After his first single-seater test in Slоvakia Marti was left quite impressed and in love with the capabilities of a single-seater racing car. Logically the next step for him, despite being just 12, was to complete a course for race car driving. The choice was one of the racing driver schools with the longest history in the world – The Henry Morrogh Racing Drivers School, based at the 1.8 km long Sele circuit near Battipaglia in Italy.
Henry, who is now in his 90s, is class winner at the 1964 edition of the 24H of Le Mans with Alpine! His school has produced lots of Italian F1 drivers and today after some new investment it is partner to the Italian federation ACI-CSAI in young driver education. The certificate that Marti received is made to be used for obtaining racing license from the federation.
Obviosly, such license can’t be issued to Marti for his age, but this didn’t stop him from going through all the obstacles in going from karts to single-seaters with flying colors.
It was a 2 day course. During the first day along with the theory Marti had to drive a touring car. He drove this car just for a few laps and the instructor was satisfied enough to put him into the Mirage M012 single-seater powered by a 150hp Renault engine paired to sequential gearbox. Immediately the instructors were quite impressed by Marti’s fast adaptation and his clear understanding of car dynamics. With just 420 kg weight the Mirage was quite tricky to drive, especially on this uneven track, but somehow Marti didn’t feel tired and managed to complete some 70 laps in his first day! During the second day he just went from where he left off and did another 70 laps. The instructors & mechanics were quite impressed by his commitment and desire to drive, so much that they were full of superlatives for him. Everybody wanted to take pictures with him and his car mechanic, in particular, was convinced that Marti was going to become a famous drive in the future!
The hosts of the Henry Morrogh school were very generous too and gave Marti a special treat – a test session with the current Tatuus F4 car!
Marti was very happy with the car, he found its stability under braking to be superior to the Mirage and in his sole session managed to beat his time by a whooping 5 seconds! His best time with the Tatuus F4 was 57 sec, meaning he’s just 2 seconds shy from the pace after just one short session of driving on old tires!
This was one very positive and encouraging course for Marti. As a 12 year old he managed to make over 150 laps in his first two days of testing and he never stopped improving his times. He left convinced that he can handle a single-seater without a problem and he was never afraid to explore the limits of the cars.
