Chapter 426: The Monaco Grand Prix III

{We are just losing time the longer we are on these tires,} Max complained on the radio as the gap between him and Fatih had already extended to fifteen seconds by lap 27.

All the simulations they had run a week before were done under the consideration of everyone in the top ten running on soft tires for the first half of the race, but Fatih’s situation had thrown that out of the window for Verstappen, who had failed to move to P1 at the race start.

{We still don’t have an opening to exit in clean air at the moment,} GP answered him, as that was the only thing he could tell him at the moment since everything else was out of their control.

{Call me in as soon as the window opens. I don’t want to be on these tires any longer,} he said before he returned to focusing on his driving.

...........

{This pace is good. Safety car window is open,} James said, updating Fatih on the level of the gap he had opened.

{Blue flags, blue flags,} Fatih called as he caught up to the two Haas cars, which were fighting one another as they arrived at the start-finish straight to start his 29th lap. The marshals waved blue flags for them to move out of the way for Fatih, which they complied with without any arguments as Fatih lapped them into Turn 1, losing about two seconds to Verstappen.

He was, at the moment, focused on making sure he was pushing just enough that he was extracting everything from the tires without overdoing it, along with making sure the tires were wearing evenly to retain their performance throughout their life.

{Hamilton is in the pits,} James updated him, just as he had requested during the pre-race strategy meeting.

{Lando, Gasly, and Bottas are in the pits,} James said on the following lap.

The moment he heard the word "Bottas," he waited, wanting to see if his presence and everything else had changed Bottas’s fate.

............

David Croft: "Now Hamilton’s got to pin it on the out-lap to clear Gasly as Valtteri Bottas now pits for Mercedes. So they brought Hamilton in, and a lap later, in comes Valtteri Bottas, and..."

Martin Brundle: "OOOOOOOOOOOH, the right front is not even off yet."

David Croft: "And they can’t get the right front off! This is not the first time! The wheel gun has jammed, and this is not the first time this season Valtteri Bottas has had an optically slow pit stop through no fault of his own! They just can’t get that wheel off!"

Martin Brundle: "Right front and Mercedes-Benz do not go well together. And look at this! Hamilton is behind Gasly."

David Croft: "Gasly is ahead of Hamilton by a car length and a half there! Valtteri Bottas is now out of the race, and that is it for him because of a wheel nut that will not budge, as..."

The feed showed Valtteri squatting in the garage with his hand on his helmet visor as he felt all the emotions of not being able to finish the race through no fault of his own.

David Croft: "And finally, after having to sit through and watch Fatih Yıldırım open the gap to him starting from lap eleven, Max Verstappen is heading into the pits. Lap 34, and that is exactly what the teams practice and hope for when one of their cars comes in for a pit stop, with a flat-out two-second stop. Yıldırım, who is still out there, extends his lead over Verstappen to 38 seconds, a very comfortable lead for Fatih to gauge the situation and pace from Verstappen before pitting and still be able to keep his position. What a flawless weekend it is for the young Yıldırım."

............

{Verstappen has pitted and is now thirty-eight seconds behind us. We stay out,} James continued, updating him on the situation.

{"What are the top five at the moment?"} Fatih asked, quite delighted that things remained largely the same despite his presence, with Valtteri DNFing due to his wheel nut teeth being ground out flat, making removal impossible.

{Verstappen, Sainz, Norris, and Perez.}

Fatih continued his drive, remaining the only one within the top seven who was yet to pit, and his tires finally started showing their age. On lap 37, Verstappen, on his now three-lap-old hard compound that was fully warmed up, reduced the gap between the two of them by 1.2 seconds in a single lap.

He cut it down further on lap 38 by 1.3 seconds.

On lap thirty-nine, 1.4 seconds was cut from their gap.

On lap forty, by the middle sector, Verstappen had already taken out eight-tenths from the gap between the two drivers before Fatih was called into the pit, when a full second was taken out by the time he finished sector two.

.............

