MotoGP | Martin: “Winning at Misano was like hitting a table”

If there is one thing that Jorge Martin has learned in this last year, it is to be satisfied when it is not possible to go beyond one’s possibilities, and the Aragon Grand Prix was a demonstration. Aware that he could not fight with an unbeatable Marc Marquez, the Pramac rider settled for two second places that however allowed him to take the lead in the championship.

Now the Spaniard arrives in Misano as the leader of the standings, with a 23-point advantage over Pecco Bagnaia (also thanks to Sunday’s controversial incident with Alex Marquez) and returns to a track that saw him triumph last year. It was on the Romagna track that the Pramac rider beat the world champion, winning both the Sprint and the Sunday race and starting his furious comeback.

“Misano is a track that I like, but more than anything it is very congenial to me,” Martin said on Thursday of the San Marino Grand Prix. “It has a lot of grip and that helps me a lot with my riding style. I use acceleration a lot to set the time and I couldn’t do that in Aragon. I think this weekend will be different from Motorland.”

At Aragon no one could beat Marc Marquez, but at Misano the hierarchy could be re-established, with Martin and Bagnaia making the difference on the rest of the group: “The pressure is always there, Pecco is at home… I always give 100%, this weekend will not be more important than the previous one, in the end they always give you the same number of points. We need to continue on the line we are following now, we need to continue to be fast, but tread carefully, knowing where the progress has been and maintaining this line”.

The conditions to go fast and get a great result are all there, the memories of last year are beautiful, but they are part of the past and Martin is focused on the upcoming weekend: “Winning here last year had a huge value, it was like hitting the table for having won at home. I didn’t expect it, in previous years I had never managed to do well at Misano. It’s fantastic to be here again after what we experienced last year, but that’s already in the past”.

“Since then, the level of competitiveness has increased and I feel that I am improving more and more, but the others are improving too and now it becomes very difficult. We will see, the goal this year is the same: to do the best we can and, if we can, to win. Before it seemed that I had to show who I was or how I rode. Now I focus on myself and I don’t have to give any titles. For Pecco and Enea it will be a good weekend, they train a lot here, they complete a lot of laps. But for us too it will certainly be a good track. It will be difficult to dominate, but we will try to repeat what we did last year. It is very difficult, but I will give everything to try”, concluded the Pramac rider.