Jorge Martin after seeing Bagnaia-Marquez clash: ‘I needed to win’

Jorge Martin delivered the performance of a potential MotoGP champion as he led every lap of the Portuguese grand prix.

Martin was unfazed by the pressure applied by Maverick Vinales and Enea Bastianini, instead using his speed in sectors one especially to create a gap.

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With Francesco Bagnaia crashing at turn five after contact with Marc Marquez, which resulted in him failing to score, Martin has now taken over the championship lead for the third time in his career.

“I’m really proud of the work we did all weekend,” began Martin. “I knew that with the medium rear I was going to feel much better.

“I was really committed to take the lead and I knew it was the key today to be in the front. Being in the lead on lap one was the key to the win. 

“I was able to manage the rear tyre a bit in the first few laps and the small gap.

“Then, as soon as I started to push I saw that the gap was always the same. But I knew that I had some margin to slowly make the gap bigger and bigger.

“At seventh tenths I was a bit more relaxed and I knew that it was a nice gap to have until the end. 

“I knew, like in Indonesia, that winning the race by seven tenths or three seconds was the same, so seven tenths was enough.”

When asked about the incident between his fellow Ducati riders, Martin claimed to have different thoughts going through his head, the last of those involving winning at all costs to gain points in the title race.

“About the incident I saw it on the screen and at that point I thought ‘okay, Jorge you have to finish 100%’,” added Martin. “I was quite slow for a couple of corners but then I said to myself that I needed to win.

“It doesn’t matter whether I finish, I just had to win. That corner is a bit complicated. It was just racing.”

After encountering chatter issues during pre-season and in Qatar, Martin admitted he felt it a lot less throughout this weekend, and especially the grand prix.

Instead it’s the sprints where he’s feeling the problem more: “We need to understand why but we suffer much more when we push at the beginning than when we can be smooth in the first laps.

“Today, in the first laps I was quite smooth and we were fast. I was really relaxed. When I started pushing I had that thought in my mind that the vibrations were arriving.

“But we have to check this for Saturday’s because the sprint is now our weak point. We need to be focused on that and try to fix that.”