Charlie Martin is a driver with grand ambition, her aspirations undaunted by anything the world of motor racing can throw at her. Martin has faced the very heart of darkness in preparing to take her own life before choosing to embrace a new one through the arduous process of gender transition. Now she stands as a role model, one of the latest “champions” chosen by Stonewall to promote its LGBT Rainbow Laces campaign.

Martin lives and drives with the passion and exuberance of someone who has already decisively conquered their greatest fears and for whom every moment is simply a joy to be seized. Unsurprisingly she has embraced her new position as a spokesperson for Stonewall’s campaign, which begins on Friday, aimed at encouraging the LGBT community into sport.

“I am trying to help create a positive change on society,” she says. “To inspire other people to live without fear and live with their true selves, to take those steps on their own journey. Working with Stonewall really helps, I hope we can together reach more people. I am very proud to be their first sport champion from motor sport. It is a huge opportunity to do good.”

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The 38-year-old started this season racing in the Michelin Le Mans Cup but as with so many others, a lack of funding forced her out. Yet she remains as determined as ever. Her plan is to be the first transgender driver to compete in the Le Mans 24 Hours. She is vigorously pursuing a drive in an endurance racing series next season, which would be a major step towards her aim. Right now, however, putting herself forward for Stonewall is a positive undertaking she believes she must take. Such a commitment was unthinkable when Martin was so desperately unhappy with her birth gender she could see no way out. “I was suicidal,” she says. “I had decided I was going to take my own life and even knew how I was going to do it. That was the bleakest moment in my life, the way I rationalised it.”

At that point in 2012 Martin was sure of two things. She loved motor racing and had known for some time of her gender issue. Racing was simple. Martin, from Leicestershire, was eight when she went to a meeting and was hooked. “I loved it, being in the paddock, around the cars,” she says. “Everything, even the smell, vintage cars, leathers, greasy spoon cafes. I found it a really visceral experience.”

At the same age there was an even more significant realisation. She read an article on Caroline Cossey, the English Bond girl, Playboy model of the 1980s and transgender pioneer. “It blew my mind,” says Martin. “I realised it was possible for someone to be born one gender and identify as another and change that. I realised: this is me.”

But it did not make her life easier and not knowing how to deal with it, she chose instead to simply “put it away”. Racing, however, remained, attending meetings across the country and Le Mans for the first time in 2001. In 2003 she decided to have a crack at hill climbing in a former rallying Peugeot 205 she bought for £1,500 and restored herself to start racing in 2004.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Charlie Martin pictured during her Le Mans Cup campaign. Photograph: DSC Photography/Darren S Cook

Funding herself and existing on next to no budget became a labour of love behind which an increasing unhappiness with herself seethed. Aged 30 at the very nadir, she decided to take the bravest course of action. “The only way forward is to transition,” she recalls of her thought process at the time. “I have to do the scariest thing I can imagine doing or I am never going to know who I am deep down or know true happiness.”

She began the process in 2012 and stopped racing to do so. It took more than two years and included facial reconstruction surgery. By the end, her rejection of suicide felt like a rebirth. “When the person looking back at you in the mirror suddenly feels like you, it is something quite profound,” she says.

Returning to racing proved perhaps her second bravest decision. “I was concerned people would not accept me,” she says. “The thing I loved would become the thing that I hated, that was my fear. I was shaking going into the paddock.”

Yet she was welcomed with a hug from friends. The response within motor racing has been overwhelmingly positive, of which the sport should be proud, and it gave her the confidence to carry on. By 2014 she was back hill climbing in France, was taken on by a French team in 2017 and last year moved to the Ginetta GT5 Challenge, a sportscar series in the UK, an experience which set her up for the move to Le Mans prototypes this season.

She, as with all female drivers, sees herself as racer first, with her gender irrelevant on track, but is also aware of the bigger picture, distributing rainbow stickers for cars to mark LGBT pride month at Silverstone last year. “I fundamentally see myself as a driver. I am there to do the best I can to win,” she says. “But me being there visible as a trans woman, a lot of good can come of that. I feel it is almost a responsibility. Anything else would feel like a dereliction of duty.”

It is, from those desperate times to now, an inspirational tale. “Thank God I didn’t commit suicide,” she says. “I completed the biggest challenge of my life and it was an incredible feeling. So I thought: ‘What is next that seems insurmountable that I can have a go at?’” Grand ambitions then, with Martin impressively determined to make a difference as she pursues them.

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org