Jorge Martin ‘out of a hole’ but issues warning about Silverstone MotoGP sprint win

Jorge Martin says he is “a bit out of the hole” that he had been in during recent MotoGP rounds after his British Grand Prix sprint win, but urged caution over the result.

Since winning both races at the French Grand Prix in May, the Aprilia rider has struggled for consistency as he moved further and further away from the bike set-up that had been working for him.

Returning to that base at Silverstone, Jorge Martin claimed pole with a new lap record on Saturday and followed it up with a lights-to-flag win in the sprint to extend his championship lead.

He branded the result as “important”, but admitted that this victory doesn’t mean “everything is alright”.

“For sure, it was nice to get an amazing feeling this weekend; this was the most important thing for me, more than my result, was to get my feeling, to have my speed again,” he told the media, including Crash, on Saturday.

“We are out a bit of the hole that we were in, and for sure this gives us a lot of motivation.

“We have full trust in ourselves. I have full confidence in my team, in myself.

“I knew it was a matter of time to get out of that situation.

“But it's not that now at Silverstone we won and everything is alright.

“We will need to reconfirm in the next races. But for sure we have a great opportunity also tomorrow.”

“I was in trouble after four laps”

The 10-lap sprint saw almost every rider struggle with extreme tyre graining, with the issue hitting the Ducatis hard.

Martin admits he was “in really big trouble” after just four laps, but soon realised he was managing the situation better than everyone else.

“I was managing from the first lap, even if I was pulling away,” Martin, who won by 1.5s, said.

“And then when I was in trouble after four laps, I thought Ai [Ogura] was going to catch me.

“But then I saw that even if I was in really big trouble, I was able to keep that distance or even increase it.

“At that point I thought, ‘Okay, they are even worse than me’.

“So I did a great job in that term. Tomorrow is another story with the medium.

“Everything will be more slow, more constant, and maybe easier to manage than today was with the soft.”

Asked how he was managing the issue, he replied: “Not opening the throttle 100%, trying to wait until the grip is there.”