Jorge Martín: “Right now I feel that Aprilia is my family”

The Spanish MotoGP rider Jorge Martín optimistically faces his second season with Aprilia after a 2025 marked by injuries, tension with the Italian factory and even rumors of a possible premature breakup, but now, already second in the World Championship after the start of 2026 and only 4 points behind the lead of his teammate Marco Bezzecchi, he assures that he is experiencing a completely different scenario and that the Noale brand has become his “family.”

In an interview with Europa Press, the Madrid rider acknowledged that 2025 was a very complicated year on a physical and emotional level with everything that happened, with “many comings and goings with Aprilia”, although he stressed that the important thing is that all that “was left in the past.” “I think we have come out stronger and right now together with Aprilia I feel that it is my family and in the end I have to represent these colors to the death and that is what I am going to do as long as we are together,” he stated.

Regarding his future beyond 2026 and with his sights set on 2027, the year in which MotoGP will release new technical regulations with the change in displacement from 1,000cc to 850cc and in the midst of the arrival of Liberty Media as the new owner of the championship, with many changes of riders planned, Martín avoided going into depth and preferred to focus exclusively on the present.

“It is clear that it will be a year of many changes, but it has taken me a lot to get here, to be in this sweet moment, and now I think I want to enjoy the here and now. It is not the time to talk about the future either,” concluded the Madrid driver.

After winning the 2024 World Championship with a Ducati satellite of Prima Pramac Racing, Martín experienced a much more turbulent 2025, conditioned by physical problems and a much more complex than expected adaptation to Aprilia. However, the start of this new year has completely changed the panorama, with a fourth place in Thailand and two consecutive podiums in America (second in Brazil and second in the United States) that have returned him to the fight for the top zone.

Although he avoids claiming that this is his strongest version, he does admit that it is “a new version” of himself. “Right now it is very easy to look at the past and know what was done right and wrong, but the important thing is to learn. I have learned to be better. I don’t know if it is the most solid, we will see it with the races and as the championship passes, but I hope it will be a better version of what it was before,” he explained.

Despite occupying second position overall and being just four points behind his Aprilia teammate Marco Bezzecchi, Martín insists that he is not looking at the classification yet and that the World Championship remains “totally in the background.”

“My goal is to continue improving, to continue finding my feelings with the bike and in the end the championship is something you look at when there are two or three races left, and if you have options. If not, it doesn’t make any sense to be looking at the classification. I don’t even know the points I have, honestly; I know I’m second, obviously, but it’s not something I look at,” he said.

The Madrid native prefers to focus on recovering his best version on the RS-GP26 and completing an adaptation that he considers still incomplete after having missed a good part of the preseason. “I’ve had very few races with this bike and I’m already feeling very comfortable. It’s about staying there, continuing until the end, not being obsessive but very analytical about where I can improve,” he noted.

In this process, he also recognizes that Bezzecchi starts right now with a certain advantage within the official Aprilia box. “Right now Bezzecchi is at a slightly higher level. Marco’s Aprilia package is clearly a bit stronger,” he admitted.

Still, it doesn’t turn victory into an obsession. “One day it will be Marco, another day it will be Marc Márquez, another day it will be ‘Pecco’ Bagnaia… The important thing is to compete one hundred percent and get the most out of myself so that the sooner that victory comes. But it is not something that obsesses me by any means,” he added.

Martín believes that, when all the pieces fit together, he will be prepared to fight for wins on a regular basis, although he insists that it is not yet time to talk about a real fight for the championship against Ducati.

“We have had three races, the important thing is day by day. Now we are focused on Jerez, which is a complicated track for me, also for Aprilia, so we start with very low expectations and day by day. Then at the end of the year we will see how far we can go,” he summarized.

The Gran Premio Estrella Galicia 0.0 in Spain thus appears as the next big test to measure their options, on a demanding track and with Pedro Acosta, Marc Márquez, Francesco Bagnaia and Bezzecchi himself as the main threats in the fight for the lead.

Furthermore, the world champion recognizes that he is still not one hundred percent physically after last season’s problems. “I still have a little bit to go, maybe I’m at 95 percent, very close to one hundred percent. I notice a somewhat strange sensation in the nail in my hand and that, as the races go by, will get better and in my favor,” he explained.

Precisely because of all that journey, from the hospital to fighting again, Martín assures that he now values ​​each result much more. “I’m happy and grateful to be able to be here at this point. I didn’t think I could do it so quickly. It took a lot of work to be here and it’s something I value much more. When I was in the hospital, now I remember it and… I value this three times as much,” he confessed.

Beyond the circuits, the Madrid native has also just released a new collaboration with the Italian men’s fashion brand Dan John, an association that, as he recognizes, fits perfectly with his current personal and professional moment.

“It is clear that I have an Italian motorcycle and now also an Italian clothing brand. I feel very identified. It is incredible, I am very happy to have closed this agreement and I think it represents me very well,” he explained.

And if at the end of the season he had to celebrate a hypothetical second world title with one of the looks from the new Spring-Summer 2026 collection and the ‘Too fast is the only speed’ campaign, he is clear: “I choose the complete blue suit, which is all very elegant, very comfortable and with a beastly style.”