Fortec Motorsport's Jordyn Martin confirmed her status as GB4's top female driver this year at Brands Hatch after an impressive rookie campaign.
The 16-year-old American demonstrated pace that belied her inexperience, with her qualifying efforts in particular being noteworthy, as she consistently mixed it with the more experienced midfielders.
More often than not, she stayed with the midfielders in the races too, and was perhaps unlucky to miss out on a truly big score. Nevertheless, she outscored her closed female rival by 27 points.
"Honestly, it's been a really up and down season, my first year in cars, but overall I'm really grateful for everybody on the team, and I'm really grateful for this year," Martin commented. "There's been so much progress that's been made, and just being able to secure the top female, honestly, I'm really proud of it."
Her status as top female driver means she follows in the footsteps of Alisha Palmowski and Ava Dobson by securing MSV's €50,000 career contribution prize, to be paid should she secure a seat in F1 Academy next year.
Having participated in F1 Academy's Rookie Test at the Circuito de Navarra recently, Martin is aiming to emulate Palmowski, Dobson and several other female contenders by using her performances in GB4 to secure a seat in the series next year.
"I'm really hoping for F1 Academy next year, especially with the prize, it would definitely help me getting in. But definitely F1 Academy will be the target next year."
Martin's strong qualifying performances meant she was on the cusp of securing the reverse grid pole position for the final race of each weekend on several occasions, which features a top-12 reversal. Had fortune gone her way, she'd have had the opportunity to claim a big score that could have further boosted her end of year points haul.
"I think the year has gone better than I expected, to be honest. The pace was definitely there, especially in testing, and I had pace to be in the top 12 for the reverse grid, but it just needed to work in qualifying.
"But overall I can look back on this year and be really happy and grateful for it, and look at all the progress that I made."
While Martin's plans for 2027 are yet to be announced, she will race in the F4 Saudi Arabian Championship, which starts this weekend in Jeddah. She's aiming to keep up her development curve as she gains further experience.
"I'm going to keep training, keep progressing, keep improving, keep absorbing the data, and talking to all my engineers and mechanics. Those will definitely be key things for me to keep progressing higher up the grid, and especially for qualifying.
"It's something that I struggled with to show my pace. I usually showed it in the racing, but definitely training, sim work, and mostly gym and sim work, those will be the main things I'll be working on."
