John Martin has put a major qualifying crash behind him to finish 12th on his Formula Renault 3.5 and Monaco debut.

Martin, the Team Australia A1GP driver, had set the sixth fastest time in qualifying; however his accident at the notorious Swimming Pool Chicane brought out the red flags and saw his fastest time of 1m28.233s cancelled. Instead he was credited with his next best lap, 1m29.503s.

Had the time stood, Martin would have started 14th, with only eight drivers beating his time in the second qualifying group which benefited from better track conditions. Fastest in the second group, Englishman Oliver Turvey claimed pole position with a time of 1m26.657s.

Following an all nighter from ex-Lotus Formula One driver Martin Donnelly’s Comtec Racing crew, the Dallara chassis was repaired in time for Sunday’s 11.10am race.

Despite only having the warm up lap to assess the car’s handling, the 24-year-old Queenslander gave it his all on the opening lap and passed the cars of Greg Mansell (son of the 1992 Formula One World Champion) and Filip Salaquarda to move up to 18th. Meanwhile Mihai Marinescu and Daniil Move tangled to bring out the Safety Car.

“My start was okay and I got past a couple of people, but I was boxed in and went over the kerb on the inside,” said Martin. “So I had to let Mansell repass because people were getting penalised for jumping that kerb.”

“Max (Chilton) just fired up the inside in a ridiculous move and got me because I had to let him go if we were going to avoid an accident.”

“I ended up getting past Mansell around the outside at Loew’s Hairpin as that set me up for the righthander on the run to the tunnel.”

A mistake from the then 14th placed Fairuz Fauzy on lap 2, which dropped the Malaysian well down the order, moved Martin up to 17th.

By the end of lap 8 it was P15 thanks to an error from Martin’s teammate the Chilton and the retirement of Marcos Martinez with rear brake trouble.

Lap 9 saw the lap times start to tumble as Martin set about closing in on Sten Pentus and keeping Mansell at bay. The next tour saw another improvement in lap time for the 2006 Australian Formula Ford Champion.

An electrical fault for then 6th placed Pasquale DiSabatino on lap 12 elevated Martin to 14th. Two laps later Kiwi Brendon Hartley handed him 13th position when he failed to negotiate the technical layout and fell to the back after two drive through penalties for shortcutting the chicane.

The 25-lap race was far from over for Martin however as he traded quick lap times with Mansell in their battle for position, posting a best of 1m28.078s on lap 20. Thankfully Martin held onto 13th, finishing 24.496 seconds behind race winner Turvey and 0.452s ahead of Mansell.

A subsequent 25 second penalty handed to Marco Barba for shortcutting the chicane meant Martin finished 12th of the 26 runners.

“With every lap I was learning more about the car and the circuit,” Martin said. “At one point I backed off from Pentus because I was stuck behind him, and I looked for clean air then just pushed and backed off and pushed again because you just can’t pass.”

“Then I brushed the wall with two laps to go and bent the toe adjuster. But I managed to hang onto it and score Comtec their first points for the year so they are happy.”

“If I hadn’t crashed in qualifying it could have been a perfect weekend. The car was good, the team was good. But I didn’t do as well as I could have. It was pretty good though considering how steep a learning curve I was on.”

Next race for the Formula One hopeful is his Superleague Formula debut with the Alan Docking Racing engineered Glasgow Rangers car at Magny Cours, France on June 27/28.

Qualifying quotes:

“I was like, ‘yes!’ when I saw that I was sixth on the pit board (and only 7/10ths of a second away from fastest time) then the next flying lap came the crash,” said Martin. “If that had not happened I would have been third or fourth.”

“I just lost the back of the car turning into the Swimming Pool chicane and the car spun around. There was nothing I could do at that point and no where I could go but into the barriers.”

“The back of the car slid into the barriers on the outside and it damaged the rear wing, front wing and the whole left side. Prior to that the car felt good; we had definitely gone in the right direction and we had what I believed was a competitive package.”