Marco Bezzecchi
Jorge Martin has arrived for the 2025 MotoGP Austrian Grand Prix, hoping it will be the real start of the Aprilia rider’s season after his long-awaited return from injury at Brno.
MotoGP’s return to Brno for the first Czech Grand Prix since 2020 at the end of July also saw Martin finally return to the paddock after three months out of action. The 27-year-old spent 461 days on the sidelines, between his crash in the Qatar Grand Prix and practice in Czechia.
Martin sustained 11 broken ribs and a hemopneumothorax in Qatar, which ruled him out of seven rounds. The defending riders’ champion had even sat out the first three rounds of the 2025 MotoGP season after fracturing his left hand on a Supermoto bike back in pre-season.
But the summer break meant Martin could not start to gain any momentum with Aprilia, as MotoGP hit pause for a month. So, he will now hope that this weekend’s Austrian GP marks the start of his season, after finishing the Brno Sprint in 11th place and the Czech GP in P7.
Jorge Martin rode a bike ‘a lot more’ than usual during his 2025 MotoGP summer break
Martin was very busy throughout his summer break trying to better his fitness levels, having realised at Brno that he was not at 100% yet. The Spaniard also went to great lengths during the break, with Martin weighing less than he did in Moto2 to try and help his performances.
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Reducing his weight was not the only tactic that the Madrid native employed, either. Martin has revealed ahead of the Austrian GP that he also spent “a lot more” time riding during the summer than usual, as the Aprilia racer strived to find his feeling after so long out of action.
“I’ve prepared well this summer to arrive stronger than I was in Brno,” Martin said ahead of the Austrian GP, via quotes by Motorsport.com. “I’ve only rested for three days, and I’ve ridden a bike a lot more than usual, because what I needed was to recover those feelings.
“In Brno, I felt that every lap I did was more competitive. But I was still four or five tenths [of a second a lap] slower than the leaders. The challenge is that, to close that gap to be able to get on the podium and win a race between now and the end of the year.”
Jorge Martin will not want to use his injury to justify his deficit to the leaders for long
Martin qualified P12 for the Czech GP on his long-awaited return from injury, before sealing P11 in the Sprint and P7 in the Grand Prix at Brno. But his lap time in Q2 was 1.311 seconds slower than the pole position lap time set by Ducati ace Francesco Bagnaia, with a 1:52.303.
Aprilia also saw Martin finish the Brno Sprint 6.000s behind Marc Marquez, despite Ducati’s tyre pressure blunders in the 10-lap Sprint Race at the Czech GP. Marquez also opened up a lead of 15.820s between himself and Martin back in P7 to win the 21-lap Czech GP this July.
Martin will not want to use his lengthy spell recovering from injury as an excuse for too long if he cannot reduce his deficit to the leaders during the coming rounds. He also knows what he can offer at the Red Bull Ring, having finished second in the Sprint and Austrian GP in 2024.
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