Jorge Martín tried his best but couldn’t surpass Francesco Bagnaia in the MotoGP Dutch Grand Prix Sprint race. The Prima Pramac rider qualified second and finished the Sprint race at Assen in the same position, lacking the means to challenge his dominant rival.
The Spanish rider explained that although he encountered some difficulties with the front end of his bike, he felt improvements throughout the day and believes he can be closer on Sunday:
– Well, I tried to do my best pace possible. I think I wasn’t at 100%; I was losing the front quite a lot at turn 6 and when you lose the front at 300km/h is not very nice. So afterwards I was trying to be really smooth on that part, trying to have margin not to crash. I think I was losing quite a lot of time over there. Overall, in the rest of the track I felt confident, I feel I improved a lot from the morning to the afternoon and I’m much closer to him. But he’s still doing it easier, 100%. I feel that if we do some changes to improve that at turn 6, it will help me also in the rest of the track to try to turn a bit better. So let’s try to be optimistic, try to improve ourselves and try to be closer tomorrow. I don’t know if I can beat him or win because he’s super strong, but I will try.
Regarding the issues he faced, Martín elaborated further: ‘Both turn 6 and turn 12 are the points where I’m losing a lot. It’s not I cannot do it faster, is that I lose the front, this is the main thing. We have improved a lot from yesterday, the bike is much more stable. This morning or even yesterday I didn’t lose the front over there – maybe it was shaking a bit or something, but today I was losing the front. So it’s super strange. I felt from the beginning of the race that my front wasn’t working perfectly. Maybe it’s about the tyre, I don’t know – hopefully it’s about that. But at least we are close, and even on qualifying we did an amazing lap, so I’m pretty happy about the day’.
Asked if it could be related to the phase when the tyres are newer, with the rear pushing the front, the #89 explained: ‘Maybe also this is an issue, but thinking about the morning, I was with the soft rear and a really used front and I didn’t have the problem. This is why I’m thinking about maybe it was the front tyre – because I didn’t have this issue yesterday or today’s morning, so I want to be optimistic on that side, thinking that maybe the tyre was not at 100%. But we need to improve also in different areas, so we will try to make some changes for tomorrow’.