The Championship has a new leader, but it is far from closed. In a debrief after the Sprint, Aleix Espargaro commented on Jorge Martin’s current form, saying that the Spaniard is in a state of grace, but that Francesco Bagnaia cannot be ruled out, stating that the possibilities of winning the title are divided equally between the Spaniard and the Italian:
– Everything he tries, whether it’s overtaking on the dirty part of the track, everything he tries, he succeeds. This means that he can find what I call balance. I am happy. It’s incredible. We forget things very quickly, but Bagnaia was in the zone in the first three months of the championship, but the hardest thing is not to be there, the hard thing is to be in a state of grace for 10 months. That’s almost impossible, so finding the balance and finishing fifth when you have to finish fifth, not tenth, is very important. He’s unstoppable, it’s unbelievable. (…) 50/50. Never say never with Pecco. Tomorrow the normal thing for Pecco is that he loses more points, because it’s impossible for him to close the gap between him and Jorge this weekend, I think. But then we go to Australia, to Thailand. Never say never. Pecco is a very strong rider and is in the official team with a lot of good engineers, so don’t say Jorge is already a champion.
The Aprilia rider also said he was very happy for his compatriot’s current moment, after having accompanied him and helped him on his journey up to MotoGP, saying that Martin is focused on one scenario only:
“I feel very happy for him. I love his story and I feel like he really deserves it. He proved that you can have a lot of talent, but you have to work hard, and he worked really hard this year. He’s been very serious, he’s been practically friendless training very hard in Andorra. He’s changed the preparation a lot this year. He does a lot more cycling, more cardio, more gym, so he really focused. His life is just to win the title and in the end reward. In the end it pays off and I’m so happy for it. It’s not luck, he really worked for it.