With 14 points behind Pecco Bagnaia in the general classification and 74 points still to be awarded, the Spaniard has no choice but to attack in Lusail to close the gap on the Italian and keep the MotoGP title race alive.
Jorge Martin, who confirmed himself as the fastest driver on the grid in the second part of the season, was unable to dominate in Malaysia a fortnight ago and doesn’t seem capable of doing so in Qatar either. At least if we start from the first day of testing, in which he finished in seventh place, three tenths behind Raul Fernandez, the fastest, and with a margin of only seven thousandths over Bagnaia, eighth.
According to his subsequent comments, the key was a set of medium tires fitted at the start of the second session, which he had already used in the morning, and which left him bottled up near the bottom of the timesheets.
The situation was so dramatic that the Prima Pramac Racing rider even confronted Daniele Romagnoli, his track engineer, to whom he had told that he would not return to the track until he had fitted new tires to face the time attack.
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Jorge Martin, Pramac Racing
“It wasn’t easy, but I’m happy to be in Q2. I had some problems with the set of medium tires I used in the morning, because I was four seconds behind the leaders. Something was wrong with those tyres”, summed up Martín, who wanted to underline the maturity with which he faced a complicated moment. Not so much for the implicit pressure of fighting for the World Cup, but for the slowness with which he was dealing with it.
“I entered Q2 in a very mature way. I improved a lot, without making any mistakes. It was very complicated because I was very slow, but at a certain point I told my technician that I wouldn’t go out on track again if we didn’t fit a new tyre. It was completely useless, I would have fallen, I would have hurt myself”, added the Spaniard.
Jorge also hopes to be able to benefit from the work system imposed on Ducati, which allows all Desmosedici GP riders to consult each other’s data. “We have no information for tomorrow due to the tyres. Having information from the other Ducati riders will help me a lot to prepare for the Sprint race”, concluded the Madrid native.
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