Polesitter Martin led Saturday’s first sprint of the 2024 season from start to finish to score his 10thhalf-distance race win since the format was introduced last year.
But the Spaniard admitted that rear chatter problems on used tyres that plagued him throughout pre-season testing reared their head in Saturday’s sprint.
As such, he felt he was “really close to crashing” on a number of occasions across the 11-lap contest and thinks fighting for a win in the grand prix on Sunday like this will be “impossible”.
“I was fast, but the rear chatter is still there,” Martin said in parc ferme. “So, we need to work on it.
“I think today I was really close to crashing in a lot of corners. So, I was struggling a lot.
“Today we achieved it [the win], but for sure tomorrow if we keep like this [the chatter problem] it will be impossible.
“So, let’s work on it. I feel confident, I feel fast. The only thing is the bike, so we’re going to work on it tonight and let’s see if we can enjoy a big one.”
Martin says the problem started “quite early in the race”, and admits that without the pole position and keeping Brad Binder behind him, he wouldn’t have been able to win the sprint.
“Well, I think quite early in the race I started to have a bit of a problem,” he explained. “I don’t want to get into it because I don’t know if I can, but for sure I cannot ride perfectly, I feel a bit too much on the limit.
“We have some ideas for tomorrow but it’s quite tight to try in the warm-up and then race. So, tomorrow will be a difficult race.
“I think without that pole position, or even if Brad overtook me in that first corner, I wouldn’t win, for sure. That’s why I tried to keep that position and close the place to Brad.
“Then I was able to keep half a second [gap to Binder], that surprised me. I thought they were going to catch me, but finally they didn’t.”
Asked if he could see this problem in the data of other Ducatis, he said: “It’s an issue we have to solve and we are looking into it. A bit more [of a GP24 issue]. Last season I didn’t have it.”
Bagnaia also hampered
Reigning double world champion Francesco Bagnaia, who was fourth in the sprint on his factory team Ducati, was also hampered by rear chatter. But he thinks this was more related to tyre pressures than a fundamental issue with the GP24.
“I struggled a lot with the tyre pressure, both tyres,” Bagnaia said.
“Normally it’s just the front, and I started to have big chattering from the rear. So, I tried to do the maximum. Maybe the maximum was to finish on the podium, I don’t know.
“But as soon as I arrived behind Brad, I struggled more; more movement from the front, the rear was not having traction, in the first part of the acceleration it was pumping.
“So, maybe we have to improve that. The bike is new, I’m new in this situation because I’ve never had chattering on the rear or rear tyre pressure high.
“For tomorrow we already know the way to follow, because I spent a lot of time in the box understanding the situation, and I think the idea we have for tomorrow is good.”
