MARTIN BLAMES WHEELSPIN FOR APRILIA PACE GAP AT MANDALIKA

Jorge Martin left Mandalika still leading the MotoGP championship, but the Indonesian Grand Prix exposed a gap between him and Aprilia’s strongest performers. Marco Bezzecchi won, with Raul Fernandez also ahead of Martin, who finished 6.9 seconds behind the winner. Aprilia riders occupied the top four places, while Martin’s weekend was complicated by a tyre-pressure issue and a late error in the Sprint. He retained the same two-point advantage over Marc Marquez that he had brought to Indonesia.

Martin said the difference was most apparent in two fast corners. Bezzecchi and Fernandez could carry more speed there without the wheelspin that troubled him. “I was spinning like crazy,” he said, explaining that he lost about a tenth of a second in each corner. He tried to make up the time elsewhere, but found his rivals had improved again whenever he checked the data. Martin said he made substantial progress from the opening day, yet felt he had missed the laps needed to reach their level.

The Indonesian circuit was unfamiliar territory on the RS-GP: Martin missed last year’s race through injury and had never ridden the Aprilia there before this weekend. He acknowledged that missing a previous event can leave him struggling to match rivals’ pace, although it does not always happen. “This one [Mandalika] was like this,” he said. “I didn’t take that extra from the Aprilia when the performance was super good.”

The learning curve continues at Phillip Island, where Martin also missed last year’s race, and later at Portimao. His limited recent track time includes only a handful of 2025 testing laps at Sepang; he was injured at last year’s Qatar Grand Prix and ended his comeback early at the Valencia finale. Marquez also missed the closing rounds of last season, beginning at Phillip Island, but has ridden the remaining circuits on a Ducati in 2024 or, for Valencia, during the 2023 winter test.

Despite Aprilia’s dominant result, Martin’s points lead survived the weekend unchanged. His explanation pointed to a specific performance deficit rather than a lack of progress: he improved through the event, but could not match the speed and traction his teammates found in two crucial corners.