Jorge Martín was among the fastest riders during Friday’s sessions at the MotoGP Austrian GP. After leading the first free practice, the Prima Pramac Ducati rider ended the afternoon session in third place, 0.319s behind leader Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati).
At the end of the day, the Spaniard commented: ‘Not only Ducati, but also Pecco was super strong today as usual. I thought KTM was going to be a bit stronger here – at least in the top positions, but they weren’t. But maybe they have something for tomorrow, I don’t know, let’s see. But, yeah. Ducati is always strong’.
While Martín recognized Bagnaia as a tough competitor, he expressed confidence in his ability to challenge the Italian: ‘For sure Pecco is always difficult to beat, he is really strong. But I don’t feel he’s really stronger than us, so let’s see tomorrow. I think we had a lot of work to do today, maybe more than usual. I also tried all the compounds, this was not easy to organize for the afternoon. But I feel confident with this’.
Asked if he had more work to do than he expected, the #89 replied: ‘Yeah. For sure this track is a bit tricky, it’s different than the normal tracks, I had to change a bit the set-up. But I had different options because maybe I tried something, it wasn’t working, I didn’t want to go back to the bike of the morning, so we tried different set-ups during the practice, also different tyres. So, a lot of work’.