Formula 1: The GOAT - Chapter 150

Chapter 150: Fanning the Flames of Hype
(There was an election in my country, Tanzania, and a protest erupted so they shut down the internet)

On a random day in December of 2014, TheConqueror.com released an article on their main page titled: “Fatih Yıldırım Joins the Red Bull Junior Team.”

[The following official statement released by Red Bull confirms that Fatih Yıldırım is now part of the Red Bull Junior Team, the Austrian Formula 1 outfit’s driver development program:

“We are very pleased to announce that Fatih Yıldırım has accepted our invitation to join the Red Bull Junior Team. This is effective immediately, and the 11-year-old Turkish driver will continue his karting career to gain additional experience until he is eligible for single-seaters, which he will promptly debut in following extensive pre-season testing. We are very happy to have managed to sign such a talented driver as we plan long-term for the stability of our F1 team.”

This marks the second time in a year that Red Bull has signed one of the youngest drivers ever into their junior program, after setting a precedent with Max Verstappen, who was announced as their driver this August, making him the youngest at the time. However, not even three months later, they have once again broken the record.

We have yet to receive a statement from the driver or his parents, but we can confidently say that this is the best driver in his current category, having won all of the prestigious international karting competitions he has participated in. He is in his first full international season, but he has already attracted the attention of every top team thanks to his performance, and it looks like Red Bull was the first to get his signature…]

The article went into further detail to speculate on the reason behind the signing before going into details of Fatih’s career and what Red Bull’s expectations were. Fatih’s image was now in a full Red Bull-branded suit with a black cover behind him, standing there with a bright smile as he held his helmet in his left hand, resting it on his left hip.

The same picture was posted on all of the company’s social media accounts, with a link to their website where readers could find the more in-depth article.

It immediately went viral, as it was quite a surprise move for an F1 team’s driver academy to recruit an 11-year-old driver. This was two years earlier than even this year’s world champion, Lewis Hamilton, was when he was recruited into McLaren’s driver development program at the age of thirteen, which was a first at the time.

Readers who connected the three incidents to find meaning hypothesized that the other teenagers who were recruited into the program, like Max and Lewis, were considered to be generationally talented drivers. For Red Bull to do this for an eleven-year-old, it meant that he was at least as talented as them, if not more. This attracted their attention as they tried to gather as much information about Fatih as possible. With a single search, many of them found his channel and, seeing his videos for the first time, started watching and witnessing with their own eyes just how talented he was through the very polished docutainments he posted.

With the news being posted on the most trusted F1 news website, no one considered it to be a prank at all, as TheConqueror.com had already cemented its dominance in motorsports, and even more so in the Formula 1 news category. They had been the ones who broke down in detail how Mercedes got the 2014 engine regulations perfectly, became the first to break the news of Sebastian Vettel leaving Red Bull for Ferrari, and were the first to suspect and later be proven right about Red Bull’s fuel sensor controversy, which led to Daniel Ricciardo being disqualified from the Australian GP.

The site had also been advocating for additional safety measures and changes in procedures to reduce the chances of fatal accidents. This initially gained backlash from Bernie Ecclestone and resulted in the majority of F1 fans criticizing the articles, arguing that they attempted to sanitize the sport, only for those same fans to start rallying behind them after a fatal accident at the Japanese Grand Prix. These and many more incidents showed they were the fastest and most reliable company when it came to news related to F1.

The same was true for the motorsports podcast they had launched at the start of the year, which now had millions of weekly viewers. They listened to experts share and talk about their field of expertise in motorsports and were now able to bring in some of the most famous people in the sport, like the new team principal of the dominant Mercedes team, Toto Wolff, who was the guest on the most-watched episode of the podcast.

As a result, Fatih’s name started spreading into all avenues of motorsports. Fans began gathering information about him, increasing the hype with each passing day as they came to believe he was going to be the next big thing the moment they watched his docutainments. This surge in interest resulted in him finally breaking the one-million-subscriber limit, with nearly all of his videos surpassing the three-million-viewer barrier. More and more viewers continued to come and stay on his channel, eager to see how his progress would unfold.

For many people, this much hype from a single announcement would have been overwhelming, increasing the pressure to a maximum in competition. With everyone focused on him and expecting a performance beyond all others, it would have resulted in mistakes. But thanks to his Invictus, this increase in fame and hype made no difference to him at all, the moment he had his helmet on, though the situation was different when he wasn’t competing. Unfortunately for these new fans, the season had ended, so there was no chance for them to see proof of this live, which resulted in the hype increasing even more based on his previous season’s performance.

This hype continued to build when, in January, he received the Rookie of the Year, Action of the Year, and the World and European Championship Trophies at the CIK-FIA Prize Giving Ceremony. The feat was repeated at the WSK Prize Giving Ceremony, where he received all the WSK competition cups he had won during the year. He followed this by posting a picture with all the trophies he won during the 2014 competition season. With all podium trophies included, it totaled more than thirty, all sitting in front of Fatih in the picture he deliberately posted, fanning the flames even more.

But hype that is dependent on the glory of the past can only last for so long. For Fatih, with the 2015 season finally starting, he had the opportunity to show everyone that the previous season was not a fluke, but something they could expect from him.

“Participating for the second time in his career, Fatih brings the WSK Champions Cup home, marking his first trophy of the year but also his first since joining the Red Bull Junior Team, proving to them that recruiting him wasn’t a mistake.”

“Going two-for-two in his second competition of the year, Fatih once again successfully defends his WSK Super Masters Series title, making it his second successful title defense of the year as the crowd cheers for him, having gathered to see if he could continue this level of performance.”

“He makes it a hat-trick of title defenses, and the second time he has taken home a hat-trick of WSK titles! The WSK Euro Series title remains under the Turkish flag, a red banner with a white crescent moon and a star, as Fatih Yıldırım single-handedly puts Turkey on the motorsport map with his dominance, leaving people wondering how such a driver came from that country.”

“He did it for the WSK titles, and he’s starting in the same style for the CIK-FIA titles. In the most flashy way possible, nearly causing all of us to memorize the Turkish national anthem, Fatih takes home the European Championship for the second time in his two-year international career. He has yet to step down from the top step of the podium this year as he tries to chase and break his record of seventeen wins in eighteen races from last year.”

“It looks like the performance of the year is going to Fatih Yıldırım again, as he successfully defends his CIK-FIA World Championship title after doing the same for the European title. He cements his name in the history books for being the only driver to win both championships for two consecutive years, all while doing the same for other prestigious international titles.”

“We said it last year, and we’re saying it again: this year is also Fatih Yıldırım’s year. By winning this race, he cements himself in the history books for having defended all of the titles he won last year while also beating the record he set. He has taken home wins in all of the races he participated in, making everyone else in his category appear as if they are in underpowered karts. He has secured a total of fifteen Grand Slam race weekends out of the eighteen races he participated in. From the look of it, the FIA will have no choice but to once again grant him an exemption to participate in the KF category, graduating him from KF Junior just as he entered the age that would have normally made him eligible. It’s clear that he is ahead of every other driver by at least two years.”

And the hype surrounding him reached a very absurd level after finally performing better than the previous season, this time in the eyes of all the new fans who had joined after he joined the Red Bull academy, or who came from the now super-successful docu-series that were produced and broadcast by theconqueror.com. This resulted in them gaining millions of subscribers wanting to watch the next episode as fast as possible, while sponsors rushed to get their names in the next season’s docuseries.