Martin cleared to ride with broken wrist as he tries to stay in title hunt

Jorge Martin has been passed fit to ride in first practice at the Malaysian Grand Prix after breaking his wrist last Saturday but his chances of making the race and staying in the MotoGP title fight sound slim at best.

Once follow-up scans on Sunday revealed that the injury from his fall in the Phillip Island sprint race was not as severe or complex as first feared, Martin stayed in the region with the clear intention of trying to race at Sepang, rather than returning home to Spain for treatment.

He was passed fit to ride in Sepang FP1 on Thursday morning and will be checked again by the MotoGP medical team after that session.

But while declaring himself neither optimistic nor pessimistic about his situation, Martin's admissions that he cannot brush his teeth with his injured right side and that he would definitely not be trying to race on if he wasn't in the title fight do not bode well.

"I feel good. For sure, I could be worse, I could be better," the Aprilia rider replied when asked about his condition by The Race.

"Now we achieved the first step, that is to try to ride and then let's see my condition, let's see my feeling and then we will decide what to do next, if I continue with the GP or not.

"The only thing I know is that my wrist is broken. This is the only thing I know, that I will try to ride with a broken wrist, so for sure it will be really difficult, it will be really painful.

"I will try for sure because I'm in the title fight, because otherwise I will be in a house with a cast for one month.

"But the only thing I can do is to try, at least to try. That's why I'm here and the options I don't really know, I need to understand, I need to go on track. Let's see how much it's a limitation for the riding style.

"It's the right hand, which is the brake and the throttle. It's a right-corner circuit. So overall, it doesn't look great, but let's see tomorrow.

"I still cannot brush my teeth [with the right hand], I do it with the left hand, so I cannot do almost anything, but maybe I can ride. 

"I'm not really optimistic, not too pessimistic, because after five days I'm here and I can ride. So it's already, I think, crazy.

"I did all the therapies I could during this week to try to be in the best possible condition here, and now let's see how far I can go. 

"I'm just thinking of trying to ride. I don't think about the championship, I don't think about Sunday or Saturday, I think about tomorrow, let's try to ride, then I will move forward with my next step.

"At the moment I don't really feel really confident to race, but everything can happen, and for sure I felt a lot of improvement during the days.

"So maybe I don't feel well tomorrow, but maybe on Saturday I feel better. The process of the bone, it is what it is."

The crash while battling title rival and eventual race victor Marc Marquez last weekend left Martin 10 points behind in the championship, but the cancellation of the Australian GP itself removed a chance for Marquez to pull further clear.

Martin's description of his limitations on Thursday suggests that gap will only grow this weekend, even if he somehow makes it as far as competing in the race.

Aprilia's other rider in doubt

Like Martin, Trackhouse Aprilia rider Raul Fernandez was cleared to ride in Sepang FP1 during a medical check on Thursday.

But Fernandez sounds even less likely to try to race, as he wants to avoid further damage to the finger injury sustained in Indonesia that has already caused him to retire from the Phillip Island sprint.

Though Fernandez raced to a podium in the Indonesian GP the day after getting hurt in the sprint start crash, his experience in Australia has made him wary of exacerbating the problem and completely compromising the end of his season.

"I feel worse than in Australia," Fernandez admitted on Thursday.

"The fracture is still not recovered, to be honest. I want to try, I am here and for sure I will jump on the bike and we will see how the finger is, but to be honest it is not necessary to take too many risks, I need to recover it.

It is a very important finger for me, it is the one that I am using normally to brake. Also now it's in a moment that it is coming to recovery, so if I crash again I will start from zero, so I don't want to do a stupid thing."