Marc Marquez puts pressure on Jorge Martin: “Saturday’s goal achieved, and on Sunday…”

Marc Marquez, winner of the Sprint race at the MotoGP Grand Prix of Japan, will try to overtake Jorge Martin in the standings as early as Sunday: 7 points separate the premier class world champion from his Aprilia teammate. “We achieved Saturday’s goal,” said the Ducati rider. “I wanted to start from the front row after qualifying because it was necessary to be among the leaders to have a good Sprint race. We made a few small adjustments to the bike and managed to put in a great race.” “We hope to do just as well on Sunday,” he concluded diplomatically, but the message to Martin is clear to everyone.

The Motegi Sprint Race saw Marquez overtake Martin right from the start, with the Aprilia rider then incurring a penalty for track limits, dropping from second to third place. The surprise of the race was Diogo Moreira, the LCR Honda rider, who secured an excellent second-place finish—his best career result in the premier class. Enea Bastianini finished fourth on the Tech3 KTM, though he too was penalized for track limits, just like Martin.

The Japanese weekend, however, also brought bad news for the team: shortly after the start of the Sprint race, a crash involved Pedro Acosta, Alex Márquez, and Fabio Di Giannantonio, with the latter being taken to the track’s medical center for evaluation—fortunately, without serious consequences. Pecco Bagnaia, on the other hand, retired late in the race—a bitter ending for the three-time world champion, who had already endured an extremely difficult Friday at Motegi, finishing pre-qualifying in 16th place and being forced to go through Q1 in qualifying.

Team manager Davide Tardozzi spoke out on behalf of Ducati, making no secret of the reigning World Champion’s ambitions: “We know that Marc will come attacking from here, from Motegi. It’s clear that we’ll try to finish ahead of our rivals here, but ultimately our goal is the same as in every race: to get on the podium.” Tardozzi also reassured everyone that the technical issue with the brakes—which had affected Marquez in Austria—had been resolved: “We’ve identified the problem, we know what happened, and we’ve made sure it won’t happen again.”