"I never thought it might be a problem this early," Helmut said as he read the documents in his hands.

In front of him was a document regarding Fatih that the analysis team had prepared for him two weeks after his triumphant win. The document showed the level of interest other teams had in Fatih and how much aggressiveness they could expect from them when it came to poaching him. The fear that his karting dominance wouldn’t translate to single-seaters had been completely debunked. The report highlighted that interest was getting higher and higher thanks to the exploits and dominance he had shown on the track.

Due to the contract renegotiations they had done, it had become harder to poach him, but it wasn’t impossible for a team determined to take him for themselves. One of those teams that could do that was Mercedes, who had both the capability and were actively investing in their driver situation.

Since Toto Wolff had failed to secure Verstappen after Helmut made a gamble by guaranteeing him an F1 seat, Toto had been looking for a driver like that to raise under the Mercedes umbrella, and Helmut was sure that Fatih was at the top of that list.

They had already offered Fatih the best contract any rookie, other than Verstappen, had ever received, and unfortunately, that was as far as it could go. They had an additional card they could have played but had already sacrificed it to satisfy and lock in their other talented driver, Max Verstappen, who was already delivering results for their F1 team.

The concession was a promise not to lobby the FIA for an exemption to allow Fatih to enter the F1 grid before he reached the minimum age of 18, in return for him signing the contract renewal. It was something that Max’s father had deliberately delayed the signing for, wanting to buy time for his son to consolidate his position as the number one driver.

As he continued thinking about the situation, he placed his hand on his forehead, pinching his eyebrows as he tried to think of something to do. After all, if things went as they were, Fatih was definitely going to win the following year’s F3 season and by a large margin, which would give him 30 Super License points, enough to meet the 40-point requirement.

He would still be sixteen and about a year and a half away from entering F1 if they didn’t lobby for him. So they needed to find something for Fatih to do during that waiting period, or else they might lose him due to his dissatisfaction with them not lobbying for the rule change.

He was really looking at an upcoming problem, because if it happened, they would be between a rock and a hard place. Even if they did lobby, the chances of it being accepted were very low since the rule was new and had been put in place to prevent a situation similar to Verstappen’s. To relax the rules for another driver from the same team would be a nearly impossible task.

"Well, we have a year or so to think about that," he said as he slid the folder to the side, not wanting to think about it anymore.

He then moved to the next document. This one was also related to Fatih, but on something they could actually do something about. He nodded as he approved the application, seeing it as something that could create a connection between them. Pushing for Fatih to win an ’Action of the Year’ award was exactly that.

.....

While Helmut was having a headache about how to handle Fatih’s situation, someone else was also having a headache because of Fatih.

His name was Aron, the head of the Strategic Planning Department, known internally as Team One. His and his team’s job was to turn Fatih’s abstract ideas into a blueprint of how they could be achieved, from blueprint to launch, and from launch to handover to the management team of the new company, before moving into monitoring and observing how the companies were operating and reporting it to the top.

"The first one is easy to handle since most of the data is already available for purchase, and we only need the equipment and engineering talent to take the information and create the system as they want it. The second one, on the other hand, is going to need you to work hard on the recruiting angle," Aron said to Mick, the Head of Talent Acquisition who was responsible for recruiting talent for the companies.

His work was completely different from general HR since these two business ideas required talent that wasn’t sending out CVs looking for a job or on LinkedIn with an "open to work" banner. They were mostly happy and well-compensated in the companies they were already working for, so someone with information and a wide network was needed to handle the recruitment of these individuals.

"I know, but how about we include working online or at-home allowances to allow for the net we cast to be as wide as possible? We then won’t have to worry about where to set up the company and can be flexible on that angle," Mick suggested.

This was the only advantage they had over the big companies who had most of the high-quality workers in these areas. If they tried to compete as they did, they would be left with either subpar talent or would have to pay way too much above market rate to convince some of them to come and work for them.

But if they were allowed to implement remote working, this would change the area they could cover from being limited to America and expand to the entire world, as talent from Singapore, Korea, the UK, Sweden, and everywhere else would now be on the list of possible people they could recruit.

"What about security?"

"That is something we will need to look into, but we first need them to accept it as something we can use. Do you think they will?"

"I don’t know, so let’s include it and make our case in the blueprint and leave it to them to go through it and decide. We can think about it from then on," Aron said as he noted it on his computer to bring up during the daily department meetings where they all gathered to discuss progress, the problems they were facing, and everything else as they built the blueprint.

During the short silence as he noted the information on the computer, Mick chuckled, causing Aron to ask, "What is it?"

"When I joined, I initially considered it to be a sabbatical, but to see the first things we need to work through being this complicated makes it very interesting to work on," Mick said. The good pay was another reason he had accepted the offer, but that was the value they were expected to bring in the first place.

"If even one of them works, they will have an edge over others," he said, though he kept the rest of the thought to himself. They needed to have patience before they could see results, but since he had only been with them for less than eight months, he wasn’t yet knowledgeable enough about the owners to know their stance definitively.

"Well, this should be enough for us to know their stances and operational approach," Mick said before gathering his documents and heading back to his team’s office to continue from where they had left off.