The Williams Driver Academy protégé, Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award winner and 2023 F3 runner-up got to test a current Formula 1 car at the end of last season – and is graduating to Formula 2 this season with champion team ART
WORDS STUART CODLING PORTRAIT WILLIAMS
You won the Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Award in 2021 – it was you where the presenters had a Terry-Wogan-and-Scooch moment, wasn’t it? [Confusion briefly reigned when he was accidentally announced as ‘Zak Martin’, with the surname of one of the other candidates]
Ha ha! It was – but I was born in 2005 so that reference is a bit obscure for me…
Welcome to GP Racing! How valuable to your career was winning AMABA?
Very valuable – and not just in terms of the money [besides a test in an Aston Martin F1 car, the prize includes £200,000 to help fund the next step of the winner’s racing career], it’s a massive thing to win, because it places your name alongside some of the most successful British racing drivers of the past 30-odd years. It’s also a tremendous confidence boost. There’s no competition like it – you’re on your own with no entourage, and you don’t see the other drivers’ laptimes. I really enjoyed it because you don’t get that kind of experience anywhere else.
You’ve now had another opportunity to drive an F1 car, this time a current-generation one [O’Sullivan drove the Williams FW45 in FP1 during the Abu Dhabi GP weekend as well as in the post-season test]. How did that go?
Not too bad, there was a lot to learn – it was my first time at Yas Marina so there was a quite a bit of track learning as well. I managed to get on top of it relatively quickly and felt quite comfortable in the car.
There were still a few things to refine, such as low-fuel runs on soft tyres, but I enjoyed it. Any experience in a Formula 1 car is valuable so I tried to make the most of it.
The other young drivers to test were racing in F2 last season, you were in F3 [with Prema, winning four rounds and finishing second in the championship to Gabriel Bortoleto]. How much of a step was it?
It was pretty big, to be honest, especially having not sat in a race car since September [the season finale was at Monza during the Italian GP weekend]. It’s a bit of a shock getting back in a car, especially when it’s an F1 car. But it wasn’t too bad – after a couple of laps you get used to the speed and can start to push towards the limits.
All racing drivers want to be as fast as po
