MotoGP | Martin “gifts” Ducati thesis to focus everything on Pecco

“If anyone thinks that a factory allows a satellite team rider to win the title, they have no idea where they are,” a former rider and now team manager of an official MotoGP World Championship team told this writer. This was before Jorge Martín realized that Ducati preferred Marc Márquez and made the decision to sign for Aprilia. “They will never allow him to take the number 1 to another team, especially not an Italian one,” say people who have been around the paddock for many years. However, despite all these arguments, no one has ever been able to say (much less prove) that Ducati did not give Martín the same weapons as the other official riders.

From Ducati, Pramac and the rider himself, they have always maintained, with responsibility and promises, that nothing would change, Jorge would have the best until the last race, just like Pecco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini. Until now, Martin had shown himself to be a very solid rider, with some mistakes, such as the fall in the Sprint at Misano or the slide at Jerez, when he fell while leading the race on Sunday. These mistakes, however, have not distanced him from the lead of the championship, despite being second in the standings behind Bagnaia, and have not weakened his image as a potential title contender.

There are eleven (or maybe ten) Grands Prix to go, 370 points or more. Under normal conditions, the 10-point gap he now has with the reigning champion and new leader should not be definitive. But the impression of the way things are happening suggests that Martin, far from consolidating, is unable to handle the pressure, both that of fighting for the crown, and that which Bagnaia has exerted in the last four races, all won by the latter.

Since the crash in the Barcelona Sprint, Pecco has taken four consecutive wins on Sunday, two on Saturday (Mugello and Assen) and a second place in the Sachsenring Sprint. This means that of the last 136 points up for grabs, the Italian has taken 131, chasing Martin and taking the lead from him before the holidays, a particularly delicate moment on a psychological level.

Ducati already has their champion

Pecco is Italian, he is an official Ducati rider with a contract until 2026, two-time world champion in the last two years and leader of the current championship: why would they support a Spaniard in Bologna, a rider of a team that has an agreement with Yamaha for next year, and that if it wins the World Championship will bring the number 1 to the top competition (Piaggio Group)? It might seem illogical, and perhaps it isn’t. But in Ducati they have understood that they have their champion, who is Pecco, and the commitment to support Martin until the end, a duty that, at the moment, does not seem to put at risk the success of Pecco’s third crown.

For Ducati, easing support for Martin could be counterproductive in terms of brand image, but with Sunday’s mistake, Jorge “gifted” the victory to Pecco and the arguments for Ducati to make the factory focus all its efforts on the three-time world champion. Among other things, he has shown that he is currently the most in-form rider on the MotoGP grid, if not the best overall, and that he is ready to face the arrival of Marc Márquez in “his backyard”.

No one in Ducati will give him a broken piece or take power away from Martín’s bike, that’s obvious, but the Bologna executives are already convinced that they “got it right” in choosing between the Spaniard and Márquez, and that they must now focus on “their riders”. The Spaniard will be one of the satellite riders, waiting for the end of the season and his move to Aprilia.

A fall that “marked a before and after”

The Pramac rider admitted that Sunday’s crash “will mark a before and after”. He was probably saying it in other words, but it also applies to the affection he will receive from Ducati and, by extension, from Pramac in his last four months as a partner of the Bologna-based company, after 20 years of relationship.

“It was frustrating to crash after 27 laps in the lead and it hurts, it will be difficult to accept but I have to get up, it is an important moment in my career to understand why this is happening to me, because this year I crashed twice when I was in the lead and in a very similar situation. There is something that I don’t know if it is mental or at a riding level, but I have no choice but to get up and continue fighting, to coldly analyse what happened and concentrate on getting back to the best I can,” Jorge said after the race, admitting that there could be a “mental” factor due to the enormous pressure of fighting for the championship.

“No, I don’t think it’s (a problem) of motivation or anything else. Neither two laps before the accident was I the king of the paddock, nor am I the worst now, these are things that can happen, but I have to see with a cool head what it is, because at this moment I don’t know and I couldn’t say, but both the crash in Jerez and the one in Mugello or this one were identical: touching the brake entering the right-hand corner. I don’t know what’s happening and two laps from the end, when I was practically finished and practically under control”, he added.

Jorge Martin, Pramac Racing crash

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

While Bagnaia said his success was to put pressure on Martín until the crash, the Spaniard doesn’t see it that way. “I was riding well and I had the pace, I had Pecco under control, I had that 0.5 margin and I managed to keep it on the last lap. It’s clear that we were both on the limit, but I think I rode well.” At least until the crash.

While admitting that “it hurts, obviously,” he added that “it’s not the end of the world,” trying to cheer himself up, even if all this comes at the worst possible time, along with a three-week break where your head can spin.

“No, this is the minimum, in the end it’s three weeks to understand what went wrong and see the opportunities, to understand where to improve. I would prefer it to happen now rather than in Malaysia and it’s better to have this time to understand why”, explained Martín, who after the accident, arriving at the pits, threw a punch that almost made the structure fall.

“It’s very frustrating. I had a bad time in the truck and it’s not easy to assimilate these things. Many times you don’t know how to deal with them. In the end you can throw a punch, which I did, you can cry, but it’s no use. In the end you have to let it go, it has to come out. You have to accept it and look forward and that’s it. I’m going to focus a lot on improving and correcting these mistakes and I’ll get back to where I need to be. I’ll win again and all this will be an anecdote,” he assured before concluding with an interesting sentence: “It’s an opportunity to continue working and to see reality as it really is.”