Why Jorge Martin couldn't match his Aprilia MotoGP rivals at Mandalika
Jorge Martin believes missing previous MotoGP races on the Aprilia contributed to his Mandalika deficit, raising questions ahead of Phillip Island.
Jorge Martin has explained where he lost time to Aprilia rivals Marco Bezzecchi and Raul Fernandez during the factory's dominant Indonesian MotoGP weekend.
Although Aprilia swept the top four places in Sunday's Grand Prix, title leader Martin was only the third-best RS-GP rider, finishing 6.9 seconds behind winner Bezzecchi.
Combined with a tyre-pressure problem and a late mistake in the Sprint, Martin left Mandalika with the same two-point lead over Ducati's Marc Marquez he had held at the start of the weekend.
The Spaniard identified two fast corners where Bezzecchi and Fernandez could carry more speed without suffering the excessive wheelspin that hampered his own performance.
“It seems like on the fast corners they were able to put more speed with less spin, and I was spinning like crazy,” Martin explained.
“There were two corners where I couldn't match the speed. I was trying to analyse how they were doing it, but I was losing one tenth in each.
“Then I was trying to recover in the rest of the track where I felt good.
“But those two corners, I was trying to match the speed, and then when I looked into the data, they did another step! And it was like this the whole weekend.
“For sure, I improved a lot during the weekend compared to the first day, but I think I missed more laps. Maybe last season the others already did the step, and this season I was trying to match them.”
Martin was playing catch-up after missing last year's Mandalika event through injury, meaning he had never previously ridden the RS-GP at the Indonesian circuit.
The Spaniard faces the same challenge at Phillip Island this weekend, and again at Portimao later in the season.
Martin also has only a handful of 2025 testing laps at Sepang, was injured in last year's Qatar Grand Prix and retired early on his injury comeback at the Valencia finale.
“Sometimes I feel a bit that if I don't race the year before, I struggle to match their speed, but other times I don't suffer," he said.
"This one [Mandalika] was like this: I didn't take that extra from the Aprilia when the performance was super good.”
Marquez also missed the final rounds of last year, from Phillip Island onwards, due to injuries.
However, he at least has some Ducati experience at all of the remaining circuits from 2024 or, in the case of Valencia, the 2023 winter test.
Peter has been in the paddock for 20 years and has seen Valentino Rossi come and go. He is at the forefront of the Suzuki exit story and Marc Marquez’s injury issues.
