“Tough” Barcelona winter test has Jorge Martin wary of Catalan MotoGP predictions

Jorge Martin has brushed off predictions he could fight for the podium at the MotoGP Catalan Grand Prix as he found it “quite tough” on the Aprilia at Barcelona in the November test.

The reigning world champion comes to this weekend’s Catalan Grand Prix off the back of a ride from 16th to fourth in Hungary, as he appeared to make a major step on the RS-GP.

Since coming back at Brno, many have predicted Jorge Martin to need only a few races to be able to fight for the podium again.

With Aprilia a sprint winner at Barcelona last year and grand prix winner in 2023, Martin is expected to be able to produce another strong result.

But he has moved to temper these expectations, noting that his previous experience of the Aprilia at Barcelona in the post-season test last November wasn’t wholly positive.

“For sure, it was a nice moment last year here in Barcelona when I won the championship,” he said on Thursday in the pre-Catalan Grand Prix press conference.

“But memories are memories. Now I want to focus on the present. I have a new project, I have a lot of work to do.

“It will be a nice opportunity here to understand how the bike works. I need to keep building my confidence and for sure I’m doing great steps.

“I know this track is good for me, is good for Aprilia. But I don’t want to have a lot of expectations. I want to go step by step and see where we can arrive.

“I don’t want to think about results. Let’s see what the weekend brings us.

“I know this is a nice track for Aprilia. But last time I rode here with Aprilia, it was quite tough in the test.

“For sure, now it’s a great opportunity because the bike changed a lot during these months. So, it’s a completely new bike.

“Let’s see how it works. Maybe we don’t have that difference from the past, but I’m sure the bike works well and we will try to do our best.”

Qualifying “confidence” still missing for Jorge Martin

In the last two rounds, Martin has failed to exit Q1 while team-mate Marco Bezzecchi scored a pole in Austria and second in Hungary.

He attributes his one-lap pace right now a result of lacking confidence to push in time attack trim on the RS-GP.

“I think it’s a matter of time,” he said.

“You can see Marco is doing an amazing job in qualifying. I’m still struggling on that. I think I didn’t have a lot of luck the last few times in qualifying.

“But I feel it’s a matter of time before I get to know the bike because normally in races I can come towards the front.

“So, I have confidence. But maybe to push to the limit I miss a bit. So, it’s one of the targets here in Barcelona to try to ride on my own and make my own times and get that confidence again.”

He added: “Balaton was a really good weekend for me. Not because of the result, but because of the improvements I did on my feeling because on Friday and Saturday I was struggling with rear grip a lot.

“Then we changed something on the bike for warm-up and I did a great step.

“I could ride like in a normal way, my normal style. So, I think in Balaton I missed the small details.

“It’s more myself that I need to make more laps and laps to get used to this bike.

“But, honestly speaking, when we made the testI was like ‘ok, the bike is working well, it’s just me who needs to continue riding’.

“For sure, there are some details to work on this weekend and for the next weekends. But still it’s a long process for me to be 100% on the bike. So, step by step.”