DRIVING CHANGE

suddenly I was not going to be a part of that. That made me think that maybe I didn’t have a future in motorsport.”

But Martin soon realised that without the weight of hiding her true identity, her career could begin to soar.

She added: “When you are essentially hiding a big part of who you are, you are having to be careful, police things that you say, selfcensor. You are using mental energy to deal with that, to manage that and suppress your thoughts and emotions.

“It wasn’t until I stopped doing that, I realised that I had been doing something my entire life and how draining and how tiring that had been psychologically.

“You stop doing that and it’s like ‘wow!’ It was like someone turning a switch in my head. I could suddenly focus and think clearly on myself.

“If I get all the trophies I have won prior to transition and look at all the trophies since, it is like two different people. It is crazy.”

Martin’s background in racing is in time-trialled hill events, in which she first competed in 2004.

But it was not until 2014, a year after returning to the track post-transition, where she achieved her first win at St-goueno in France, and her career began to take off, as she moved into singleseater and prototype cars.

While reaching Le Mans would be a breakthrough moment for LGBT people in racing, Martin believes that more still has to be done.

She said: “I think you need other people who do not identify as LGBT to show their support as allies.

“Nothing like that has really happened yet in motorsport and it feels like it is a bit overdue really.”