For Martinator is it ‘mission impossible’?
“World? Jorge has a short shot after six or seven strong long balls, my strong point is the determination to always hit hard“. Francesco Bagnaia ‘cited’ Tennis to describe the arm wrestling in the World Championship with Jorge Martin. Italy against Spain, Jannik Sinner against Carlos Alcaraz. The two were teammates on two Mahindras in Moto3 in their first years in the World Championship and at the time few would have imagined that they would be the ones to take the stage in MotoGP at least for the two-year period 2023-2024. A year ago Martin ‘returned’ to the race also due to Bagnaia’s injury, this year instead Martinator tried to act as a hare at the beginning of the year, but some serious errors have facilitated the recovery of the two-time world champion.
After Martin’s crash at Sachsenring, he almost surprisingly regained the lead in the standings at Silverstone, also thanks to Bagnaia’s mistake in the Sprint. Martin, however, also defeated his rival in the Grand Prix and it was that result that temporarily handed the lead back to Martin. Bagnaia and Martin showed up on the eve of the Red Bull Ring releasing opposing statements. Bagnaia, unusually, did not hide his intention to regain the lead in Austria and then extend his lead in the next stages. Martin, on the other hand, downplayed the fact that he is the leader of the World Championship, stressing that what matters is having shown in Great Britain that he can fight, hoping to keep the championship open until Valencia.
In Austria Bagnaia followed up on his statements from the day before by ‘losing’ the duel for pole position – Martin’s specialty – but taking a double win in the Sprint and Race. On Saturday Martin tried in every way to stay ahead of Pecco, but he overdid it and was ‘pardoned’ by Marc Marquez’s fall which allowed Martin to finish in second place, a ‘partial’ that had perfectly evened the score at 250 points in the standings. Yesterday Martin started well, but at the start of the second lap Bagnaia took the operations command to never leave it again except for a crossing of trajectories in Turn 9 due to a half-hearted attempt by Martin to put the fairing back in front of his rival’s.
“Now I think Pecco is stronger, but I hope to find more speed” Martin’s frank admission at the end of the race. On the horizon are the weekends at Aragon and then the double at Misano, home of the Ducati-Bagnaia duo. Martin will need more than ever to invent some short balls and not only in the rapid exchanges of the Sprint. The game is on ‘red clay’ (the Ducati is from another planet compared to its rivals) and the master of this terrain characterized by long exchanges is Bagnaia: in the Sunday GPs, in fact, Martin hasn’t won since Le Mans and when it seemed he was one step away from breaking his fast he crashed at Sachsenring. Martin could have psychologically thrown in the towel after that KO, but at Silverstone he reacted and is called to do the same at Aragon.
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