The ‘army of one’ rhetoric Jorge Martin should play up to in MotoGP title fight

In June everything looked locked on for Jorge Martin to finally fulfil his long-held ambitions of stepping up to the factory Ducati team in 2025.

After a strong start to the campaign, leading reigning MotoGP champion Francesco Bagnaia by 38 points coming to the Italian Grand Prix having won two main races and three sprints, Ducati management felt ahead of Mugello it was time to give 2023 title runner-up Martin what he had hard-earned.

Martin had come close to a factory promotion at the end of 2023, with Ducati stipulating that he would gain an automatic step for 2024 if he won the title. That didn’t come to pass, and at the end of that season Martin already had the feeling that there was absolutely nothing more he could do to convince Ducati.

“I think, sincerely speaking, if I didn’t show yet my potential for them to be in red, I will never be in red because making more than this is quite complicated,” Martin told the assembled media after the Valencia finale last year.

“And arriving into the last race, finishing second, I think if they didn’t put me there, they won’t put me anyway.”

Reading that quote now, it is oddly prophetic.

The arrival of Marc Marquez into the Ducati stable for 2024 was always set to throw a spanner in the works. His showing at the start of the season on a GP23 he was still learning was strong - two GP and three sprint GP podiums pre-Mugello - but Martin’s form really couldn’t have been overlooked. And, briefly, it wasn’t. Until Marquez refused a factory bike at Pramac.

In a stunt that stunned Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicalli, Marquez - as any rider of his stature should, in fairness - wielded all the cards and made it clear to the Italian marque it could not risk losing him to a rival. Even if that did mean losing Martin, as well as Pramac as collateral damage in this rider market shock.

Martin’s subsequent signing with Aprilia for next year has now brought with it the expectation that Ducati will likely ease off its support for the Spaniard to stop the possibility of an RS-GP carrying the #1 plate courtesy of its superstar outcast.

While, publicly, Ducati has said otherwise, Martin told the media at World Ducati Week that he and Pramac are “more alone” than before now this season.

Now he needs to play up that angle across the final 10 races of the season.

Prior to the start of the year, Martin made a comment during the premier of a DAZN documentary about the Spaniard that if he could beat Marc Marquez on the same bike he could be considered one of the best riders ever.

Currently, he’s 62 points clear of the eight-time world champion at the halfway stage of the season - though it’s worth pointing out that Martin is not on the same bike as Marquez and has an advantage in that department.

Regardless, ending the season clear of Marquez in any capacity optically is something he can use as ammunition against Ducati. As petulant as it would come across, the Spaniard spending the winter saying ‘look how good I was and look how better I was than the guy they’ve replace me with’ will sting the Italian marque. And there’s not a lot they could do to defend that.

Taking the last year and a half of results into account, Martin has won 13 sprints and six grands prix. Across the 30 rounds run since last year’s Portuguese GP, Martin’s points-per-round average stands at 22.3 from a total of 669. In the same sample, Bagnaia is sat at 23.5 having won 13 grands prix, six sprints, a second world championship in that time and a total of 705 points.

While comparing that to Marquez’s previous 30 rounds isn’t wholly representative of the kind of rider we know he is capable of, based purely on current recent form Ducati has little to defend itself with when looking at the numbers Martin posts against Bagnaia.

Riders are hugely egotistical creatures and riding at your absolute best without getting what you feel you deserve will smart. Largely because in the instant you are officially not deemed worthy enough of staying somewhere, it alters the general public perception. That’s something Martin will have to fight against for the rest of the year and it will put any mistakes he makes into further focus.

Mentally, though, he’s proven resilient. After crashing out of the lead of the German GP, leading to Bagnaia taking over at the top of the standings, he bounced back with a brace of seconds at Silverstone as his chief title rival crashed out of the sprint and struggled to third in the GP.

It re-established Martin the championship lead ahead of this weekend’s Austrian GP at the Red Bull Ring - a happy hunting ground for the Spaniard, having taken a maiden victory at the Styrian GP held at the circuit in his rookie 2021 season.

Playing up to the ‘lone warrior’ angle also covers him if his championship challenge starts to come off the rails. He can point the finger at waining support from Ducati, who can equally claim it doesn’t want secrets slipping with him to Aprilia and Pramac to Yamaha. If he wins, becoming the first satellite rider ever to do so, it somewhat mythologises his title given the circumstances.

Aprilia’s current form in 2024 has faded further off that of Ducati’s, with CEO Massimo Rivola admitting after the British GP that his manufacturer is “doing something wrong” with its RS-GP.

Those are not encouraging comments for Martin to be reading just months away from swinging his leg over the bike for the first time in the post-season Valencia test. If he ends up struggling to battle for the title in 2025 on the Aprilia, whether or not he is reigning champion, he can confidently lean on the fact that he was forced into this situation by a Ducati management who didn’t value him enough. And based on his current results, there would be little room to doubt his ability.

Domenicalli told motosans.es that Martin shouldn’t have shut the door to remaining at Pramac beyond 2024. While there is an argument to be made there, fundamentally Martin remaining at a satellite squad as a consistent championship challenger or even world champion would have been a bad look for MotoGP.

Top riders should get what they’ve earned, and Ducati didn’t offer that to Martin… or, more specifically, it did but then decided to take it from him. Now they must accept the negative PR consequences Martin can inflict on them.