Martin after Saturday’s sprint: “The others did better than me”

The conditions seemed favourable, but it wasn’t enough for Aprilia factory rider Jorge Martin to extend his World Championship lead in the MotoGP Sprint. The current championship leader got off to a slow start.

Thomas Kuttruf

MotoGP

11.07.2026 - 19:55

This article is an automatically generated English version. The original article was published in German.

Jorge Martin rettete mit Platz 6 im Sprint die Tabellenführung
© Gold and Goose

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Jorge Martin

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“There are quite a few other riders in the running for the World Championship, and they’ve all done better than me.” Self-critical words from Jorge Martin, which at least sum up the MotoGP qualifying session at the Sachsenring for the Aprilia factory rider. Of the five riders currently highest up the MotoGP standings, Martin had the lowest starting position on Saturday, finishing 9th.

By the end of Saturday’s race, a sixth-place finish was at least enough to limit the damage. The absence of team-mate Bezzecchi due to injury played into the ‘Martinator’s’ hands, as did his own improving form in the sprint race. This was partly down to fine-tuning the electronics settings on his RS-GP, as well as the Spaniard’s aggressive approach on the first lap: “This morning I was 3 to 4 tenths of a second off the pace of the rest of my Aprilia teammates. We made quite a few changes to the set-up for the sprint, as we’d gone down the wrong track there.”

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Jorge Martin

Changes that visibly boosted the Spaniard’s confidence. The Madrid-born rider managed to overtake three rivals on the first lap of Saturday’s race, thanks in part to some unintended help from his rivals Bagnaia, Quartararo and Morbidelli: “I saw that they were caught up in battles and were therefore riding more slowly, so I seized the opportunity.” It wasn’t the first time the 2024 MotoGP World Champion had made such a big leap forward in the first lap: “I managed that before in 2023 against Jack Miller and Pecco. Unfortunately, that was the only positive thing on Saturday.”

A lap faster than winner Marc Marquez

The Spaniard’s potential also shone through in the sprint race in terms of speed: the rider with number 89 set the second-fastest lap time; whilst this was slower than Fabio Di Giannantonio, who later finished third, it was faster than winner Marc Marquez and, consequently, the fastest of the Aprilia riders.

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It’s an improvement that has come so late, however, that the championship leader must first make up for the work he fell behind on over the course of the weekend: “My sprint felt like FP2 to me, because all my work up to that point had been in vain. I have problems too often on Fridays and will have to learn from this in the second half of the season so that I don’t go into the races for the rest of the year always lacking experience.” For Sunday’s Sachsenring spectacle, the focus must be on the positives: “We’ve now taken a step forward. That must be followed by further steps on Sunday. Let’s see if we’ve got more up our sleeve.”

Jorge Martin heads into Sunday’s Grand Prix with an 11-point lead over Marco Bezzecchi, who will also be sidelined on Sunday due to injury. The gap to Fabio Di Giannantonio has narrowed to just 13 points following the latter’s third-place finish. And: Marc Márquez, who was previously tied with Jorge Martín on 18 sprint race victories, is now the most successful MotoGP sprinter.

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