{Box, Box, Box,} James called Fatih into the pit lane as the team pulled the trigger when the gap started falling rapidly, wanting to be as safe as possible.

"He did extend them for ten more laps," Marco Perrone said when the call to pit was made to Fatih.

During the strategy meeting, he was planned to pit on lap 30, and as a result, Fatih had been driving with that as the target.

As Fatih entered the pit lane very rapidly, only stopping and slowing to minimum speed as late as possible, Marco Perrone, the head of strategy, and everyone on the pit wall turned to watch him take his pit stop.

He stopped in the exact position the mechanics expected, and his car was raised. The mechanics started changing his tires. Fatih’s full focus was on the red light in front of him as he was already revving the engine while holding the clutch, waiting for the light to turn green because that was all that mattered to him and nothing else.

The moment he was dropped, he released the clutch and left the stopping place, sliding as he entered the fast lane and started heading back to the track, exiting at the start-finish but remaining on the pit lane’s white line all the way to the exit of Turn 1 before he finally joined the track, still in the lead of the race.

...........

"AlphaTauri has executed that perfectly as Fatih Yıldırım comes out still in the lead with a nine-second gap and comfortably ahead of Max Verstappen, who has now reduced the gap that was eighteen seconds to just half of that," David Croft said as the feed showed Fatih coming out of the pit before changing the camera to show the mechanics patting and hugging themselves.

{Out-lap critical. Bring them up gently. We have enough of a gap to not rush things,} James reminded Fatih to prevent him from trying to extract everything from lap one, which, although the tires would give him the grip, would cause them to die very rapidly due to the shock they would experience.

Fatih didn’t answer as he was weaving slightly to bring heat into the tire while Verstappen, with his tires up to full temperature, was constantly reducing the gap. By the time Fatih finished his out-lap and started pushing, Verstappen had reduced the gap down to only seven seconds.

The gap was then brought down by another second when Fatih used the following lap for temperature stabilization before he finally set out loose at the end of lap 43, starting lap 44 with Verstappen five seconds behind him.

...........

Lap 44, the tires finally came to life as he set a 1:14.650 lap time, which was very close to Max’s fastest lap, as he started lap 45 while still pushing.

On lap 45, he improved again, driving a 1:14.310 lap as he finally set the fastest lap by only half a tenth from Verstappen’s lap time a few laps ago, but he wasn’t looking to ease up at all.

..........

"For the second consecutive time, Fatih is already improving on his fastest middle sector time in this race, and he is pushing very hard, quite the opposite of what is normally the case when the race leader is avoiding taking any risk to avoid crashing.

As he now approaches the final corner, he leaves no safety gap with the barriers, slides out of the final corner, and opens the DRS thanks to the backmarker, Nicholas Latifi, being under one second from him, and he is slipstreaming him all the way to the start-finish line, and he improves again, setting the first sub-one-fourteen lap time by delivering a 1:13.967, as he widens the gap to Verstappen back to eight seconds!

That was incredible driving from the young driver. You can’t help but feel excited and nervous for anyone supporting him, as at the moment he has all the required things to have a Grand Slam, so long as he manages to finish this race without losing his P1 position and keeps his fastest lap..."

...........

"What is he doing?" Marco Perrone said amidst the clapping teammates next to him, causing them to stop clapping and focus back on the screen to see what was happening, only to nearly have a heart attack as the eight-second gap that Fatih had opened was now down to four seconds at the end of the first sector. After each corner, that gap was reducing slowly until, by the end of the sector, Verstappen was already within a second behind Fatih.

"Nothing is wrong with the car. Check in with him if there is a problem we are missing?" Franz Tost said to James with urgency in his voice, as he imagined Fatih retiring from the lead, and with nothing out of order based on all the sensors in front of them, he started wondering what problem it might be to not be caught by the sensors but still cause him to lose time.

{Fatih, is something wrong with the car?} James heeded the orders and asked Fatih, his voice trying to present confidence, but a semblance of worry slipped out as he asked him.