The beginning of 2024 saw Jorge Martín as the fastest rider on the first day of testing in Sepang, where the Spanish rider had the opportunity to ride with the latest Ducati engine. In a first analysis, this seems to be his preferred choice as it has more power, although there are weaknesses that he did not reveal.
The Prima Pramac Racing rider started by analyzing his day and revealing part of his work plan during this first session in Sepang, although he emphasizes that he is not necessarily concerned with his lap times at the moment, as his main focus is: ‘It’s good to be fast, better than being right for sure, but today I didn’t pay much attention to lap times. I was more focused on understanding which aerodynamic package was better because we were using the new engine. I set a time with the new engine, but this is not the most important thing to look at. Instead, we should focus on performance, maneuverability, throttle connection, and I was focused on that aspect’.
For Martín, it is crucial to continue working, as not everything was good: ‘There are some positive points, but there are also some negatives, and we need to keep working. Tomorrow we will switch to the 2024 bike on both bikes, and then it will be easier to work. Overall, it was a good day, I did a lot of laps, I feel prepared, and the winter was very good,’ he said, before revealing his initial inclination in terms of choice for the future regarding the bike/engine, but always with caution:
– For now, I prefer the one from 2024, there are very good things in it but we have to work because we don’t want to make the same mistake we made in 2022. These two days that are missing will be important to keep us in line with what we did today and to work on the details because we have more things to test, like the fairing, many things. Anyway, I already improved my time compared to what I did last year and that is very positive.
The rider later said that he only noticed the biggest difference and praised the evolution by the competition: ‘It seems that we have a bit more power and that is good because I saw other brands improving, like Honda or Yamaha, I saw that they were very fast on the straight and having more power is always important. The maneuverability is good, similar to the 2023 bike, maybe we have some weak points but I can’t say much more. I believe in general it is a better bike. We will try to work a little more tomorrow and be more competitive.’
