Marti eyeing Qualifying gains for Round 2

22 March 2022

With his maiden weekend in the Formula 3 Championship done and dusted, Campos Racing’s Josep María Martí says he is eyeing Qualifying gains for the second round of the season next month in Imola.

Martí ended his first Qualifying session in Sakhir in 20th position, and enjoyed a strong Feature Race run to 13th after retiring from Saturday’s Sprint Race.

The Spanish driver pointed to race pace as his strongest trait during the opening race weekend, but insists that there are improvements elsewhere to be found.

“I think the race weekend, overall there’s a lot of room for improvement but being my first week and the lack of practice before the first race, it was quite a positive weekend,” he said.

“There are a lot of positives to take away, a lot of negatives to work through. But I think overall, it was quite good.

Marti went from P20 to 13th in the Feature Race

“Race pace was definitely our strongest point. In Qualifying, there’s a lot to improve, a lot to work on. It’s something we have to work on, on my side I struggled quite a lot to get a time out.

“Qualifying was not optimal and that really backfires over the whole weekend and compromises most of the races. It’s definitely something we need to look upon, but I’m really happy with my first week.”

Although he is new to Formula 3, the 16-year-old has experience with Campos, as he spent the 2021 Formula 4 Spanish Championship with the team.

Martí says he is confident that throughout the season, the team will be able to extract the maximum potential from him as they continue to work together.

Marti is new to F3 but spent the 2021 campaign with Campos in Spanish F4

“Campos is a real pleasure to work with, the whole team, the whole squad is a group of very hard-working, beautiful people,” he said.

“It’s an absolute pleasure and so enjoyable to be able to work with them, the whole crew is fantastic. It’s really nice, it’s a team whose focus is really on the driver and how we can extract the maximum potential out of the car, even if the car is not ready to be winning races.

“If the car is ready for P5, we want to push ourselves, driving-wise and the engineers to be P5. For round two, we know there’s a lot to work on, there’s a lot of things to be going through. But I think as a team, we’ll be able to push through, because it’s a team of people who work very hard, who are very determined to win.”