MotoGP | Martin: “Difficult to stay focused after Bagnaia’s crash”

Jorge Martin no longer knows how to win, but the world championship standings smile on him. It may seem paradoxical, but this is the picture painted by the weekend at Motorland Aragon, where the Prima Pramac Racing rider arrived with 5 points to recover on Pecco Bagnaia and where instead he starts again with a 23-point margin over the reigning world champion.

The last victory of “Martinator” dates back to the French Grand Prix (with the exception of the Sachsenring Sprint), 7 races ago, but, faced with a Marc Marquez who seemed to be the same as in 2019 for a weekend, the most he could hope for was second place. And the Madrid native took it in both the Sprint and the long race. Moreover, on a weekend in which Bagnaia had to deal with a tire that did not perform as hoped in Saturday’s race and retired in Sunday’s, being the victim of an accident with Alex Marquez while battling for the lowest step of the podium.

The watchword, therefore, was to stay out of trouble today. Even more so with the new asphalt of the ups and downs at the gates of Alcaniz that offered very little grip: “It’s a very positive day, because I managed to finish second and that was the best I could get today. After yesterday’s race, I expected Pecco to be in good shape, so I expected a difficult race. I thought I could stay a little closer to Marc, but today he still had something more and was faster than me”, Martin summed up to the microphones of Sky Sport MotoGP.

In a challenge that is really being played out in the details, a weekend like this can leave its mark, so Jorge admitted that it was absolutely not easy to maintain concentration after knowing that his rival was no longer in the race and that therefore there was the possibility of making a significant leap in the standings.

“It was a really difficult weekend and today the last 9 laps were really difficult not to crash. The track was really dirty and as soon as you went off the line even just half a meter, you immediately had the feeling of crashing, so it was very complicated. And after Bagnaia’s crash, and I feel sorry for him, even more so, because the goal was to finish, it was just to get points. It was difficult to stay focused. I thank my team, who sent me some nice messages. Behind Marc, we were the strongest. Let’s hope we’re closer to the victory in Misano, because here, even if we were second, we were far away”.

By the way, in the early stages of the race he had also had a scare, risking a contact with Pedro Acosta at the “corkscrew”, from which he managed to emerge unscathed by using his head: “It was really a moment to fall. While I was overtaking Pedro, the front closed on me, so I let go of the brake. At that point we almost touched and then on the dirt I took off again and I tried to be as careful as possible, because I had already seen Canet fall in Moto2 this morning at that point. Then Pedro passed me again there, but my bike was then going very fast on the straight, so I managed to get back in front straight away”.

When asked if he could have tried to stay closer to Marquez without this blunder, he concluded: “I couldn’t have tried to stay closer to him even by half a second, he was too strong today. He absolutely deserves it.”