CHAPTER 75: MY NAME IS FATIH YILDIRIM

"Formula 1, the pinnacle of motorsport, a place where, if you win, you can say with confidence that you are the best in the world, and no one would argue against that.

It takes years, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, just to reach it. And even after reaching it, there is no guarantee you will succeed. Only the best of the best reach Formula 1 and perform under the pressure. Yet, at any given time, thousands of people around the world at different levels of motorsport chase this dream, knowing there is less than a one percent chance they will reach it. And I’m among them.

Hi, everyone. My name is Fatih Yıldırım, a future Formula 1 driver, and this is my journey to Formula 1." The audio playing from the speakers stopped as the video in the editor paused, showing a Fatih on it, under what looked like professional lighting.

"What do you think?" Fatih asked, turning to his mom, who was watching behind him.

"It looks perfect. The sound is great, and even the music fits very well. It even makes me question how you managed to achieve that quality with those," she said, pointing to the modest setup in his room: a single camera that looked as if it was finally being put to use, two light sources, one large light covered by a honeycomb grid lighting the chair from the side and a smaller one behind the chair lighting the black backdrop, and a lonely microphone hanging from the ceiling, mounted on a stick extending from the cupboard as a makeshift mic stand. She then looked back at the image on the screen, which looked as if it had been shot with a hundred-thousand-dollar camera setup and edited by professional editors.

"It’s something I’ve been practicing over the three years since you got me the camera," Fatih said, satisfied that his hard work was finally paying dividends. Through sheer practice and repetition, as he challenged himself more and more, he had finally managed to recreate the professional and immersive look of the interview style perfected by Drive to Survive.

"So, that’s what you were doing. I sometimes wondered if you only asked for the camera because you wanted to brag about it, as I’ve never seen you post anything from it in the three years you’ve had it. Looks like your perfectionist tendencies seep into everything you try to do," Rümeysa said as she walked to the camera locked on the tripod, touching it carefully. She remembered going with Fatih to buy it as a reward for his first-ever championship.

She recalled wondering why her son had pestered her to get the better model when a cheaper one would have sufficed. But now, it was clear he wanted the best so he could create something great.

To her surprise, and mild disappointment, Fatih had never uploaded anything to YouTube, despite his initial excitement hinting otherwise. She had seen him recording or practicing, but every time she asked if he had posted anything–despite having already made Fatih promise to show her all the videos he was planning to post first so that she could approve them, and knowing Fatih never broke a promise–the answer she received was always, "Not yet."

"But won’t your introduction come out as arrogant?" she asked as she stopped touching the camera and returned to where Fatih was, finally entering her audience mode.

"I think it projects confidence. If I say, ’I hope or pray to be one in the future,’ won’t that subconsciously hint that I don’t trust my driving abilities and can only manage to succeed if hope or prayer is added on top of that?" Fatih answered, explaining his reasoning for phrasing it that way.

"So you thought about that as well," she said, chuckling, surprised that her son had even taken the viewers’ subconscious view of him into consideration when making the video. "But when did you learn about all of these things?"

"Videos, lots of videos. They are very helpful if you know what you are looking for and practice repeatedly."

"That is not something a nine-year-old should really be saying," she said as she messed with Fatih’s hair, which, unlike others his age, he didn’t hate and even enjoyed.

"The average nine-year-old, yes. Me, I hope I have a different image in your mind," he said, looking at her as he touched his chest as if he was hurt by her words, earning a chuckle from his mother.

"I can’t argue with that," she said amidst her chuckle, having already gotten used to her son, who seemed to be maturing faster than ever. He was the kind of child other parents envied, as he almost never caused problems, and if he did, he always had a good argument for why he had to do that.

"Thank you," Fatih said with satisfaction.

"Okay, fine. Continue playing it. I want to watch it from the start all the way to the end without interruption this time," Rümeysa said as she dragged a chair over. Fatih moved his chair a few centimeters from the center of the screen so that she could have a better view of the video from the best angle.

TAK! Fatih pressed the space button before he put the video in full screen for her to watch from the start.

"Formula 1, the pinnacle of motorsport, a place where, if you win, you can say with confidence that you are the best in the world, and no one would argue against that.

It takes years, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, just to reach it. And even after reaching it, there is no guarantee you will succeed. Only the best of the best reach Formula 1 and perform under the pressure. Yet, at any given time, thousands of people around the world at different levels of motorsport chase this dream, knowing there is less than a one percent chance they will reach it. And I’m among them.

Hi, everyone. My name is Fatih Yıldırım, and this is my journey to Formula 1."

The moment he finished his intro, the music picked up as various montages of Formula 1 started appearing, edited in a way that felt premium. The cuts of different scenes seamlessly appeared, match-cut from a zoomed montage of one driver to another taken from the same location.

