Jorge Martin claims he was riding “worse than a rookie” on his way to fourth place in the sprint at Motegi on Saturday, but the Pramac Ducati star says he knows how to improve after following Marc Marquez for most of the race.
World championship leader Martin has struggled in Japan this weekend and only qualified 11th after a crash in Q2. While he recovered to finish the sprint in fourth, his rival Francesco Bagnaia won the race on the factory Ducati, cutting Martin’s points advantage from 21 to 15.
But spending most of the sprint trailing eight-time world champion Marc Marquez did have its benefits, as Martin admitted after the race.
“I saw some things with Marc where I can improve for tomorrow, so that gives me more confidence going into the grand prix,” he said.
“I can’t tell you exactly what it was, but his fourth sector is quite impressive! And I was riding like…Moto3. It was really bad.”
Martin will look to take lessons from the way Gresini rider Marquez uses his body in that final sector, which features a tricky sequence of corners that requires braking and turning simultaneously.
“I couldn’t select gears in a natural way," he explained. "I was struggling with my body position. So I will try to find a natural way that is fast tomorrow, like I had last season. And then to keep it consistent every lap. Because today I felt like I was worse than a rookie!”
Apart from applying the lessons learned behind Marquez, a candid Martin also admitted he’ll be hoping for dry conditions. The first two days, including the sprint, have featured intermittent sprinklings of fine rain that have been just enough to unsettle him.
“I lost a lot of confidence when raindrops fell [in the sprint], and didn’t feel comfortable pushing at that point. I lost out a lot to Marc and the front guys.”
Martin’s lowly grid position was mostly down to his fall in Q2 earlier in the day. His comments on that incident also revealed a certain discomfort with the patchy conditions.
“I lost the front because of the rain, so it’s a normal mistake when you are pushing to the maximum.”
Martin won the 2023 Japanese Grand Prix at the same circuit, albeit on a track drenched enough for the race to be red-flagged early.
Despite his various difficulties in this year’s edition, Martin was happy to have limited the damage to his championship lead after such a poor qualifying.
“For sure after qualifying, I am happy with the result," he said. "I think it would have been much better if I was on the front row. But yeah, starting from 11th was the maximum I could achieve today.”
