Jorge Martin picked the right time to make a mistake.
Adrenaline coursing through his veins, heart rate racing, sweat in his eyes, the Spaniard reached for a bottle of celebratory champagne on the podium at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on Sunday … and promptly dropped it, the glass smashing into a million pieces.
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Martin could only shrug his shoulders and laugh. After a 2023 season of letting a championship slip through his fingers with no end of costly mistakes, Sunday was a day to celebrate … once another bottle of bubbly could be located.
When you’d waited as long as the 26-year-old had to complete a year-long redemption arc, a drinks delay was a minor inconvenience at worst.
Riding for a brand that overlooked him – twice – as a potential teammate to Francesco Bagnaia at the Ducati factory team, Martin banished the demons of throwing away a title that his pace suggested should have been his in 2023 by holding his nerve and converting in Barcelona.
To do it, he had to beat the fastest version of Bagnaia yet, and deny a rider who won 11 of 20 Grands Prix a third straight title that would have put him on the same plane as such two-wheel luminaries as Mick Doohan, Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez in the past three decades.
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Succeeding in that quest meant he had to face the frailties of his failed title run last year head-on, work on himself, quieten the voices of self-doubt and find a way to be just as speedy, but smarter in when to deploy that pace.
Martin needed only to finish inside the top nine to take the title on Sunday – and riding a Ducati GP24 for a manufacturer who won all but one Grand Prix all season, not doing that would have been a tough ask.
The 2023 version of Martin? You’d have backed him to seal the deal from such a position of advantage, but with some doubts. This year? It felt inevitable, and removed most of the drama from a season finale that had an appropriately big build-up, but was remarkably run-of-the-mill.
Bagnaia – as he’d done in Thailand and Malaysia before Barcelona – won the race and took the 25 points. Martin – as he’s done all season – did the best he could with what he had. On a more normal day, he might have fought Marquez harder for second when his compatriot pushed past on lap two. On Sunday, given the stakes, he slotted in behind, ticked off the laps, and barely put a foot wrong.
For all the stats behind Martin’s championship success – and there were an avalanche of them as the late autumnal sun sunk rapidly in a chilly Barcelona on Sunday evening – two stood out, one explaining Martin’s success, another detailing how a rider who’d won 11 Grands Prix in the same season couldn’t win the title.
First, Martin’s third place was his 32nd podium in 40 starts across sprints and Grands Prix this year, 16 rostrum results in each format of the championship. Consistency, which for so long had eluded a rider who had been known as the sport’s most volcanic one-lap talent with his exploits in qualifying, had become a sustainable, decisive calling card.
Second, Bagnaia’s eight non-finishes to Martin’s three for the season told another tale, one of the world champion being partly responsible for relinquishing his title despite never being faster. Not all DNFs are created equal – Bagnaia has regularly referenced his race-ending accident with Alex Marquez in Aragon in September that first saw the wheels wobble on his title defence – but the Italian was, far too often, the architect of his own misery with needless crashes from positions of advantage.
He knew it, owned it, didn’t discredit it as a storyline. But it stung all the same, magnanimous as he was in praising Martin on Sunday.
Even after the post-championship press duties were done and the paddock reconvened at the National Art Museum of Catalonia, located on the mountain of Montjuic in Barcelona, for the annual prizegiving ceremony, quiet moments for Martin to soak in what he’d achieved remained few.
A first test of his new Aprilia for 2025 was set for Tuesday, but that could wait.
There were celebratory drinks to be had first. All he needed was to find a bottle, and someone with a steadier hand than his to pour them.
MENTAL CLARITY UNLOCKED MARTIN’S CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON
Martin was as much reflective as he was euphoric after his biggest career moment, detailing how the work he’d done away from the spotlight on the mental side of his craft set him up for what became a championship-winning season, and came to the fore on Sunday when his mind started wandering.
“This year, January, I was really struggling with my mental health,” he admitted.
“Last season was great, even after being second I was quite happy, but in January I started to have a lot of fears, I was really scared like I would never be champion in MotoGP.
“Thanks to my [mind] coach, I improved a lot. I was more focused on the hope of winning than the fear of losing.
