Marti made an unexpected debut in the Italian Formula X Pro Championship with the Tatuus F4 car. The race was unexpected because Marti’s focus is no longer on single-seater racing, having last sat in the cockpit of an F4 over a year ago.
However, Formula X Pro did have a race at Magione, the home track of the Henry Morrogh racing school of which Marti is an alumnus. In the class in which he had to participate – Trofeo Formula Italia, there were 6 drivers from a total of 23 F4 cars. His class differed from the others in that drivers were not allowed to use a new set of tires. The target of the race was for Marti to gain experience.
He had a short test on Friday morning with the car, skipped the first session, which had to be paid for, and directly started with the second. In this session, he recorded 13th time overall and first in class, but was disappointed to not be able to improve on his time from Friday. This was expected because he’s been driving on the same old tires since Friday, but equally, some set-up changes the team made weren’t to his taste.
Just before qualifying it rained, Marti’s favorite conditions, he was immediately on the limit and in the first corners he was passing drivers, but by the time he got to the start of the start-final straight, it was obvious that there was something wrong. Subsequently, it became clear that the cable of the actuator for gear changes broke and the car remained in second gear.
Luckily for him, several cars flew off the track and the session was stopped. During this time the rain became so heavy that qualifying was canceled and the grid was set according to the second practice classification. Thus, Marti lined up 13th for the start of the first race.
On the starting grid for the first race, it turned out that Marti was the only one with proper old tires, which puzzled the technical delegate who was checking the tires’ bar codes. At the start, Marti made his only mistake of the weekend. The traction on his starting place surprised him and inaccuracy at clutch release stalled the engine. By the time he started the engine again and drove off, he was already in last position. Immediately after that the safety car came out and thus Marti caught up to the back, by the end of the race he made several passes and was up to 14th overall and 3rd in class.
For the second race, Marti had learned his lesson and made a brilliant start. From 13th on the grid, at the end of the first lap he was 8th, keeping the pace of the cars around him despite the old tyres! A safety car came out, and Marti made a good restart. Already towards the middle of the race, it was clear that once again he had some kind of technical problem, and he started signaling that there was a problem with the front of the car. Soon he started to lose a few seconds and a train formed behind him. Despite the problem he was quite successful in keeping the cars behind him. Still, they could very hardly overtake him and Marti until the last moment did not allow anyone to outbrake him! It turned out that one of the bolts holding the front right wheel hub broke and the wheel had a lot of play, making turning and stopping very difficult.
Marti continued to struggle later, the second bolt broke, and the wheel became undrivable. Marti stopped in the grass, which as the race was coming to an end caused a red flag. Thus, the chance for a good result was lost.
The onboard footage shows that the wheel problem started quite early on, the wheel progressively whobbled more & more, but somehow he managed to stick to the pack of cars ahead of him and not let himself be overtaken at braking until the last possible moment!
Despite all the problems that accompanied him, he achieved what he went for to Magione. He raced at a level he had never raced in before and under very difficult conditions. He gathered experience with starting from the grid and safety car restarts, as well as fighting with more experienced and much better financed rivals. All in all, it was a positive weekend where he once again demonstrated his will to fight until the very last moment.
