind at all when I was saying that. He now sets the fastest lap of the session and is still eligible, if things go as they are, for a grand slam, and I don’t know how we would react if he could achieve that in his debut weekend."

"And you did it again," David Croft said as he laughed at how Martin, back-to-back, said things that, if anything happened to Fatih, would point to him putting a curse on him.

.....

{How are the tires?}

{Still good. I can keep up with the target times,} Fatih answered.

{At the moment, we are considering +10 for strategy,} James said back, asking Fatih if he could handle extending the laps he would be driving on the medium compound by ten more than planned.

{I can try,} Fatih answered after coming out of a corner since he couldn’t answer while in it, as even speaking was difficult due to the G-forces.

"Isn’t that too extreme?" one of the setup engineers on the pit wall asked when Fatih was done being updated on the change of plans.

"We will be monitoring the situation, but if he can do it, we can go for a total sweep," Marco Perrone, the head of strategy, said as he looked at Fatih finally achieving a ten-second gap to Verstappen.

The team, seeing the level of performance he was delivering along with the specific track they were in, had gotten greedy. They were not only attempting to get their third race win in the team’s history, but Marco was now trying to get the team’s first Grand Slam.

It would have been impossible on any other track due to the pace deficit their car had to the leaders, but in Monaco, it was possible, and he was now trying to optimize with that as the target.