One of my tasks for last Thursday’s Japanese Grand Prix media day was the first one-on-one interview with Jorge Martin I’ve conducted since his 2024 MotoGP title win.
I left our 20 minutes together with the idea that the hardships of the past year had marked a huge turning point in his maturity.
But his actions two days later at the first corner of the sprint race at Motegi don’t just mean that he’s been forced to undergo surgery on Tuesday for a broken collarbone and will miss this weekend’s Indonesian Grand Prix.
It also means I’m no longer quite so sure of my assessment of the now-past world champion’s new mentality - and that there’s still work to do to prove that he’s emerged from 2025 a more mature athlete.
I don’t think it’s unfair to Martin to say that his title fight last year against Pecco Bagnaia was won on raw speed and aggression, given that they're two of his biggest strengths.
He went into the year an underdog, but he outperformed Bagnaia when he needed to, often simply being faster than his fellow Ducati rider - but rarely by being cleverer, a luxury afforded to him by dint of his outright speed.
Since then, he’s had a horrific few months. Broken almost as soon as he jumped on his new Aprilia in pre-season testing, hurt again training for his recovery, and then finally left staring death in the face as Fabio Di Giannantonio barrelled down on him at Lusail following a crash out of the Qatar Grand Prix.
Perhaps only Marc Marquez can relate right now to what Martin has gone through since winning the title.
Martin has spoken on more than one occasion since returning to racing about what exactly the impact of all that trauma (both physical and emotional) has done to him, of course - something that was in part unavoidable thanks to the dramatic impact it had on his contract situation with Aprilia.
It was something that I knew I wanted to discuss when we got the chance for an interview, even though I also knew that it was something that the Martin of 2024 at least wouldn’t really want to discuss in too much detail.
Hence my surprise when, rather than having to dig in to talk about his contract spat with his current employer, he was the first of us to raise the subject, to talk honestly about the motivations for his actions - actions that he’s now got the maturity to admit was both reckless and fuelled by the mental health crisis he found himself in after almost dying at Lusail.
We’ll publish that full interview at a later date, but the key highlight for me was very much Martin’s admission that he had been immature coming into 2025 - and that the first few months of the year had caused him to grow up very quickly, morphing into a much more rounded character who absolutely has a better chance of further title success than the kid who won a championship in 2024.
And yet, come the opening lap of Saturday’s sprint race at Motegi, he managed to make me question my assessment of him from 48 hours previously with a completely wild lunge into the opening corner that not only never had a chance of working out but also managed to take out not just Martin, his team-mate Marco Bezzecchi also.
It was impulsive rather than malicious, but it also hints at Martin’s frustration with his lot in life right now. He obviously wants to win. He’s on a bike that Bezzecchi is showing is good enough to win.
But there’s still something missing from Martin’s recovery. He’s getting there in terms of race pace, but he’s missing that textbook Martin qualifying speed. The result is race starts from a wholly unusual position than what he’s used to, and the consequence is what we saw at Motegi.
I don’t think, of course, that a few seconds of idiocy is enough to completely rewrite my Thursday assessment of Martin - but there’s still work to do for him before he’s ready to once again fight for championship success, and not all of that work will happen inside the factory Aprilia garage.
