Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Reigning FIA Formula 3 champion Victor Martins was “really proud” to make the podium on his Formula 2 debut, but says he will need “another approach” for Sunday’s feature race.
The ART Grand Prix driver started eighth on the reversed grid of Saturday’s sprint race, and made it up to fourth on lap one. He passed DAMS’ Arthur Leclerc for third on lap three, and took another 10 laps to clear his team-mate Ayumu Iwasa.
With two laps to go he lost second to Prema’s Dennis Hauger, having pushed too hard on his tyres earlier on.
“I’m really proud of my race today, also really proud of the team, the car they gave me,” said Martins.
“I was just pushing a lot. I knew I was feeling the grip to do it in the car, so I just went for it and I got many opportunities so I just wanted to look ahead, and then for sure at some point I had to manage.
“I did a few mistakes which cost me to fight again to gain a position on Iwasa, and then in the end I knew I was going to struggle so it was a matter of keeping the car on the track and finishing where I could be.”
Martins praised the “really clean” racing against Hauger and Iwasa, with “a lot of respect between each other”, and said the biggest thing he learned from the race, particularly with Sunday’s race on his mind, was to “manage a bit more my emotion”.
“I was seeing Ralph [Boschung, who won the race] and I was like ‘I want to go for it’, but then you need to think about the tyres. So maybe tomorrow, and tonight also I will need to analyse where I could have stayed a bit more on the back foot to be better in the end. I think on the management side, I just need to do another approach.
“But I think for the first race I just wanted to push, see where I was ending.”
He summarised that “I’m feeling great” in the car, and “for sure we can score big points tomorrow”, but says he “will try to not have any expectation” for the feature race, knowing there will be even more to learn.
“[I need] to learn how to attack like I did today and how to manage a bit more the tyres [at the same time],” he said.
“Tomorrow is a feature race, I never did a pitstop in a real race, so it’s going to be discovering a new thing for me again. Outlap with cold tyres, all of those things.”
He added to Formula Scout that he would need “to think a bit more about the end of the run, either with the option or the prime [tyre compound]”.
“Maybe manage a bit more the overtakes that I did. I tried a bit aggressively at some points, it paid off, but then I had to stay a long time behind Iwasa because my first attempt was not successful.”