Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
Pepe Marti credited his Campos Racing team for the efforts that led to him claiming his maiden Formula 3 victory in the opening race of the 2023 season at Bahrain.
The Spaniard had already made a significant step forward in the last round of 2022 at Monza, where he qualified 10th and scored his only two points of the year thanks to finishing ninth in the sprint race.
“Last year, I struggled a lot, especially with qualifying and delivering good results in races,” Marti said after his Bahrain win.
“And I think over the winter me, Campos, all the guys, we’ve worked really, really hard, and I think we’ve put a really good package together.”
“And obviously, it showed yesterday with me being at the top. Got my laps invalidated in qualifying, which wasn’t unbelievable, it wasn’t great. But apart from that, just really, really happy. Coming across the line, seeing the chequered flag in first was great, an amazing feeling. Just hoping to do it more in the future.”
Despite having one of his flying laps deleted, Marti’s best valid laptime in qualifying was good enough for 11th place, which meant he started the sprint race from second on the reversed grid.
At the first corner he dropped behind Van Amersfoort Racing’s Caio Collet, but he regained the place after the first safety car restart, and went on to pass MP Motorsport’s Franco Colapinto for the lead after the second restart.
“With the help of the DRS, I was just able to catch up a lot into Turn 1, he half defended, and I just got a really good exit out of Turn 2 made the move into Turn 4 around the outside,” he said of the pass that earned him the win.
“Honestly, I think the main step forward we made wasn’t over winter,” Marti replied when Formula Scout asked what the breakthrough point had been. “It’s just from the end of last year to now. And what I mean over winter is basically, I was in the Jerez test, we were already quite strong.
“Most of the work was done throughout the last season, and in winter we just capitalised. A lot of simulator [time], a lot of work, the engineers have been working really, really hard over the winter. We’ve done a lot and when we came back here for the test, we brought a lot of new things to test and we tested most of the things we wanted to do, followed a really good programme and we were able to come away with really good conclusions.
“We just did our work and came back and everything that we tried was just really, really positive in the car and it shows. We were really competitive yesterday, three cars in the top 13, really positive pace overall just really, really quick and today was the same. Really happy for the team, really thankful for what they’ve done over the winter and the way we we’ve been working to go quicker,” he concluded.