Three years after a serious accident in Portimão, Jorge Martín achieved his first victory in the Portuguese MotoGP Grand Prix. The Prima Pramac rider dominated Sunday’s race, although he never had a very extensive lead over his pursuers.
In a press conference, last year’s runner-up spoke about this result: ‘I am really proud of the work we did all weekend. I knew that with the medium rear [tire] I would feel much better. I was committed to taking the lead – I knew that being in front on the first lap was key to winning. I was able to manage the rear tire a bit in the first laps having that small margin. And as soon as I started attacking, I saw that the distance was always the same. But I was always consistent and knew that I had some margin to slowly make that gap bigger‘.
Martín spoke after managing the margin he had, recalling the abandonment at the Indonesian GP last year: ‘I think that when I had those 0.7s, I was a bit more relaxed, knowing it was a good margin to maintain until the end. And I thought about Indonesia – it’s the same to win the race by 0.9s or three seconds. So, 0.7s is enough, I will try to finish and win’.
Asked if this was the most mature victory he achieved, #89 replied: ‘This is a track where I almost lost everything in 2021. I fractured nine bones in turn 7 and now I’m here in first place. So, I am grateful for the track, and I think this gives me a lot of maturity for the future as well. And in this race taking the lead at the beginning was a bit easier, because I could manage it from the start. As soon as they were catching up to me, I had this little margin of maybe 0.1s or 0.05s and every lap was faster than the previous ones. But I was feeling comfortable. I think with five more laps maybe we would go to 1m38.5s because I still had something more to push to the limit. It was really… let’s say, a comfortable race because when you take the lead right away it’s much easier’.