As it slowly zoomed out, it revealed the liveries that were changing with them, and once they were fully revealed, it instantly transitioned from real-world video into animation. The video of the cars from the side slowly shifted to show the top of the cars in an animation as his voice was once again heard, "However, to reach there, you have to start from the bottom." The moment his voice mentioned "bottom," the paper animation of the Formula 1 car started changing, showing the cars of the lower ladder needed to reach Formula 1 until it reached karting.

It continued until an image of a Bambino Kart appeared, stopping the animation there as the surroundings immediately shifted to reveal that the drawing was a match image of a white kart that drove away from the still camera POV of the video.

The episode followed a Drive to Survive-like presentation, but unlike the artificial drama forced by the show, this one focused on his first-ever race weekend. It was edited in a way that cut between the different sessions, back to him, and to an animation to illustrate something that was not captured on camera or to explain something for those new to the sport. It featured a mixture of a commentator’s voice in English, replacing the original Turkish commentary that the session footage existed in.

Starting from the first practice session, it slowly built tension through the qualifying heats and the start of the race. Just as anyone watching would think that since he showed such a dominant performance during all the previous sessions, he would go on to win, they were surprised by the crash that happened as if out of nowhere.

The crash was then replayed, this time starting in slow motion. Just before the crash, the footage shifted from real-world video to animation as the angle changed, and the animation zoomed in to show it from Fatih’s POV in slow motion. His voice was heard in the background, explaining what was going through his mind and what he did to reduce the damage before returning to the original footage, showing karts after karts passing him until he was plum last.

The artificial commentator’s sound was heard as if coming from speakers on the track, saying, "Is this the end of his brilliant performance? Will he be disappointed? Will he crumble due to things not going his way, or will he get on and try to fight and recover from this catastrophic situation? That will decide what type of driver he is..." Just as the voice trailed off, the scene cut back to him in the interview room, one side of his face lit, the other covered in slight darkness, his silhouette isolated from the background with a backlight that was not visible.

"I could have given up there after things went wrong for the first time since the first session of the weekend, but that didn’t sit right with me, and I decided to try and fight to recover as much as possible." But his appearance didn’t last until the end; his voice remained, showing him starting once again to drive.

This time, only the commentator’s excited, surprised, and impressed voice and Fatih’s voice explaining what was going through his mind during each action he took were heard as the video showed him catching up to the pack and starting to pick them out one by one. The impressive overtakes were replayed with dramatic animations appearing again to show different angles of how close he was pushing, as if it were a fantasy anime about racing and not reality.

Sometimes the animation started from the engine, with the camera moving until it exited the tire, then showing the result of the engine being pushed by Fatih, revealing the four-kart overtake. All of this was accompanied by music perfectly fitting the situation, sometimes heroic, sometimes tense, sometimes calm, playing with the viewers’ tension right and left until the final overtake happened, releasing all of the tension or breath that a viewer might have been holding since the start of his recovery drive, allowing them to feel the excitement and happiness as if they were the ones who had won the race.

The video continued, showing him doing his victory lap, then the interviews of the podium finishers, and Fatih taking home his first trophy before it finally ended, showing the credits, which were short. It thanked TOSFED for the footage and things like that before showing a teaser for the next episode.

"Wow," Rümeysa said involuntarily as she rubbed the tears that had fallen while watching. She had failed to realize that nearly forty minutes had gone by since the start of the video, as it was so well-edited, engaging, informative, and entertaining that she never noticed the passage of time.

"It’s perfect. It really replicated what I felt during that weekend," she said as she turned to one of the cabinets in the room that was full of trophies.

"So then, can you appear in the next episode?" he asked, having finally gotten the confidence to ask now that he had shown his work fully and received her complete admiration for it. Had he done it before, she would have most likely denied or delayed it, but now, after seeing the level of production, it would be difficult to deny, since it didn’t look like a child’s production at all.

"The next episode isn’t done yet?" she asked, surprised. "Why is there a teaser then?"

"I have it in my mind, and it takes a long time to make one, a whole month, to be exact," Fatih said, not revealing that it takes that long because of the animations, the music, commentary recording, and other things the people he hired online needed to make for each episode. But for his mother, who didn’t know the real workload needed to make videos of this quality, a month was a believable timeframe for Fatih to make them.

"Sure, but I get to see the video before it’s posted and decide if I appear or not," she said as excitement spread across her face.

"Fine," Fatih said, happy that she had even agreed in the first place.

Now that he had received her approval, he immediately started the process of exporting the video.

"Did Grandma watch it already?" she asked when she saw that it would take five hours before the export was complete.

"No, I finished it today and showed it to you first," Fatih answered as, on the inside, he prayed that the program wouldn’t crash and delete all of his progress.

"Then let’s show it to her when she is back from the market," she said, excited and wondering how her mother was going to react to watching it for the first time.

A few hours later, once the video finished exporting and after doing final checks, he uploaded it to YouTube and posted it on his Fatih Yıldırım channel, a new channel he made trying to disconnect himself from The Conqueror brand that was growing even more rapid, under the title: Road to Formula 1 | S01E01 - My Name is Fatih Yıldırım.