Latest Episode | Cut To The Race Podcast
Victor Martins is driving with ART Grand Prix and is leading the Formula 3 Championship after Round 1.
The Alpine Junior Academy driver is in his second season of Formula 3, having switched from the MP Motorsport team for 2022.
Early Years:
Martins amassed a collection of karting titles between 2014 and 2016. His most notable achievement was winning the 2016 CIK-FIA Karting World Championship. He beat out David Vidales and Théo Pourchaire to take the OK-Junior title.
While Martins continued to kart throughout 2016 and 2017, he made his single-seater debut by taking part in one round of the 2016 French Formula 4 Championship. Despite being a guest driver and ineligible for points, he was on the podium twice in the four races he competed in.
In 2017, he raced full time in French Formula 4. He went on to continue his run of good performance in the car and won three of the first four races. By the end of the season, he had finished on the podium for more than half of the races.
While Martins lost the title by a mere four points to Arthur Rougier, the two of them were over 100 points ahead of their nearest rival. As Martins was technically a rookie, unlike Rougier, he was crowned the Junior Champion.
For 2018, Martins moved to the Formula Renault Eurocup Championship, where he remained for three seasons. He raced for a different team each year, starting with R-ace GP, moving to MP Motorsport for 2019, and racing for ART Grand Prix in 2020.
Throughout those three seasons, Martins won 15 races and scored a total of 34 podiums. He continually progressed up the standings, finishing fifth in his rookie season, second the next year, and finally taking the title in 2020. Notably, in 2019, he lost the title by only 7.5 points to Oscar Piastri.
Formula 3:
Martins moved back to MP Motorsport to make his Formula 3 debut in 2021. He was racing as a member of the Alpine Junior Academy, which he’d been affiliated with since 2018.
In a midfield team, it’s harder to compete with dominant teams like PREMA or Trident. But Martins took six podiums throughout the seasons, one of those being a race win in Zandvoort.
Race winner Victor Martins of France and MP Motorsport celebrates on the podium at Zandvoort (Image Credit: Getty Images)After finishing fifth in the standings and comfortably ahead of both his teammates, Martins signed with ART Grand Prix for the 2022 season.
Martins qualified fifth for the first round of the season in Bahrain. He retired from the Sprint Race, but made up for lost time and won the Feature Race on Sunday.
After Round 1, he leads the championship by just one point over PREMA’s Arthur Leclerc.
Feature Image Credit: Getty Images
