Jorge Martin’s lead over Francesco Bagnaia in the MotoGP overall standings for 2024 was 39 points after the Catalonia GP in Barcelona. Three race weekends later, the tide has turned, and now Bagnaia leads by ten points ahead of Martin. Following strong performances from defending champion Bagnaia in Mugello and Assen, the change in leadership came at the Sachsenring, where Martin crashed in the penultimate lap while leading the Sunday race, thus handing Bagnaia the GP victory and the top spot in the championship standings.
With this bitter experience, Martin entered the summer break—a scenario that was as bad as it could get for the ambitious Spaniard. The disgrace from Sachsenring meant that Martin couldn’t truly enjoy the almost four-week interruption and felt little desire to get back on a MotoGP bike. “To be honest: I was lying on the beach and it was hard for me to come back here. After Sachsenring, I wasn’t really looking forward to it.”
However, Martin’s motivational slump was not felt on Friday in Silverstone. The Pramac rider topped both practice sessions for the British GP. “To finish in first place in both sessions was the best way to make a comeback,” he noted with satisfaction. More important than the fastest times for Martin was an update to his Ducati Desmosedici GP24.
Following his crash at Sachsenring, Martin and his team conducted a thorough analysis of that crash and the also costly mistakes in Jerez (crash while in P1 during the GP) and Mugello (crash while in P3 during the sprint), recognizing commonalities. According to the analysis, all three crashes may originate from a specific component of Martin’s Ducati.
“It’s a part where I’ve used a different variant compared to the other Ducatis over the past two years. We believe that’s the reason for the crashes,” explains Martin. He said goodbye to this special strategy on Friday in Silverstone: “We had a new part to test that is standard. At first, I had my doubts, but I felt better with it.”
Jorge Martin reveals: Now a better feeling on the brakes
Martin did not want to disclose the exact component: “It’s about the braking area. It seems that the bike pushes less over the front wheel with it. I can slide more into the corners. In return, I lose a bit of stability, but it was just day one. I believe we can control that.”