Marti made both his racing & endurance racing debut at the 2 hours endurance race part of the FunBoost Challenge at Magny Cours in France at just 13 y.o.
He took part in the race with his step-father Miroslav Petkov who only drove a few laps in qualifying and the experienced multiple Bulgarian champion in circuit & hillclimb racing Tsvetan Iliev. The car all teams had was a Mygale MySpider – 550 kg, Yamaha R1 engine with 170 hp, 6-speed paddle-shift sequential gearbox.
The power-to-weight ratio of the car is better than that of Formula 4, but unlike the single-seater it doesn’t have much downforce.
The weekend didn’t start very well for Marti because he had caught the flu. He was having sore throat & temperature, but his ever present fighting spirit was intact and he was quickest in the team.
His best time was good enough for P4 even though he had never tested on the technical French GP track at which Michael Schumacher famously scored 7 F1 wins.
At the start of the race Marti lost a position, but managed to climb back his way to P3. Then the car started having hydraulics gearbox issue. It was hard to change gears and Marti pitted for the mechanics to fix the issue. It was fixed, but the team lost a lap!
In total from the 120 minutes of racing Marti drove 2 stints in total of 90 minutes and clocked his best lap just 4 laps from the end. His stamina was evidently very strong and he was learning, improving right until the end. The only 2 drivers faster than him were the driving instructors from the circuit who know it extremely well. At the end the Bulgarian team finished P4, only the technical issues preventing them from finishing on the podium.
Tsvetan Iliev was also quite impressed by Marti’s consistency and speed for his debut at this age.
Marti’s debut car race showed that all the sacrifice and investment from the family wasn’t in vain as once again he got praised by very experienced motorsport figures.
