MotoGP king Martin: From Turn 1 at Jarama to the chequered flag at Barcelona

Because it was second places that won him the championship. Martin took ten sprint/GP victories to Bagnaia’s 18, but Martin took 15 second places to Bagnaia’s one.

This is not a criticism. There is ONLY one target in world championship racing: to score more points than everyone else. If you do that, you deserve the championship, if you don’t, you don’t. It’s that simple.

Meanwhile Bagnaia demonstrated the veracity of the ‘To finish first, first you must finish’ maxim.

Most fans would never compare the 27-year-old Italian – usually the professor of precision – with 500cc legend Kevin Schwantz – the oft-floored genius of the late 1980s and early 1990s – but the Italian’s 2024 season had shades of Schwantz about it: top of the podium one weekend, gravel trap the next.

Therefore Bagnaia didn’t lose the championship because he was slow but because he brought home too much gravel in his fairing. He crashed out of seven races, losing a potential 103 points, to Martin’s three, which cost him a potential 62. Bagnaia also had one mechanical DNF.

Three of Bagnaia’s accidents were collisions with other riders: at Portimao, Jerez and Aragon. “I need to understand some situations better,” he said after finally relinquishing his crown.

His other four crashes were losing the front: Barcelona in May, Silverstone, Misano 2 and Sepang, but he says the only crash caused by pushing too hard was Silverstone.

“As soon as you brake a bit less you lose the front,” Bagnaia says, explaining the tightrope that riders walk with Michelin’s super-grippy 2024 rear slick. “It’s the rear pushing the front – Jorge has crashed for the same reason.

“I never give up but I will learn that sometimes it’s better to finish fourth or fifth than crash.”

If Bagnaia’s 2024 campaign reminds me of Schwantz at his mercurial best, Martin’s riding style reminds me of Wayne Rainey’s, Schwantz’s greatest rival.

Like Rainey, Martin makes very defined and pronounced movements aboard the motorcycle, focusing his aggression at each stage of the corner to make the bike do exactly what he wants it to do, muscling the machine, which shakes and quivers as he bosses it into shape.

And I think of Martin when I think of this story which Rainey told me some years ago.

“I always had a little ritual before the race, if you want to call it that, which would get me into the right state of mind,” said Rainey. “I’d be dancing around my motorhome, kicking my leathers. Or I’d sit there, focusing on the feeling of being excited and wanting to spit nails and rip the handlebars off the bike. It was like going out to fight.”

I have no idea what Martin does before a race, but I know what he thinks – and he agrees with Rainey. “I feel like racing is a war – it’s like going into battle,” he says. “I guess I have a really killer mentality”.

Martin even has the words of Conor McGregor (controversial Irish former Ultimate Fighting Champion) tattooed on his left arm, ‘We’re not just here to take part, we’re here to take over’.

There he is again, the boxer walking into the ring, the warrior going into battle. And now he’s backed up the talk with the walk and will take the number-one plate to Aprilia next year.

It’s been a long road – it’s always a long road! – all the way from minimotos to Red Bull Rookie to Moto3 to Moto2 and MotoGP. In 2018 he won the Moto3 crown with Fausto Gresini’s Honda team and he might have won the 2020 Moto2 title with Red Bull KTM Ajo if he hadn’t gone down with Covid.

And none of this might have happened, due to the global financial meltdown of 2008. Martin’s dad lost his job, so his mum kept the family going, while dad begged and borrowed bikes for his son.

Martin really started climbing the ladder in 2009, winning in minimotos, MiniGP and PreGP – but these were all low-cost categories. By 2011, when it was time to move up to the Spanish Moto3 championship, the Martins were out of money and ready to give up their dream. What saved his career was the Red Bull Rookies Cup. Instead of finding 300,000 Euros for a Moto3 ride, all father and son had to do was get themselves to the tracks.

Martin finished 12th overall in his debut Rookies season, then second and finally first in 2014.

“Without the Rookies I wouldn’t be here – I would’ve left motorbikes,” says Martin. “I knew the 2014 Rookies was my last chance. 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 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.”

Rookies director of rider development Peter Clifford remembers Martin well and his memories sum up the rider we see today.

“When Jorge was with us he was very serious and very committed,” says Clifford. “He was one of those riders that obviously has a talent but if I had to pick what was his biggest strength – his raw talent or his commitment to using that talent – I would say it’s the latter.

“He’s obviously got real talent, but he also makes the very best of himself, the motorcycle and the situation, and he really works at it. With that attitude Jorge could always recover from difficulties. He always managed to keep it together – he was very mature, even back then. With some other riders it’s all talent, but they don’t know why it works.”

Martin’s Rookies title got him a 2015 Moto3 ride with Jorge Martinez’s Mahindra team, when his team-mate was… Bagnaia.

It’s difficult to say what matters most in making it to the pinnacle of motorcycle racing: talent or determination. Maybe the latter, because every rider on the MotoGP grid has rivers deep and mountains high of talent. But unless you have the determination to keep going through the pain, suffering and dark moments, you’ll never make it to the top.

Martin’s next job is to stay at the top in 2025. If Aprilia – with new technical director Fabiano Sterlacchini – can finally make its RS-GP work with MotoGP’s latest rear slick, he should be up the front. If Aprilia doesn’t figure out the tyre, he will be in for a very tough year.