What life is like as a Williams F1 simulator driver

Agosto 6, 2026 lojamais44@gmail.com

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Motorsport: Let’s talk about your current role at Williams. Can you explain what impact you have on the car?

Victor Martins: “I can have an impact on the car, but is it direct? Not necessarily, I’d say, because there are many people in the team, many departments, many things to improve, to analyse – so ‘direct’, I’d say no.

“However, taking part in development, yes – be it mainly on the simulator, testing energy management on the upcoming track before every weekend, preparing [for] Alex’s and Carlos’ arrivals so that they can work on other things that may be more important to them.

“I’m not going to have a direct impact on the likes of changing a suspension, because I haven’t tested the car in real life to this day, but I’m going to speed up that development, I’m going to try and use my experience and feedback for them to have the most accurate and best possible information.

“Then, I try to have quite a close relationship with Carlos [Sainz] and Alex [Albon] to understand the areas we need to work on for the car – what’s good and not good, what we need to improve, what to focus on.

“It’s important for me to spend time here [trackside in Belgium] to then go back to the factory and give good feedback, focus on the right things for this year’s FW48. But it’s also good for my career to keep learning from an F1 team, keep my foot in the door as a reserve at a few races, so I’m taking it positively.”

Pictured in 2025, Martins attended the Belgian GP as Williams’ reserve driver

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

MS: Doesn’t it make things trickier to be in the simulator without having driven the actual car?

VM: “It does. But we know how difficult it is to get actual mileage in the car – you don’t get many FP1 opportunities, there isn’t much time, these aren’t easy things to get as a driver. So yes, I’d like to, I want to say I push every day and hope every day for such opportunities. But I still have enough feedback and experience to look at and listen to what happens on the car out on track; reproduce it on the simulator, feel it, understand it and know where to go from there.

“Of course, if tomorrow I were to have an opportunity to drive it, it would be invaluable for the whole development of the simulator, of the car, of the correlation – for pretty much everyone actually, all departments.”

MS: Has the team given you a heads-up about potentially taking the wheel sometime this year?

VM: “For now, there are no FP1 plans. I’ve got a few TPC [Testing of Previous Cars] days, I’ve already had a day at Silverstone earlier this year, but not with this car. For now, there’s nothing planned for me, but again, things can change in F1; you must not rush or be desperate, you just need to do the job when needed, be professional, give the right feedback, have the right relationship, then maybe they’ll give me the car sometime this year.”

Martins took part in his first (and so far only) FP1 session at last year’s Spanish GP

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

MS: You’re also developing a simulator specifically for the young driver academy. How is it developed compared to a regular simulator?

VM: “It’s actually quite similar, because in the simulator I’m doing for this year’s FW48, we try and replicate the car’s movement, its problems, its strengths and weaknesses, and its feeling, in order to develop it.

“For the simulator for young driver development, we try to get as close as possible to how a car behaves on track, so it naturally is similar. But we’ll try and work on models from feeder series – F3, F2 – to try and reproduce everything they might have in junior categories. But there are similarities, it’s the same in the end.

“It’s just up to me to bring my F2/F3 experience regarding Pirelli tyres, the car, the engines, how it went, how they behaved – just to replicate them and reproduce them.”

MS: In the end, is it mainly about having two simulators that can be used simultaneously?

VM: “Yes. Simultaneously, not on the weekend, but for instance at the factory on a Tuesday, there’s the simulator that works on the FW48’s development year-round, and a few metres away, a simulator that runs to help young drivers.

“So that’s the goal, but it’s not the same target at all, nor the same programme or the same project, actually. One is for F1 and the other is for the academy’s young drivers, so these are two very different things, but yes, they can run at the same time.”

Martins has been busy working on two simulators in Grove

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

MS: Alex Albon said many resources were being dedicated to next year’s FW49. Have you been working on it?

VM: “Yes, but we’re a sizeable pool of drivers, so we have different tasks and targets. As of now, I think I’m more dedicated to current development with the FW48, so that’s race support. For instance, yesterday [on Thursday ahead of the Belgian GP] I was still on the simulator to prepare this weekend and have the last adjustments on energy management, so I’m focusing more on this. But a few times this year I’ve been able to test what’s coming in the next few years and how they behave relative to this year’s car, as well as the avenues to follow.

“Of course, I think many engineers are dedicated to that development, but for sure, when you’re in an F1 team, you get to work with many people on many different topics, so it’s quite funny how sometimes you have someone you might have never met before because you’d never worked on this and that, someone you met yesterday because that engineer has just joined. There are many of us in an F1 team, so that’s a lot of personnel and topics, many things to analyse, we’re constantly evolving, discovering new things every day – even in my role as a simulator tester and developer.”

The Frenchman’s role at Williams means he’s learning every day

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

MS: Earlier, you said it was good for your career to be here. Does that mean you’re still thinking about F1, and what does your future look like?

VM: “I’m not shying away from the fact I still think of F1, but I think of F1 as much as WEC or Formula E for instance, because these are in my opinion the three most important and coveted categories in motorsport for the best drivers in the world, so for me it is as important to have one foot in the door in WEC, one foot in FE and one foot in F1.

“So yes, this remains a goal, reaching F1 is still a dream, that’s why I’m keeping that foot in the door at Williams, with that role which brings me a lot as a driver on the personal side, on how to approach, learn new things on engineering, on the car.

“For instance, the electrical side of F1 can give me nice things if I move to FE later in my career, so there are many connections between all these categories. Hypercar systems are very close to F1 systems, so I can also bring things that I learn here into Hypercar with Alpine. So it’s beneficial, whatever happens for my career, and it might give me one day – you never know – a chance to drive in F1.”