Renato "Tico" Martini is undoubtedly one of the most interesting figures in the French motorsport scene of the 1970s and 1980s. He was the founder of a small but creative factory that produced limited-series road cars and both open- and closed-wheel racing cars: Automobiles Martini.
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| MARTINI MK23, René Arnoux Zolder, Belgian GP 1978 |
"Tico" Martini was born in 1934 in Bordighera, Italy, to French parents. After returning to France, he settled in Magny-Cours, where he first attended and later became an instructor at the Winfield Racing Driver School. In 1965, together with his business partner Bill Knight, whose initials formed the "MK" (Martini-Knight) designation that would identify his cars, he opened a workshop near the circuit. Initially, they prepared and maintained the school’s cars, but later, they started assembling their own karts, Formula 3, and Formula 2 cars.
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| MARTINI MK23, René Arnoux Montecarlo, Monaco GP 1978 |
From that small workshop, Martini quickly gained a reputation for building cars that were solid, well-constructed, and fast. His vehicles began achieving significant results in the "junior" categories and were used by the best French teams, as well as by many young talented drivers emerging from the French racing scene at the time. Among them were Jacques Laffite, who won the 1975 Formula 2 Championship with the BMW-powered MK16; René Arnoux, who repeated the success in 1977 with the Renault-powered MK22; and future Formula 1 World Champion Alain Prost, who clinched the French Formula 3 title with a Martini-Renault.
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| MARTINI MK23, René Arnoux Zolder, Belgian GP 1978 |
Thanks to these successes, at the end of 1977, Martini decided to take the big step into Formula 1 with a car designed in-house. The result was the MK23, built around the classic V8 Ford-Cosworth engine and Hewland TL200 gearbox, funded by a couple of notable French sponsors and entrusted to the well-known driver René Arnoux. The MK23 was a conventional car, perhaps too conventional, completely disregarding the ground effect aerodynamic principles that were becoming mandatory in that era.
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| MARTINI MK23, René Arnoux Zandvoort, GP d'Olanda 1978 |
The radical modifications required to make the car competitive were beyond Martini’s budget. After only a few sporadic appearances during the 1978 season, with two ninth-place finishes as the best results, Martini decided to abandon the costly Formula 1 project and return successfully to the lower formulas.
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