Formula 1: The GOAT-Chapter 44: Playing the Long Game

The app setup was surprisingly simple. Once Fatih configured his Bitcoin wallet, he immediately set it to mine in the background. He planned to let it run for the rest of the year, fully aware that by 2010, mining difficulty would skyrocket. Back then, people would still mine from ordinary PCs, but soon enough, mining farms with rows of servers and thousands of GPUs would dominate the field. That wasn’t something he wanted or even planned to get involved in.

This was just a side project, a passive effort working quietly behind the scenes. With that handled, he turned his focus back to his newly created Facebook and Twitter accounts.

It was time to craft his first post. The one that would mark the start of his social media journey.

@TheConqueror Monaco next week. Here’s what I see coming: Pole: Button. Brawn’s low-speed traction is unmatched on these streets. Podium: Expect a Ferrari surprise. Räikkönen’s been quiet, but Monaco rewards precision. He’s due. Strategy Twist: Super-softs will crumble early. Whoever dares a longer first stint on the softs could leapfrog the field. Dark Horse: Webber. If Red Bull nails the setup, he’s podium material. Bookmark this.

He reread the post three times, making sure it had the right level of ambiguity. It needed to sound like an educated guess, not a clairvoyant’s prediction. His English hadn’t been used much since his rebirth, so he double-checked for grammar mistakes too. Satisfied, he hit Post on both platforms.

Then, as an extra precaution, he logged out and deleted the browser history. If his mother or grandmother stumbled upon any traces of this, explaining it would be... complicated.

The timing was perfect. Formula One was still under Bernie Ecclestone’s leadership, a man notoriously conservative about media. To him, social platforms were distractions, not tools. This left F1’s online sphere starved of engaging, reliable content. It would stay that way until Liberty Media’s acquisition in 2017.

That gave Fatih a golden window, a chance to carve out his niche, build credibility, and become the source for fans deprived of information during Bernie’s reign.

But he knew results wouldn’t come overnight.

Even after posting, his work wasn’t done. Though he wouldn’t post again until a few days before the Monaco Grand Prix, he needed to prepare. Victory photos, podium graphics, stat tables... It required learning basic photo editing skills if he wanted to emulate the highly polished, emotionally engaging content strategy Liberty Media would bring years later.

His version, however, had a twist. He wasn’t just going to post after events. Instead, he would publish predictions, then follow up with comparisons once races were done. If he could consistently get predictions right, his reputation would snowball.

He also created a YouTube channel but didn’t rush into uploading videos. That would take time and effort to do properly.

For the next few days, life continued as usual. He kept his routine, only montoring his social media accounts during idle hours, like when his grandmother was cooking and his mother was at work, to reduce the chance of being caught.

An hour before the 2009 Monaco Grand Prix qualifying session, he posted his Top 5 Qualifiers Prediction on Facebook and Twitter. His accounts had seen little to no engagement in the past weeks, but that didn’t discourage him. He knew slow, steady growth was better. Viral overnight sensations often burned out just as fast.

When qualifying wrapped up, he struck while the iron was hot. He posted the official top 20 list, then a side-by-side comparison of his predictions against reality. Next came a celebratory pole-position photo of Jenson Button, drawn from previous races, but convincing enough for casual fans, and a few other pre-prepared posts. fгeewebnovёl.com

Thanks to his efficiency fore knowledge allowing him to finish all of the preparations before hand giving him an unbeatable first mover advantage, he beat most print media and blogs to the punch.

The same strategy carried over to race day. Half an hour before lights out, he posted:

"Congratulations to Jenson Button on yet another brilliant victory, and to Kimi Räikkönen for securing Ferrari’s first podium of the championship."

He followed it up with another prediction post for the top eight finishers.

And this time... the algorithm finally noticed him.

Where his posts had barely reached ten people before, now hundreds were seeing them. Likes trickled in. Comments began appearing.

-"For someone posting ’nonsense predictions,’ these graphics are way too professional. Why waste time guessing when you could just post after the race?"

—"I agree, they’re surprisingly informative and on point."

—"But he predicted the entire Top 5 in qualifying correctly. Go check his earlier posts, it’s scary accurate."

—"Getting the top two right is easy; Brawn GP’s dominance makes it a 50/50 between Button and Barrichello. But nailing the Top 5? That’s interesting."

—"I don’t care about all that. This guy just predicted Kimi on the podium. If it happens, I swear I’ll become his lifelong fan."

—"Don’t give me hope, man."

-"Should I bet on these predictions?"

—"Are you dumb? Why would you gamble on some random guy’s post?"

—"He got it right the first time! Plus, if I lose, I can blame him instead of myself. If I win? Even better."

—"Did you accidentally post the congratulations before the race? Pretty sure there’s still twenty minutes left..."

—"He nearly gave me a heart attack with that post. I thought I’d missed the race. F&%k you!"

—"If his prediction turns out to be true, then this will finally be my proof that Formula 1 is rigged and is set to follow a story, or no one will believe that Brawn GP a new team, is currently leading the championship."

—"The name is new, but the team members are the same Honda team members, and this car was designed last year before Honda decided to withdraw from Formula due to the financial crisis, you dumb mother....."

Fatih grinned as he read the comments. Slowly but surely, he was making ripples. It wasn’t much yet, but he knew that if he kept this up, it was only a matter of time before those ripples became waves.

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