[TS] Formula One Streamer - Chapter 169
As always. The lonely night of Bahrain was not one.
Vroom-!!!
The race car, perfectly implemented as data in For One, was speeding down the straight with the roaring power of its engine across the dark and lonely track of Bahrain.
Blue Bull.
It was the race car of Blue Bull, a team that proudly boasts its status as the best in F1, having won both the Driver Championship and the Constructor Championship.
The iconic race car of Blue Bull, with its mysterious and metaphysical harmony of black and blue decals, and adorned with two muscular wild bulls from birth on the side of the car, displayed its majesty as a race car.
Perhaps because of that.
If the other teams’ race cars could be described as cutting through the air sharply, the Blue Bull race car seemed to be destroying the air with the rough power of its engine as it moved forward.
As the two cars charged down the track, passing the starting line, the electronically existing scoreboard flashed and displayed the records.
Name / Time / Practice Mode
① Maniel Ricciardo 0:58:095
② Sergio Perez 0:58:101
Maniel Ricciardo and Sergio Perez. The two drivers who have been part of Team Blue Bull for years checked their records marked on the sides of their helmets and slammed their steering wheels down, shouting loudly.
The first was the ‘Honey Badger’, Maniel Ricciardo.
“Ahhhhh…!!! This is so frustrating. What the hell is the problem? I seriously don’t understand.”
“I feel the same… I’m really losing my mind…”
The two, who momentarily stopped the race with their heads on the steering wheels, showed no signs of moving. They felt powerless, as if engulfed in despair when facing an insurmountable wall.
The cause was not far away. It was none other than Yooihyun… or rather, to be precise, it should be called Yooihyun’s ‘clone’.
Vroom…
Even while Ricciardo and Perez had stopped, Yooihyun’s clone was quietly racing down the track, leaving a long tail as the engine sound faded into the distance. As the duo of Blue Bull looked despondently at that figure, their gaze turned to one side of their helmets.
There, close yet infinitely far, was Yooihyun’s qualifying record idly floating.
Name / Time
Yihyun Yoo 0:58:091
“0.004… 0.004! Why the hell can’t I close that gap?”
Ricciardo yelled at the number 0.004, which wouldn’t decrease despite repeated practice.
Not 4 seconds, not 0.4 seconds, not even 0.04 seconds, but 0.004 seconds. A fraction of a second, divided into a thousand parts in one second, was supposed to be time that could be caught up at any moment when they began practicing, yet,
That’s why it made it even harder to collect himself.
When something believed to be always possible is denied by reality, despair inevitably grows.
“I just can’t accept it. No, I don’t understand. Why can’t I close the gap? Is my cornering wrong? Did I lack acceleration? Or is it me that’s the problem…?”
His condition was definitely fine. He thought he had executed the best possible move flawlessly… thus, he was confident that this lap was close to a perfect lap.
All that confidence and assurance ultimately betrayed Ricciardo.
Haunted by thoughts of his inadequacies, Ricciardo was wandering aimlessly, unable to find any major issues with his driving.
Laps he had failed repeatedly had long accumulated like a mountain under his name in For One’s data. Even as the record of lap times was deleted repeatedly until he lost track of how many had disappeared, there wasn’t a single record that surpassed Yooihyun.
Lap / Name / Time
1 – Maniel Ricciardo 0:58:120
2 – Maniel Ricciardo 0:58:125
:
:
:
35 – Maniel Ricciardo 0:58:101
36 – Maniel Ricciardo 0:58:099
37 – Maniel Ricciardo 0:58:100
Each time he looked at the data, which felt like a grave for records that had died fighting against the wall, Ricciardo felt as if even his existence was being dragged down beneath the ground.
This desperate situation of Ricciardo was not solely applicable to him. His long-time teammate and eternal rival Sergio Perez was in a similarly dire situation.
In fact, if it came to records, Perez’s were generally worse.
“I can’t even get into the 58.0 second range. Am I missing something…”
Considering the situation itself, Perez was in a more desperate state.
