Victor Martins: From Karting Champion to Formula 3 Winner and WEC Driver

Victor Martins is a French driver who has built his career through karting, single-seaters and Formula 2, before switching to endurance racing with Alpine in 2026. He won the FIA Formula 3 title in 2022 and was named the top rookie in Formula 2 in 2023. He also works for Williams as a test and development driver.

How did Victor Martins start racing?

Karting began for Martins in 2013, following time spent in gymnastics, where he won a national crown by the age of ten. In 2016 he won the CIK-FIA Junior World Karting Championship. He stepped up to single-seaters in 2017, winning the French F4 junior title.

Born on 16 June 2001 in Quincy-sous-Senart, he has a French mother and a Portuguese father. Gymnastics came first in his life, and he was a French champion before he was ten.

His karting title in 2016 was dominant enough that pundits compared him to Stoffel Vandoorne. Motorsport.com listed him among the ten karting drivers to watch in December 2016, placing him second behind Logan Sargeant.

In 2016 he also raced as a guest in the fifth round of French F4, claiming two podiums. The next year he competed full-time and took four wins, nine poles and eleven podiums.

His 2017 season ended with the junior crown and the overall vice-championship, which made it a strong first full campaign in open-wheel racing.

A karting champion who became Formula 3 champion, then one of Formula 2's unluckiest drivers before his move to endurance racing.

How did his Formula Renault years develop?

In 2018 Martins drove for R-ace GP in the Formula Renault Eurocup and finished fifth overall. In 2019 he switched to MP Motorsport and finished runner-up to Oscar Piastri, with 7.5 points between them. In 2020 he won the Eurocup title with ART Grand Prix, finishing 44 points ahead of Caio Collet.

In 2018 he took his first Eurocup win at the Red Bull Ring and another at Spa-Francorchamps. He also claimed two poles and six podiums that season. In the NEC series he took his maiden Formula Renault victory at Monza.

At the halfway mark of 2019 he had scored only one win, yet he was level with Piastri in the standings. He won six races and 14 podiums, three more podiums than Piastri, and in a Motorsport.com ranking of 2019 junior single-seater talents he came ninth among twenty.

ART Grand Prix signed him for 2020, alongside Gregoire Saucy and the rookie Paul Aron. His first two victories came at the Nurburgring round, and he won seven races across the Eurocup season.

What was his FIA Formula 3 record?

Martins joined MP Motorsport for the 2021 FIA Formula 3 season and finished fifth with 131 points, as the best-placed rookie. In 2022 he moved to ART Grand Prix and won the championship with 139 points, the first drivers' title for a team other than Prema in that category.

He qualified third for the opener and took his first podium, second place in race two, after a last-lap battle with Olli Caldwell. The 2021 season brought more podiums at Le Castellet and elsewhere. At his home round he led by lap 18, but he was passed by Alexander Smolyar with half a lap to go.

In 2022 the title fight came down to Zane Maloney, who finished only five points behind. Martins had opened the year with a feature win in Bahrain after a difficult sprint.

At Monza a crash during the feature race was followed by a track-limits penalty, leaving him fourth at the flag, which was still enough for the title. He finished the season with four podiums.

How did his Formula 2 career go?

Martins spent three seasons in Formula 2 with ART Grand Prix, from 2023 to 2025. He won the Anthoine Hubert Award as top rookie in 2023 and finished fifth overall. He won once in each of his three seasons, at Silverstone, Spain and Qatar.

He stepped up with ART in January 2023 alongside Theo Pourchaire. His first Formula 2 podium came in Bahrain, after a second-place qualifying effort on debut. He took three poles across the season and six fastest laps.

His maiden Formula 2 victory came at Silverstone, where he passed Ayumu Iwasa off the track and took a five-second penalty. He still won by two seconds. ART also picked up the Formula 2 teams championship that season, its first.

The season had a rough start in Melbourne. He crashed at the end of qualifying after taking third, and in the feature he ran third before hitting the back of Dennis Hauger, which earned a penalty and a drop to 18th. At Baku he ran second in the sprint, but a late safety-car restart left his cold tyres without grip, and he crashed out with a few laps left.

Monaco brought a drive-through penalty for failing to slow under yellow flags near marshals working on Jack Doohan's burning car, and he finished eighth. Barcelona brought a third-place finish in the feature, his first podium since Jeddah, despite losing a place to Pourchaire late on. Austria gave him a second pole of the year and a second-place sprint finish on soft tyres.

Silverstone was his third pole of the year. Zandvoort ended with a ten-second penalty after he collided with Oliver Bearman, dropping him from fifth to ninth. Monza gave him second in the sprint, six seconds behind the leader, before engine problems stopped him in the feature. The Yas Marina finale brought front-wing damage in the sprint, but he recovered to second in the feature and the fastest lap there.

The 2024 season began poorly, with an engine failure in Bahrain and a crash in Jeddah. He recovered to finish seventh with 107 points, including one win and five podiums. The win came in Spain, where he took the lead from Kush Maini into the first corner. He also took pole for the Abu Dhabi finale.

In 2025 he partnered Ritomo Miyata at ART. He ended the season eleventh overall, having won once, taken two poles and stood on the podium three times. The Feeder Series ranked him among the unluckiest Formula 2 drivers of recent times. His 2025 win came in Qatar, where he led from second on the grid and held off Fornaroli.

The 2025 season opened with a front-row start in Melbourne, and he was promoted to pole when Gabriele Mini was penalised for impeding. His sprint ended after a lap-two crash, and the feature race was cancelled because of rain. At Bahrain the sprint ended early for him when a front wing broke on lap one, and he recovered only to 14th.

The Bahrain feature brought his first points of the year with fifth place. In Jeddah he finished eighth in the sprint, then took third in the feature, fending off Leonardo Fornaroli late on.

Monaco was a poor weekend: Oliver Goethe forced him into the wall in the sprint, and a lap-one incident with Alex Dunne eliminated him from the feature. At Silverstone he claimed his first pole of 2025, but front-wing damage from a safety-car restart forced him out of the feature.

Spa brought second place in the sprint and a time penalty that dropped him back in the feature, where he still finished eighth. In Budapest he took fourth in the sprint, but mechanical problems curtailed his feature race mid-way through.

How did his Alpine and Williams roles develop?

Martins joined the Alpine F1 academy after his Eurocup title, but was dropped from the programme before the 2025 season. He had been inducted into the Renault Sport Academy in January 2018 and released after the 2019 season.

In May 2023 he made his F1 test debut at Monza in the Alpine A521. A year later, in June 2024, he drove the Alpine A522 at the Red Bull Ring, and in November he tested it again at Losail.

On 31 March 2025 Martins joined the Williams Driver Academy. That year he took over Alexander Albon's slot for free practice at the Spanish Grand Prix, a first in a Formula 1 weekend. In 2026 Williams promoted him to test and development driver.

What is he doing in endurance racing and other series?

In 2026 Martins switched to endurance racing, joining Alpine in the FIA World Endurance Championship. He had already tested an Alpine Hypercar at Bahrain in November 2024, where he finished fourth quickest, the highest of the rookies in that session.

In Formula E, Nissan had him test in the Berlin rookie session in April 2023, and he took part in the rookie pre-season test for the 2023-24 season. In March 2026 he was back in Formula E machinery, running for Nissan at the Madrid rookie test.

In the 2025 Race of Champions he drove for Team France alongside rally driver Sebastien Loeb, and the pair won the Nations Cup. In October 2025 he took part in Indy NXT tests with HMD Motorsports at Indianapolis and with Juncos Hollinger Racing at Barber Motorsports Park.

What are his main results by series?