Jorge Martin admitted post-race that he had a different “feeling” throughout the Australian MotoGP race.
The Spaniard capped off the weekend with second place in the Sunday race after claiming a dominant pole position and Sprint victory on Saturday.
Martin and Marc Marquez formulated a ten-second advantage over title rival Francesco Bagnaia by the end of the race, before the eight-time champion passed Martin with three laps to go.
Despite being the superior GP24 Ducati rider all weekend, Martin stated Sunday’s race provided more struggles and even admitted to nearly crashing out of the race altogether.
“It was a great weekend, doing the pole position, winning yesterday and being on the podium today,” said Martin. “I wanted to win. I tried my best. But actually the feeling wasn’t like yesterday.
“I was struggling to put the power on the ground so I couldn’t make a gap to Pecco and Marc, who both improved from yesterday, even though my race was quite strong.
“In the middle of the race, I started to feel a bit better but then I almost crashed in corner 1. Pecco overtook me, but straight away I was attacking back.”
Jorge Martin: Marc Marquez “had nothing to lose”
The two Spaniards’ battle for the win ended with three laps to go, and Martin’s approach was to bring the bike home.
He wanted to cap off the weekend with the double, but he shared that the disparity in risk-taking differed between both riders, which meant he settled for second.
After the Sprint race, Martin gained a six-point advantage over Bagnaia and increased the gap to 20 points.
“I tried to stay in first position for the last few laps, but Marc had nothing to lose, so it was much more difficult from my side to battle,” he said.
“I tried to be close, but he had something else. Maybe not in terms of speed, but in terms of the risk that he can take, or the risk that I can take.”
“I just thought, ‘wow, he’s aggressive’,” Martin smiled, but the location of the pass wasn’t a surprise.
“[Turn 4] was the only point where I think he was stronger than me. I was struggling a lot with the right side of the front tyre from the 5th-6th lap and it was the only place where I could hear him right behind me.
“Any chance that I have to increase the world championship lead, I will take it,” Martin said.
“It was nice to have a small battle with Pecco because normally he’s in front and pulls away or I’m in front and pull away. So finally at least we were battling for one lap and I enjoyed this.
“But anyway, I lost 11 points last week, now I’ve gained 10 points. Next week we don’t know. So we have to be focusing race by race.”
