ART Grand Prix’s Formula 2 lineup of Victor Martins and Zak O’Sullivan joined the Feeder Series Podcast for the latest episode, released Wednesday. We asked them what it’s like to speak different languages and what they have picked up from each other’s cultures so far…

By George Sanderson

If you’re a 19-year-old from Cheltenham, England, you could be forgiven for feeling a little out of place when joining a French team to be the teammate to a French driver. But a few months into his time with the team, ART’s Zak O’Sullivan is feeling right at home.

O’Sullivan is well accustomed to representing teams from mainland Europe, having driven for Prema Racing in F3 last season. After securing second place in the 2023 championship, with four victories to his name, he now makes the step up to F2 with ART Grand Prix.

Once again, O’Sullivan will be travelling further afield, this time swapping Italy for France. But the presence of possible language barriers does not seem to be a concern for him, as he told the Feeder Series Podcast.

“Being in an Italian team last year as well, I’m used to working with a different language at heart,” he says. “It’s my duty as well to embrace the culture, to learn as much French as I can, because I can’t just be sat there refusing to speak French or refusing to understand.”

His new teammate for 2024 is Frenchman Victor Martins, who enters his second season in F2 after a fifth-place finish in his rookie campaign. Martins, who is now in his fourth season with ART, told us that whilst team debriefs are conducted in English, he finds it “more natural” to speak in French with his engineer on the team radio.

“It’s not easier, but I will say it is more natural when I want for my engineer to understand something. I use the natural word from French and he understands directly.

“I used to, in 2022, to change to English during the season, and I don’t know, I felt I was not – I was natural but it was not coming like this [snaps fingers]. So I was sometimes saying something to my engineer, but I had to think a bit about it and it wasn’t anymore enough in the moment.”

Martins had said at the time, during his title-winning F3 campaign, that the switch to English was to “prepare the future” and “get in the rhythm with the language”.

Martins does attest, however, that with O’Sullivan joining the team, he now speaks English more often. In fact, there is one particular scenario in his F2 races when Martins says he always speaks English.

“I do speak French unless I need to say something to FIA!” he said with a laugh.

“I will say I will try to keep it in French, and when it is with Zak, for sure we’ll do it in English because that’s normal. And in the end, it’s training me also, even though I don’t have any problems to speak English about motorsport.”

Martins and O’Sullivan had yet not spent much time with one another when we spoke to them, but the Briton did tell us that he had already started picking up things from his new teammate – including a taste for a soft and fluffy pain au lait from Brioche Pasquier.

“I really like them! I have like four in my car every time I go back,” he laughs.

“I drive back and forth to the workshop and I always pick them up in a service station on the way! But yeah, I am slowly learning French mannerisms, and actually the sense of humour is quite similar from English to French, more so than we like to admit.”

Along with the varying nationalities, Martins and O’Sullivan also represent two different F1 team academies, running their respective liveries in F2. Martins is part of the Alpine Academy, having been with the French team since the start of the 2021 season after a two-year stint in the predecessor Renault Sport Academy in 2018 and 2019.

O’Sullivan signed with Williams in 2022 and debuted in F1 machinery for the team during the first free practice session at the 2023 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. We asked them how being part of an academy helped in their preparations for the 2024 season.

“I was with Renault Sport Academy before,” Martins said. “Since 2018, it’s kind of always the winter time is dedicated to training camps, to the full preparation – physically, mentally, technically – with the team.

“They give us some time to go also to Enstone, to the factory, to the simulator. I do even more now because now I’m in F2. It’s kind of closer to F1, so they use you more.”

O’Sullivan agreed, telling the Feeder Series Podcast that he had noticed a big increase in “relevant data to compare to F1” in terms of fitness and work on the simulator. Despite that, his focus remains fully on his progress with ART in F2 this season, he said.

“My main priority, as with Victor, is having a good Formula 2 season. You can then use your academy’s framework to aid that season in areas that perhaps the F2 team can’t fulfil. But the main focus every year is to complete your season as well as you can.”

Both drivers are the longest-serving current members of their respective academies. Does this give them a feeling of responsibility in helping guide the younger drivers?

“It’s quite weird to think like that because I still remember when I was entering the academy and there was Anthoine Hubert, there was Jack Aitken at that time, there were many of them like [Christian] Lundgaard also was already in F2 when I was still in Formula Renault [in 2020],” Martins said.

“I was hoping going to get that place – to be the kind of first one on the list of the academy based on the category I am in.”

Martins said that alongside Kush Maini – another member of the Alpine Academy in F2, driving for Invicta Racing – he enjoyed being able to give advice to the newer members of the academy like 16-year-old Kabir Anurag, who was announced to be joining the programme on Monday.

“You give advice, you give experience to the young ones, and it will remind you what you went through when you were at the time where they are.”

You can hear Victor Martins and Zak O’Sullivan answer more fan questions on the latest episode of the Feeder Series Podcast, hosted by Jim Kimberley.

Header photo credit: Diederik van der Laan / Dutch Photo Agency (both images)