Jorge Martin may be the current World Championship leader, but the Aprilia rider is by no means satisfied—What has been holding the Spaniard back on his RS-GP lately
At the Sachsenring before the summer break, Jorge Martin managed one thing above all else: damage control. The Aprilia rider finished the German Grand Prix in fifth place, securing important points.
But while the result looks solid on paper, Martin was not satisfied with his current level of performance. The current World Championship leader sees his position less as a result of his own dominance and more as a consequence of mistakes made by his closest rivals.
“It was a solid weekend, and it’s always important to finish a race. I scored the maximum possible points,” Martin explains in retrospect.
At the same time, he makes it clear that the current situation doesn’t meet his expectations: “We’re very far behind the others and also very far behind the other Aprilias. On the one hand, that’s good because it means the bike is working. But there’s something we don’t quite understand.”
The Mystery of the Lost Speed
Martin is particularly concerned about the comparison with the start of the season. In the first races, the Aprilia felt much better to him; now, however, he lacks consistency. The Spaniard believes they need to rediscover the bike’s base setup that made him competitive at the start of the year.
“I don’t know why I felt so much better at the start of the season, but now I’m losing some speed. We need to get back to where I believe we can be,” Martin muses about the lost momentum.
For him, the search for the cause leads primarily to the setup of the RS-GP. While he believes other riders have found a clear foundation to work from, his team remains in a phase of experimentation.
