Jorge Martin warns beating Francesco Bagnaia “really difficult task” in Misano sprint

Pramac’s Jorge Martin believes it will be hard to beat Francesco Bagnaia in Saturday’s MotoGP Emilia Romagna Grand Prix sprint after his rival dominated for pole.

After Friday practice, both on outright speed and long run pace, Bagnaia and Martin emerged as clear favourites to battle for victory throughout the rest of the Misano weekend.

In qualifying, Bagnaia and Martin were a cut above the rest, with the former setting a new lap record to take pole by 0.214s over the championship leader - while Enea Bastianini was a further 0.319s back in third.

While improving on his fourth place from Misano qualifying last time out, Martin is predicting beating Bagnaia again in this afternoon’s sprint “will be a really difficult task”.

“Well, I don’t know about the race,” he told TNT Sport when asked about his prospects for the sprint.  

“For sure I focus on myself and I think I can do it.

“It will be a really difficult task to beat Pecco today, but I will give my 100%.

“I feel comfortable, I’m super happy that we improved the qualifying position because two weeks ago I was struggling quite a lot.

“So, overall, I think we are working quite well and Pecco, he’s in a good shape, so I will try to stop him.”

Martin added that he has had to go between set-ups for his qualifying and race bikes because he has struggled to get the best out of his machine in time attack trim at Misano.

“I’m quite ok,” he said.

“I think it it seems like we are doing different set-ups: one for qualifying, one for the race because in this situation with this grip I struggle to do time attacks.

“So, we will go back to our standard bike for the race.”

Martin says his final Q2 lap was compromised by the fact he didn’t leave enough space to his Pramac team-mate Franco Morbidelli, as he caught up to the back of the Italian much quicker than anticipated.

“Was a good position, but maybe [I needed to] leave a bit more space to Frankie because as soon as I was in the second sector I already caught him,” he said of his final lap.

“So, I think it was difficult to improve. But I think I have still some gap [to improve]. So, for the race I feel competitive.”