Misano Sprint winner Jorge Martin is targeting a perfect weekend in San Marino after converting his pole position into a confident victory on the Pramac Racing Ducati.
Martin closed the gap at the top of the MotoGP World Championship by five points to Lenovo Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia, who held off KTM test rider and wild card entrant Dani Pedrosa for the final place on the podium in third.
The deficit is now 45 points at round 12 of the championship ahead of the main Sunday Grand Prix at the Marco Simoncelli Circuit, where Martin is hoping to put more pressure on reigning champion Bagnaia.
Martin, who blitzed the lap record in qualifying, said: “It was a tough one but I have enjoyed all this weekend and today qualifying really was amazing, but then in the race I thought we were going to be a little bit more tight between Pecco, Marco [Bezzecchi] and me.
“But then straight away I was making a big difference and afterwards I started to put in a great pace, but those 1:31.7s were quite tough to improve.
“But then I saw he [Bezzecchi] recovered three-tenths in one lap, so I was a bit worried about that moment.
Secure your spot today.
“But I thought I have to keep the pace, I cannot go any faster, but then I saw he was going back again and dropping the pace a bit, so I tried to keep that distance the whole way to the end.
“Lucky I won, so I’m really happy.”
Martin says he has found the right balance at Pramac to enable him to produce his best form on the track as he focuses on challenging for a dream MotoGP world title.
“I’m super focused and I feel like we found a balance in terms of work with the team, in terms also with balance of the bike; everything is working so I’m super happy about this,” he said.
“Hopefully tomorrow we can make some more steps forwards. I have to not think about the other riders, just focus on myself and, hopefully, we can repeat.
“All the points, every point you can get will be important, so this is the main target and hopefully tomorrow we can get the maximum.”
Martin won the Sprint race by 1.445s from VR46 Ducati’s Marco Bezzecchi after 13 laps.
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