Jorge Martín dominated Saturday’s proceedings at the MotoGP French GP. The championship leader secured pole position with a new lap record at Le Mans – the first ever in the 1m29s range – and then in the Sprint race, he emerged victorious 2.280s ahead of Marc Márquez (Gresini/Ducati).
The Prima Pramac rider is pleased with his performance in this round: ‘I’m super happy. I think we did an amazing performance until the Sprint. Tomorrow will be interesting for us, to understand where we are on Sundays. But you also make points on Saturdays, so it’s super important to be fast’.
Despite his confidence, Martín admitted that there are some areas to improve for the main race: ‘I’m confident, I think we have some good information for tomorrow’s race, because I didn’t feel as this morning. On the front I was losing a bit on the edge grip, it was much less than this morning. So we need to understand and see where… not to improve because we won’t improve the lap times, but to be more confident and have a bit more feedback from the front’.
Regarding the crash in qualifying, last year’s runner-up explained what happened: ‘I think I pushed a bit too much. Normally I sacrifice a bit turn 3 to make a really fast 4 and I tried a bit too early on the throttle and when I did the change of direction I didn’t have any contact in the front. I still have some pain on my back, but I think for tomorrow it will be a bit better. It’s nothing we couldn’t understand’.