Jorge Martin says his early status as a MotoGP title contender left him more “tense than necessary”, prompting him to change his mindset.
The factory Aprilia rider has emerged as one of the early favourites for the championship this year, having recovered from an injury-hit 2025 season to capitalise on a vastly-improved RS-GP.
Although his team-mate Marco Bezzecchi started the campaign with three grands prix wins on the trot, Martin has generally appeared quicker of the two, with a victory in the French GP thrusting him firmly into the title fight.
Following a second-place finish in Saturday’s sprint race at Mugello, Martin has slashed Bezzecchi’s lead to just 12 points, while extending his advantage over VR46 rival Fabio di Giannantonio.
Although there are still 15 rounds remaining following this weekend’s Italian GP, Martin has admitted for the first time that the high stakes in the intra-Aprilia fight were having an impact on him.
“I want to enjoy myself,” he said. “Obviously, I’m here to fight until the end, but in these last two races, I’ve been more tense than necessary because I was thinking about the championship.
“So right now, I’m going to take it one race at a time and try to enjoy myself. Obviously, I’m not going to be reckless and crash trying to pass Raul [Fernandez], but I got as far as I could, which was second place. And tomorrow I’ll do the same. We’ll see how far we can go.”
Jorge Martin, Aprilia Racing Team
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images
Fernandez and Martin qualified right behind polesitter Bezzecchi in a front-row lockout for Aprilia, but the two quickly surged past the Italian on the opening lap to establish an early 1-2.
Fernandez was the only rider to initially gamble on Michelin’s medium rear tyre, with Martin also changing his mind at the last moment to follow his countryman’s strategy.
Towards the end of the race, Martin briefly closed the gap to four tenths after Fernandez made a mistake, but the 2024 champion didn’t have the speed to challenge the Trackhouse rider for victory.
Martin, who successfully bounced back from a confidence-shattering run of crashes in Barcelona a fortnight ago, expects more riders to feature in the victory battle on Sunday.
“I think I’ll have to focus a bit on myself, because physically it’s going to be a very long, very tough race,” he said.
“In the end, I’ll have to find my own space, my own spot, my own pace. And from there, see how far that takes me. I think pushing a little too hard could cause me to hit a major physical wall later on, so I need to maintain my pace.
“We have to work on it a bit, because I felt I had better potential, but when I got close to Raul, I struggled. Let’s see how the team can help me with this.
“Bezzecchi, Raul, [Fabio] di Giannantonio, there will be more than one rider who can fight for the win.”
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