“Seven laps to go, I started to think a lot. On the [trackside] screens I saw my family, my dad, my mum, my girlfriend … I started to remember moments like the pasta my mum was cooking when I was on the pocket bikes in the karting [track], it was like all my life going through my lens.
“Thanks to the work I did this season, I was able to refocus quite fast and be in the present, nothing is done yet, keep focused.”
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As the countdown to the Barcelona season finale intensified over the past fortnight, Martin and Bagnaia were asked to undertake several photo shoots and filming sessions with MotoGP’s distinctive tower of champions trophy, which was a reminder to Martin of what he didn’t achieve 12 months ago.
Seeing his name added to the list of riders who’ve won the premier two-wheel motorsport category in the world would be a pinch-me moment, he said.
“I’m really looking forward to put my name on that MotoGP trophy because it’s been a while looking at it, trying to be there,” he said.
“The key for the season was to live the present, improve from the past, don’t do the same mistakes. The future, you never know. So, live your present, do your 100 per cent, this was the key.
“It’s quite easy. I will live the present, and the present is to celebrate. All my closest friends are here, so yeah, it will be a good one …”.
BAGNAIA: MALAYSIA SPILL SEALED MY FATE
The Aragon crash with Alex Marquez was the last time Bagnaia led the title chase, and try as he might, he could never get close enough to Martin again to really turn the screws.
The sprint race at the previous round in Malaysia was the final nail in the coffin for the Italian when he crashed out of second place as Martin escaped to win, and while Bagnaia won a thrilling head-to-head with Martin the next day at Sepang and both races in Barcelona after the final round was shifted from flood-ravaged Valencia, it wasn’t enough.
“I already accept that after my sprint race in Malaysia, I understood that it was tough and difficult to win the championship for another mistake,” Bagnaia said.
“If you mix all the other riders, they didn’t arrive to my victories this season, so we can be very satisfied and happy. But for next season, we have to improve in some areas.
“I have to improve, and I will try to do it for next year. But I’m a rider who never gives up, so sometimes it’s better to think more and maybe finish in fifth, fourth, than crash.
“It’s difficult to imagine to win a title with eight zeros [non-finishes] … we know why we finished second. I know we lost the championship for mistakes.”
Bagnaia’s class in defeat – after he’d flatly rejected suggestions of adopting tactics that pushed the boundaries of sportsmanship with so much on the line – was a theme of Martin’s post-race celebrations.
The pair were teammates in their earliest Moto3 days, and while fighting for the sport’s biggest title means their relationship today is more professional than personal, Bagnaia took some comfort in losing a fight that, as he put it, “was in the right way”.
“If someone else apart from me have to win the championship, I’m happy that he won this title because I think he deserves it,” Bagnaia said.
“He’s a great guy with a great family, we know each other very well, so they deserve the title. Full respect, because it was a fair battle.”
MILLER: KTM STINT FELL SHORT OF EXPECTATIONS
Jack Miller signed off on his two-year stint with KTM on Sunday by finishing 13th from an equal season-worst 19th on the grid, his time with the Austrian manufacturer petering out after he finished 14th in the world championship standings for his worst year since 2016.
The Australian will rejoin Pramac Racing – who he rode a Ducati for from 2018-20 – from Tuesday’s post-season test as Pramac joins forces with Yamaha after cutting ties with Ducati after two decades, and he spent much of Sunday’s race tucked up behind 2025 teammate Miguel Oliveira after gaining five places in the first six laps to get inside the points.
After finishing on the podium in the early stages of his KTM tenure in Spain last year, 2024 has produced few results of note, a pair of fifth places at opposite ends of the season in Portugal and Thailand the high points of a partnership he felt fell well short of expectations for all concerned.
“I’m disappointed for everybody, it’s not what we wanted,” Miller said.
“It hasn’t been what I imagined or envisioned. Even the beginning of this season, I put in the hardest off-season I’ve ever done and didn’t get the results I wanted. I tried my best and I take pride in that fact.
“[Thailand], that was nice being back fighting for the podium again. It was wet conditions but we showed true grit, and I think that describes these last two years.
“I never f**king gave up one moment, even when I was landing on my head every second weekend. I was trying my best. I’m a racer and I want to be competitive, and unfortunately I haven’t met my expectations in the last two years so I’m disappointed with that.”
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