CHAPTER 127: THE OFFERS

Until Thursday, Fatih’s routine returned to a predictable monotony. A few things remained constant: his quiet deskmate speaking only a few words to him each day, his hour in the school’s gym, and his half-hour of real-world karting practice.

But today, he carried a different air around him. He knew that by the time he arrived home, his mother would have finally returned from her meetings in Italy. Despite that knowledge, he didn’t cancel his gym practice; he just accelerated his workout, doing it as quickly and safely as possible. By reducing his rest time, he finished his usual hour of practice in forty minutes, allowing him to arrive home half an hour earlier than usual.

"I missed you too, dear," Rümeysa said as she put Fatih down after he jumped on her the moment he opened the door.

Fatih turned to Burak with a very weird expression on his face. "I missed you too, coach," he said, hugging him as well but not saying anything about their discovery. His grandmother just smiled wider than usual; she planned to talk with her daughter alone later to confirm her grandson’s hypothesis without getting ahead of herself. Still, her daughter’s expression made it quite obvious.

"Do you have anything to do at the moment? If you do, then we can postpone the discussion about my meetings," Rümeysa asked as she played with Fatih’s hair, having missed doing that after being apart for a few days.

"Not really, I already did my exercises at school and washed up," Fatih said as he walked to the dining room table, showing his intent to have the discussion now. Besides, even if he did have other plans, he couldn’t wait to hear what offers they had received.

"Let’s get through it fast then," Rümeysa said, walking with Burak to the table. She sat at the head position, with Burak taking a seat opposite Fatih.

"Let’s start with the easier news first. We have received a report from our TOSFED representative that their request for the FIA to change your inclusion in the talented drivers list from temporary to permanent has been approved. After observing your second-week performance, they concluded that it was worthy of that, and now you can permanently benefit from it until at least the end of next year, when they will review the year’s performance to determine if your inclusion needs to be reevaluated, but that applies to all the drivers on the list," Rümeysa said with a smile. It was one of the major milestones they had hoped to accomplish with the three high-profile events he was scheduled to participate in this year.

However, due to this super-dominant performance in the two races, they accomplished one of their goals before even competing in the third one in October, and it seemed like they had the opportunity of accomplishing the rest of their goals within this one-month period before the WSK finals.

"Is there bad news coming after the good news?"

"Not really, maybe if you consider going through documents to be bad news."

"Not really."

"Then that’s good," she said as she picked up her bag, removed a stack of documents, and placed them on the table. She slid the first one over to Fatih. "This is the Red Bull offer we received. You were there for the discussion; this is just the written form they delivered later, so there is no need to repeat it."

She then picked a second document, sliding it over as she continued, "This is the Ferrari Driver Academy’s offer. Their offer is more of a partnership where they will provide technical assistance, training, and prestige while leaving the financial parts for us to either cover ourselves or find a sponsor for. They promise to fully cover your racing endeavors after you show continuous development. The benefit is that, unlike Red Bull, who are known to be ruthless when there is no performance, Ferrari is patient with their drivers, but you cover the cost. That is all the offers we received from driver academies owned by F1 teams," Rümeysa said, pausing before moving to the remainder of the batch.

"These are from the factory teams and management agencies," she said, tapping the remaining folder before sliding the top one to Fatih. "The best offer comes from Tony Kart. They gave us two options. The first is similar to your teammate Lando’s: you would be a works-supported driver. This entails free access to the latest factory equipment, priority technical support with an engineer sent to major racing events, and priority equipment in return for driving with their sponsorship logo.

The second one is for you to leave RFM and join their official karting team, which would entitle you to the best of the best while covering everything karting-related. As for other karting manufacturers, they gave similar offers to Tony Kart’s second option, but many didn’t promise the free equipment support, meaning you would be required to cover some of the costs with sponsorship or our own cash," she said, sliding the batch with all the documents regarding the karting teams.

"These are from management agencies. They are not offering a karting sponsorship but are offering to represent you in negotiating sponsorships and other motorsports-related contracts. So, go read them, and once you are done, we can have a discussion about what options are best," Rümeysa finished, sliding the last batch of documents over just as Fatih started going through the Red Bull contract.

Usually, someone his age would rarely be left with such a decision. Their suggestion might be listened to, but could be completely vetoed if the parent deemed it not the best option. That was not the case for Fatih. As someone who became a millionaire at nine, his words were always taken heavily into consideration, especially for things related to him. His mother found that most of his choices were the ones she would have made anyway. If they had a disagreement, once she heard Fatih’s reasoning, she usually agreed with his choice, barring a few times where she stood by her decision, which Fatih didn’t argue with, as her explanations made sense. It made their situation a special one between parent and child.

Since each proposal was not too long, he managed to go through all of them within an hour while his mother went to do what she had planned, leaving Fatih alone at the table.

"I’m done," Fatih said to his mother, who turned out to be in the kitchen helping her mother prepare dinner.

After a moment of silence, a response finally came.

"Already? Don’t you have to think about it?" she asked, sticking her head through the kitchen door.

"Done with that as well," he said as he gathered the documents into one neat stack.

"Still, think about it more. We can talk about it after dinner," she said before returning to the kitchen, leaving Fatih to do what he wanted in the meantime.