Mat Oxley: MotoGP’s most spectacular rider is new champ Jorge Martin

Jorge Martin’s 2024 MotoGP title success was historic – the young Spaniard is only the sixth rider in 76 years of world-championship racing to win the crown for an independent team, rather than an official factory team.

True, the Italian Pramac Ducati outfit was fully supported by the Ducati factory, but nonetheless it’s an independent operation. And, significantly, Martin beat Ducati’s factory number one, Pecco Bagnaia, to this season’s MotoGP top spot.

Martin graduated to MotoGP in 2021 and was instantly up to speed, taking pole position and a podium finish at his second race. He thought he had it made. He was wrong.

Racers need confidence but too much confidence is a dangerous thing. Less than two weeks after that first podium, Martin crashed heavily during free practice for the Portuguese Grand Prix. He was on an out-lap, getting cocky, pushing too hard on tyres that weren’t fully up to temperature.

The crash knocked him out for 15 minutes and broke multiple bones.

During his rehabilitation he considered quitting – was all this pain and suffering worth it? – but, like most young racers who consider quitting their habit, he was soon back on it. Two months later Martin was racing again and two months after that he scored his first MotoGP victory, at Red Bull Ring.

Martin has a certain swagger to him, a hint of rock’n’roll cockiness, which is reflected in his riding technique, which has him hanging off so far he scrapes his shoulders on kerbs. Currently, no one in MotoGP is more spectacular to watch.

“When I’m at full lean I try to pull up the bike as fast as I can [to use the fatter, grippier part of the rear tyre], even though sometimes my left hand isn’t even touching the handlebar, maybe with just one finger, because I’m leaning off the bike to the maximum,” he explains. “From that point I just try to pick up the bike and put the power to the ground, managing the throttle to keep the grip.”

“What I’ve learned in MotoGP is that people aren’t your friends”

There is, of course, a science to leaning off a motorcycle, which is why racers do it. First, the more you hang off, the less you lean, so you’ve got more tyre on the ground, so you can corner a bit faster and open the throttle earlier. Second, the further you move your body to the inside of the corner the less centrifugal force, so you can turn quicker.

Martin moved to the three-class MotoGP championships in 2015, won the Moto3 title three years later and might have lifted the 2020 Moto2 crown if he hadn’t missed a few rounds through getting Covid. He first challenged for the MotoGP title in 2023, when he took Bagnaia all the way to the final round.

Martin’s journey from kid racer to MotoGP king was interrupted by the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash. His father lost his job, so the last thing the family could afford to do was racing.

He may never have made it further than minibikes if he hadn’t been selected for the Red Bull Rookies Cup, which runs as a support class at half a dozen MotoGP rounds each summer, offering free rides to gifted youngsters. He entered the series in 2012 and won the title two years later, a success that got him into Moto3.

“I knew the 2014 Rookies was my last chance,” he says. “If I hadn’t won it I would’ve had to go home, because my parents didn’t have the money to buy me a Moto3 ride. I think out of a hundred riders coming up, maybe three don’t pay. The rest must pay, at least for the first years.”

Martin grew up next door to Jarama, Spain’s first purpose-built racetrack. His father Angel was so much into motorcycles – although he never raced – that he read bike magazines to his son instead of children’s books. Martin’s destiny was clear.

Now 26 years old, Martin is the most muscled rider on the MotoGP grid, because his extreme riding technique demands extreme strength. He looks like a cage-fighter – there are bulging muscles and tattoos everywhere – and he talks like one too.

“I guess I have a really killer mentality,” he says. “What I’ve learned over the years in MotoGP is that people here aren’t your friends. I don’t need to be friends with Pecco, Marc [Márquez] or with anyone. I just want to beat them… I think it’s better if we are enemies, like Valentino [Rossi] and [Jorge] Lorenzo were.”

The big question now is can Martin defeat his enemies once again to hold onto the MotoGP crown? Because he no longer rides a Ducati Desmosedici, MotoGP’s dominant motorcycle. Last summer Ducati management had to choose between Martin and Márquez for its second 2025 factory seat alongside Bagnaia. Most people assumed they’d go for Martin but he wasn’t so sure.

“If they don’t want me, I’ll give my talent to other people”, he said at the time.

Finally Ducati chose Márquez. Martin stayed true to his word, signing with rival Italian brand Aprilia for 2025 and 2026.

Aprilia won races in 2022 and 2023 but last season its engineers struggled to extract maximum grip from Michelin’s latest rear slick. If they can fix that problem expect Martin to be in the fight, determined to avenge Ducati.