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Victor Martins endured an excruciating 26-minute wait while stewards mulled the results of the Formula 3 championship after the final race was stopped early and abandoned. The ART riders entered this morning’s season finale with a 6-point lead. He finished third behind title rivals Zane Maloney and Oliver Bierman, but was poised to win when the red flags came up.
“When I saw the safety car, I was already thinking, ‘Please don’t use the safety car in that race,'” recalls Martins. “I know I’ve done my job of keeping third, even if I don’t win, it’s okay.
“I’ve been wanting to win for many years and I’ve lost the title. So I just wanted to keep P3, and then there were red flags.”
However, while the drivers waited to know the results of the race, Martins found he had been fined five seconds for violating track limits, putting his race position in question and his title potentially in jeopardy.
“I try to stay focused and not think about anything and how I need to deal with a reboot. I’m trained to turn off and not think about what’s around me, who’s behind me, and where I need to be. I’m in a mode , I’m going to look ahead and take some action, because when you also do something to protect yourself.
“No one told me [about the penalty]. I saw it from the mechanics, my bro, they started seeing five second penalties on the phone. To be honest, at first I was very frustrated and angry with my team.
“Honestly, at this moment, your reaction is a little bit bad and instinctive. So I would say I’m a little pissed off why I didn’t know I had some track restrictions before because I think they told me it was a problem as well.
“I think the FIA ​​also spends a lot of time showing on TV that I have some track restrictions [penalty]. So in the end, I think in the end [track limits violation] By the time the team told me, I might have been too late. So it’s just a scary moment. “
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Martins admits he fears a repeat of last year’s controversial conclusion to the Formula 1 season, when Max Verstappen If the race is restarted, pass Lewis Hamilton to win the championship after the restart on the final lap. “I was like, ‘No, this can’t happen.’
“My first thought if I was going to start over was between Verstappen and Lewis last year – I supported Lewis. So I thought, I’m not doing what Lewis did, I kept the title. No matter what happens, I want to win That game.”
Martins is now an Alpine junior, and his career hasn’t always been smooth sailing. He previously left their junior driver programme, which was still a Renault brand at the time, before rejoining after winning the 2020 Formula Renault Euro Cup.
“It made me more aware that I am the champion today [and] Of course, it feels better than the easy way I got the title,” Martins said. “I’ve been through a lot, a lot of hard times on my own, and I have a lot of questions and I’m not doing the right thing. Work, I lost some championships for nothing.
“Today, if I lost the title, I don’t know what would happen, but I believe I’ll be stronger against the wall. But I feel like to get it, I’ll believe in a different way of how things are going.
“Even if it doesn’t get in your way — like today, to be honest, at some point — I say ‘it’s over, it’s over, I’m not going to be a champion.’ To get it, it makes me wish Have a better future, maybe easier.
“But I want to say to myself, even if it’s hard, I’m going to go around the corners, around the problem, around the problem like I used to. Of course, it’s been awesome to get it.”
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Formula 3
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