British GP sprint winner Jorge Martin has revealed that reverting to an older-spec base package has allowed him to climb ‘out of the hole he was in’ and rediscover his winning form.
The Aprilia rider dominated Saturday’s half-distance race at Silverstone from pole position, leading every lap of the race to extend his championship lead to 17 points.
The result allowed him to bounce back from a tough run of recent results, where he simply lacked the confidence to push the bike and made too many unforced errors.
While unwilling to draw any firm conclusions, Martin says his record-breaking pole lap and lights-to-flag sprint win suggest he is turning around his campaign.
“It was nice to get an amazing feeling this weekend. This was the most important thing for me, more than the result – to have my feeling again, to have my speed again.
“We were out a bit of the hole we were in, and 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 we now won Silverstone and everything is alright. We will need to reconfirm in the next races. But we have a great opportunity tomorrow.”
Jorge Martin, Aprilia Racing Team, Marco Bezzecchi, Aprilia Racing, Ai Ogura, Trackhouse Racing
Photo by: Qian Jun / MB Media via Getty Images
Martin explained that he has gone back to the same base-specification bike he used en route to a dominant Le Mans weekend, albeit paired with a new aero package that no other Aprilia rider is using at Silverstone.
Having previously struggled for speed as the RS-GP evolved over the summer, the switch to an older version was key to his perfect Saturday at Silverstone.
“It’s the same bike we used in Le Mans,” he revealed. “For sure, now we have some new pieces, you will see on aerodynamics. But the set-up level is the same as Le Mans.”
Managing tyre degradation proved vital at Silverstone, with all frontrunners opting for the soft rear tyre. While Martin briefly came under pressure from Ogura midway through the race, he quickly responded to his pace and eventually took the chequered flag with a winning margin of 1.5s.
The Spaniard explained that having a bike that was to his liking helped him extend the life of his Michelins.
“When the bike is balanced, the front and the rear are balanced, you don’t need to override the front to turn or turn with the rear. Everything is pretty good,” he explained.
“The bike is working really well. I don’t need to override and everything comes quite well.”
He added: “I was managing from the first lap, even if I was pulling away. And then when I was in trouble after four laps, I thought Ai was going to catch me. But then I saw that even if I was in really big problems, I was able to keep that distance or even increase it.
“So at that point I thought, ‘OK, they are even worse than me’. So I did a great job in that term.”
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