Gaining confidence quickly and adapting between F1 and F2: How I Race with Victor Martins

As we continue to explore how each driver likes to go about their racing, we recently spoke with Victor Martins about his driving style.

The ART Grand Prix driver explains how he likes to setup his car, how he adapts his braking style depending on the circumstances, and what he has taken from his Formula 1 outings into his Formula 2 campaign.

“I think I would say the most important thing is to get good confidence in the car. For most of the drivers it's the key part of their success, it's just the confidence. When you get into the car, you complete your first lap and you are like ‘I am one with the car’.

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“In terms of setup, I would rather an oversteery car rather than an understeery car with good front end, because I will prefer to manage my rear tyres rather than being a passenger and waiting until the car rotates. That's it for sure!

“It's what is important. If you have a good front end, a good confidence in the car, and you get the tyres in the window, then in quali it's really powerful. But then in the race, maybe the approach is a bit different because you need to manage the tyres.

“The goal of the team and I is to anticipate what we want and what we expect, but definitely if the car has a good front end, normally I will like it.

“I do think you need confidence to have that type of preference, because during my career in the lower categories, I came up with cars setup with good front end and I started to like it more and more.

“I think for my first year in F3, I started to really get this preference. But there are some track layouts that are better for this, some tracks where you better have a good rear end, and a lot of stability, and then some tracks where you need to have a really good front end, and the car is rotating by itself to bring some minimum speed and to have good performance.

“It depends, but I think from my first year in F3 I started to change, maybe as a driver, with my driving style.

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“In terms of braking, I am quite flexible. I tend to perform on all tracks, so in the end, when I look at the big picture, I am quite confident that I manage my driving style quite well, in terms of different corners.

“Maybe there is more of a tendency for me to not really be a late braker. I tend to like to bring some minimum speed into corners rather than braking late, stopping the car a lot, and then doing the V-Shape.

“But I'm quite flexible honestly. It also depends on what lap you are on, or the track layout, or the corners. So I just change it if I can see it's not suiting me but I manage to do it well and then I adapt to it.

“For the weekend, we always start preparing in the simulator, trying to get the driving style correctly for each type of corners of the track that we are going too, and then we work on that.

“So, we get a good feel before the weekend, but we also have to stay open-minded for the step in Qualifying, with for example, going from Hards to Softs, it will make a huge difference.

“You will be able to get a better combine traction, a lot more overall grip, so the limit is probably further, and it's not the same, so you have to have this in mind.

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“But then you have another situation in the race, where you need to adapt for tyre deg, for management, but it all starts in Practice. Once you get the rhythm, then you know how to build up your confidence, you can try things in FP, but then you know the step and limit for Qualifying.

“For Qualifying, it's always in your imagination. It's dreaming about something that you might get or not get, it's trying to think about what you will get in terms of grip and the balance of the car to win time.

“In the end you need to deliver from Lap 1 and you don't always know how the car is behaving. So the main thing is confidence, to be able to achieve that.

“When you jump into a Formula 1 car you feel like there is no limit, at least from the first laps that you do. It feels like you can just push, push, push 100%, and it will always stick to the ground and the track.

“I think an F1 car comes to you really nicely and you have a lot more confidence than in F2, because you bring the car to the limit quicker.

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“But for sure when you jump into an F1 car you think about what you are doing in F2. What is the driving style you need to have, and what you learned in the car because F2 is a great Championship to prepare drivers, and there is nothing better or closer to an F1 car.

“But then it's another challenge, so you need to adapt well because things are harder to achieve, and the car, which is our tool, there is much more performance in it, so you need some extra help.

“It's just a matter of confidence and driving style that you can take from F2 to F1, and F1 to F2.”