However, missing a possibility that was just out of reach was more despairing than losing one that was far away, so Ricciardo’s emotional shift was naturally more dramatic than Perez’s.
In the grim atmosphere where they would only fall, Perez spoke up first to break the silence.
“Let’s take a short break. Just a short one… and let’s try to organize our thoughts and rework each corner slowly, starting from the beginning.”
“…”
Ricciardo, who was swimming in the swamp of despair, nodded weakly, aware that Perez couldn’t see his face.
Still, there are some things that go unspoken.
“End practice mode.”
[Ending practice mode.]
The perceptive Perez seemed to have read the positive meaning from his teammate’s silence and quickly ended the practice mode. Given how fast he reacted, it seemed that even if Ricciardo had refused, practice would have efficiently stopped either way.
Moments later, the chassis of the race car vanished and their bodies shifted onto the grid. The empty grid strangely echoed their feelings.
“Let’s rest for at least 5 minutes.”
“Yeah…”
The rest time soon came to an end. It wasn’t that the 5 minutes had all passed, but it felt like it ended “so soon.” The two drivers, who had just written a long history of defeat, couldn’t endure relaxing in their guilt.
Ricciardo, revitalized, suddenly rose and spoke.
“What do you think the problem is?”
“The problem?”
“Yeah, the problem.”
“A problem… can I be honest with you?”
While pondering the problem, Perez suddenly changed his gaze and raised a topic. Tensing up, Ricciardo nodded, anticipating what prickly words might come with the honesty.
However, what came out of Perez’s mouth was blunt.
“To be honest, there’s no problem. The fact that there’s no problem is the problem.”
There’s no problem because there’s no problem.
It was a ridiculous statement, akin to saying that having no flaws is a flaw. Ricciardo questioned back.
“There’s… no problem?”
“That’s what I heard.”
From Perez, with his natural expression, Ricciardo felt only sincerity.
To Ricciardo, still not understanding, Perez asked.
“I’ll ask you, so answer. How many laps did you do in this practice mode?”
“87 laps.”
“Among those 87 laps, which ones felt closest to a perfect lap?”
“Um… about 3 laps?”
“Then we can consider those 3 laps as perfect laps?”
“Sure.”
With such a simple conversation, something so obvious, Ricciardo’s expression hardened, sensing the hidden intention behind the question.
For a moment, as he watched Ricciardo, Perez delivered the final blow.
“Were there control misses on those 3 laps? Was the cornering lacking, or the straight acceleration insufficient? Did the timing go off, or did the plan fall apart?”
“…Nothing…”
“Right. For a driver like you to call it a perfect lap, it naturally must have been. Now do you understand what I mean?”
What he initially considered to be blunt words, the more he pondered and mulled over it, turned out to be sharper than any other words.
“There’s no problem.”
Ricciardo recalled all the laps that were overwhelmed by emotions.
The practices where he tried to compromise with ‘the current me.’ Those practices, due to ‘me’ blindly trusting ‘the current me,’ achieved no development or progress. All the laps he had done until now were merely results dependent on momentary luck and current condition.
They were worthless times that had no impact on ‘the future me.’
If only the condition had been good, if only he hadn’t made mistakes this time… All those words were excuses.
F1 is not racing that ends in a single lap. It’s a fight that stretches across many laps, a long-term battle rather than a short-term one. If one wants to win in the clash against the opponent dozens of times, it’s essential to raise basic abilities instead of relying on short-lived luck.
While chance is indeed an element that cannot be ignored in a single battle, over many repeated battles, ultimately the side with a higher average will win.
Thus, the very word “there’s no problem” was problematic.
The self-delusion of believing there are no problems due to the “current me” being as perfect as that could only reach a limit was what constituted the real issue.
Moreover, the performance of the race car was such that Blue Bull was ahead of Ferrari, so he couldn’t blame the environment.
“I thought I worked hard… but from start to finish, everything was a problem.”
Ricciardo’s scorn for himself echoed across the grid.