Rivals analyse Jorge Martin fall: ‘Maybe better to lose two tenths’, ‘You roll the dice going in there’

Jorge Martin couldn't explain his penultimate lap crash from the lead of Sunday’s German MotoGP, saying he wanted to wait and analyse the data with a cool head, but some of his rivals were asked for their impressions.

Repsol Honda’s Luca Marini said he had only seen a TV replay of the incident, from the helicopter shot, which suggested:

"In my opinion, he braked quite late, after the white line which is the braking reference for Turn 1," Motomatters.com quotes Marini as saying.

"In my opinion, during the braking he understood that he was a little bit long [deep] because also he put his right leg out wide, but then come back.

“In my opinion, he was not sure to turn the bike inside, but maybe he said, ‘OK I try’.

“But maybe it's better to lose two tenths and go wide than destroy the championship [lead].

"It's a pity for him, but better for Pecco."

KTM’s Jack Miller highlighted the complicated nature of the undulating Turn 1 braking zone.

"You're trying to stop it, and then right at the most critical point, the track drops away," Miller explained.

"A couple of times you do roll the dice going in there, when you brake later, and think, 'oh, I've got it', and it starts getting close to that drop-off and you know you're going to unload the front at that point."

"It happened a few times to me throughout the race, where you almost start standing it up," he added. "You've got a choice; you either start standing it up or you commit to it.

“I don't feel like you ever fully brake to your full potential there. There's always a little bit of margin, obviously with the hill right as you grab the brakes, and then it drops away [again] at the apex of the corner."

"I think they were riding on the limit," Aprilia's Maverick Vinales said of the Martin-Francesco Bagnaia victory battle. "The previous laps were [close to] 1m 20s, that’s a pretty fast lap time at the end of the race. 

"Turn 1 is really tricky... It happened to me in the morning, I stopped the bike better but when I touched the gas it was on the crest. You have to be so careful."

Martin’s fall, his third in a race this season, cost him the world championship lead to Bagnaia.