Bouncing back
How Martin took Moto3’s crown
Talk to Jorge Martin about the pressure of being crowned 2018 Moto3 World Champion and he may well laugh in your face. Not in a dismissive or derogatory way and certainly not in an arrogant way. That’s not in the style of the immensely likeable 20-year-old, whose speed and smile lit up this year’s Moto3 battle. Winning a Moto3 title seems like a cakewalk when you’ve confronted with raw, sick to the stomach, lifechanging pressure, and won. Wind back the clock to midOctober 2011 and the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Selection event for 2012 at MotorLand Aragon and Martin will tell you about the burden of pressure.
Rejected the previous season in the selection event at Monteblanco, Martin was staring at the abyss if knocked back again.
“It was my last opportunity to make it,” concedes the 20-yearold. “If I hadn’t been picked for 2012 I would have gone home. It was difficult because you think you’re going to give up on your dream. That was the time when I felt under the most pressure in my life because had I not been selected it was over. I think being selected in 2012 was the best moment of my career because that started my journey to being a World Champion.”
Since being crowned Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup Champion in 2014, Martin has barely looked back, only to remind himself on occasion this year that the pressure in holding off Marco Bezzecchi and Fabio di Giannantonio was nothing like what he felt under the autumn sun in MotorLand Aragon back in 2011. But nobody could quarrel with the assertion that Martin triumphed this season the hard way. Innocently wiped out in Jerez and Le Mans when in podium contention, he was almost the master of his own downfall when he fractured the radius bone in his left arm during opening practice in Brno.
He said: “When I was lying in the gravel in Brno I thought it was going to be impossible for me to fight for the title.”
Yet just nine days later and he was miraculously on the podium in Austria, though more obstacles had to be negotiated.
Routine physiotherapy as part of the on-going recovery from the Brno fracture almost incapacitated him in Thailand when a nerve issue meant he could only close his left hand with the aid of a modified glove.
“That was another time I could see the title slipping away,” he added. When drama and pain free, Martin was peerless in 2018 with an astonishing tally of ten pole positions, ten podiums and seven race wins. He said: “Being World Champion feels amazing and I still can’t believe it. I’ve made so many sacrifices throughout my whole life to arrive in this moment and it feels very difficult to process what has happened.”
admitted that he sees 2019 not as a year out from Grand Prix but as the start of a whole new career in production bike racing. Frustrated after feeling he’d never been given the chance he needs to show his potential in MotoGP after struggling on uncompetitive bikes like the open class Honda he debuted on and the Aprilia he’s been riding in 2018, Redding is instead treating his move to BSB as the first step in a whole new career plan. “Obviously my first goal was to try to stay in MotoGP, which turned out not to be possible. We then looked at Moto2 but this was also difficult. When the offer came in from PBM it was quite interesting. It took me a lot of time to think about it, trying to understand what direction I need my career to go in and the best move I could make for the future. “I did have offers from Moto2, but for me at this point my career is about starting to be successful. Being in MotoGP is great, but I don’t go just to be in MotoGP; I race for podiums, I race for wins. That’s what I thrive on. This isn’t a hobby for me… I would have been happy to go to Moto2 but only if I had an offer to go with one of the best teams and could fight for the title, but a lot of those places went quite early on while other teams wanted money and I’m not about to pay for a ride.
“I’ve been in MotoGP, I’ve done it but I haven’t given up on my dream of being a world champion and my chances of doing that in MotoGP are now over. My target instead is to be in BSB for two years and then move into World Superbikes and try to take the title there. I need to take a step sideways to move forward again and that’s what this is. We’re kickstarting a new chapter in my racing career.”