One year ago today, Pepe Martí departed Formula 2 to embark on his maiden campaign as a professional racing driver with Cupra Kiro in Formula E. Feeder Series caught up with the Spanish driver at the season-ending London E-Prix to reflect on the journey that led him to compete in the all-electric world championship.

By Seb Tirado

Martí was sixth in the drivers’ standings when he curtailed his F2 campaign to join the Formula E grid. In his second year in the championship, he had taken three victories and two further podiums, including a sprint win at Bahrain when he capitalised on late-race chaos to win from 11th on the grid.

The prospect of joining Formula E first came as a suggestion from his management, which Martí agreed to explore. After ‘very quick conversations’ in early October, Kiro Race Co – who compete as Cupra Kiro – announced on the 21st of the month that Martí would be joining the team for the 2025–26 season, six days before Formula E’s pre-season test in Valencia.

“My management A14 can take absolutely all the credit for the negotiations and managing to get it all done,” he told Feeder Series. “The way it happened, I obviously can’t give precise details, but it was very, very on the limit [compared to] what you would normally have for coming into a world-class series like this one.”

The 21-year-old’s move to Formula E not only ended his affiliation with the Red Bull Junior Team, of which he had been a member since August 2023, but also a five-year affiliation with Campos Racing. This partnership began in his maiden year in single-seaters in 2021, when he finished third in the Spanish F4 standings with two wins and seven further podiums.

Winter series campaigns aside, Martí had been with the Alzira-based outfit on every rung of the feeder series ladder.

“I think it really did help me out in those first years when you’re sort of a young kid and you’re trying to learn your way through a motorsport,” Martí explained. “I do think looking back on my career, I would‘ve liked to be somewhere else at some point during the years just to have another environment. In the end, whilst I was in the family and I was super happy to have been with Campos for five years, when I came to Kiro, the difference in the sort of work culture really shocked me at first. So I think as a learning [opportunity], I would’ve also enjoyed working with someone else.”

Reminiscing on his time with Campos, Martí viewed his 2023 F3 campaign as a particular standout season with the team. That year, he won on three occasions and added a third place in the Silverstone feature race to come fifth in the standings.

“I’ve had a lot of highs in my junior career, thankfully, and I think probably one of the main moments would be winning at home in Barcelona in F3,” said the driver from nearby Sabadell, Catalonia. “That 2023 year, obviously I finished fifth in the championship, but the way we did things, I [had] a lot of special races. Pole position at Spa, pole position at Barcelona, being able in Australia to come from 30th to seventh. I had a lot of great memories from that year.”

In his time on the F1 support bill with Campos, Martí admitted that Formula E was never in his periphery as a possible career destination. But in the end, he had no regrets about choosing it to be the starting point of his professional career.

“You’re so dead focussed on Formula 1, you don’t really consider anything else,” he said. “I had a lot of talks with other drivers before I came here and they all say like, ‘Honestly, you’ll enjoy it’. And for some people, it’s a disappointment to come to Formula E. That’s how people perceive it.

“They said, ‘No, honestly, give it a chance, you’ll enjoy it, it’s a good championship.’ And whilst the racing is so different to anything else in motorsport, I couldn’t have made a better decision than coming here.”

Header photo credit: Simon Galloway / LAT Images