No one has won more Sprints than Jorge Martin since MotoGP introduced the new format. However, at Montmelo the world championship leader had to deal with a Saturday that wasn’t as perfect as usual and was content with a fourth position. The damage was properly limited, because his main opponent, Pecco Bagnaia, ended up in the gravel when he was dominating.
The Prima Pramac standard bearer’s Saturday started on an uphill climb, with a fall in qualifying which affected his starting position, relegating him to seventh place: From qualifying things started to get worse. When I crashed, I had more angle, more speed and more gas than the previous lap. It’s a combination that doesn’t usually come out well. If it had gone well, the pole would have been mine, I can assure you! Already at Turn 1 I had improved my time by a tenth, but clearly qualifying has an impact. Being in the third row is not the best. I thought I could overtake some riders and get into third and fourth position at the start, but it was the opposite. I couldn’t even try the start and this made everything unpredictable.”
From there, a comeback race: “. Then I started very badly, I almost collided with Rins and had to close the throttle. At the first corner I was tenth or eleventh. I tried to recover a lot in the first corners and perhaps this caused the rear tire to overheat and from there I had no grip. I had to use the front a lot to try to set the times, but I was very much at the limit. So we need to understand why I suffer so much when I’m behind. When I’m alone my pace is faster, but everything in the back gets hotter. I did what I could. In the end, a fourth position isn’t that bad, let’s see if I can improve the position tomorrow.”
In a Sprint that was not particularly brilliant as usual, the world championship leader still managed to increase his lead in the championship over Bagnaia and maintain a gap of 37 points over Marquez, second: “The races are very long, today we saw that up until the you can never say anything about the last corner. Whoever fell was perhaps over the limit, I perhaps had a bit of margin. But I’d rather suffer and finish fourth than have fun and crash. So in the bad times we did well. For tomorrow the pace is strong and I think that with the medium tire I have a little more than what I had with the soft. I hope the race is a little slower than it was today, especially at the start. But if those in front start like this, I don’t know how they will get to the end of the race.”
At Montmelo there were many falls in addition to Bagnaia’s and Martin struggled to find an explanation: “All the falls we saw today were very strange. Pecco’s was similar to mine in Jerez, with the bike very straight. But it’s clear that perhaps being in the lead isn’t the best thing on this track. But neither he nor anyone else expected Pecco to make this mistake. However, today we saw a good race, winning is very complicated because I think the top six all have the chance to win tomorrow’s race. We’ll see what happens.”
Despite today’s zero, Bagnaia is still fearsome over distance in the championship. However, Martin believes that the most dangerous opponent is Marc Marquez: “The championship is very large and I think that the two of them are the strongest for the world championship. Then there are many factors, one day Aleix wins, another day Acosta, then Binder. But it is clear that fighting against Marc Marquez, who is an eight-time world champion, is the most difficult thing. But Pecco is among the strongest, so the challenge is enormous. I will do everything I can to beat them both.”
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