Hours after the Japanese Grand Prix sprint race crash triggered by reigning MotoGP champion Jorge Martin, Aprilia brought him together with Marco Bezzecchi to review the incident and smooth things over.
Reigning champion Martin fractured his right collarbone following a poorly-judged move at the start of the sprint, taking his team-mate Bezzecchi out of the race with him.
Martin’s reaction to the lights was sharp. As soon as he released the clutch, he darted to the right side of the track, finding a gap that positioned him well heading into the first braking zone. The problem, judging by what happened next, was that he carried too much speed. The RS-GP snapped at him, he grabbed the brakes and went down.
His trajectory took him straight into Bezzecchi, who was violently knocked off-line and sent tumbling towards the outside. The crash ended with Martin nursing a fractured right collarbone and a heavy bruise on his right leg. A misfortune, but far less severe than it could have been.
The Spaniard will fly back to Spain this Sunday, where Dr. Xavier Mir awaits him in Barcelona to perform surgery on Monday. After initial checks at Motegi, he was airlifted by helicopter to a local hospital, which confirmed the earlier diagnosis.
By around 5:30pm he was already back at the circuit, and at 6pm, he was spotted walking through the paddock. He covered the nearly 200 meters from the medical center to his team office on foot, his arm in a sling, flanked by Aprilia communications chief Antonio Boselli, a member of his management team and his partner Maria.
Halfway there, he stopped, embraced her and broke down in tears. Moments after entering the private room prepared for him, Aprilia Racing CEO Massimo Rivola appeared, gently holding Martin’s head in an effort to console him.
Five minutes later, Bezzecchi arrived. The Italian rider knocked, stepped inside and leaned against a side table, while an Aprilia staff member pulled out a phone so the two could go over the incident together. The meeting lasted barely four minutes before the riders shook hands and Bezzecchi left.
“Jorge kept asking how Marco was doing,” Boselli told Motorsport.com, having witnessed the entire scene. “It was Jorge who asked Marco to come by so he could apologise.”
Marco Bezzecchi, Aprilia Racing crash
Photo by: Qian Jun / MB Media via Getty Images
Neither Martin nor Bezzecchi spoke to the press, for obvious reasons. Marc Marquez, however – one of the riders who can best relate to Martin given his own injury history – did offer a few words.
“Nobody needs to tell me what Jorge is going through. I feel really bad for him. What he has to do now is get surgery, recover, return to racing, enjoy a quiet winter, and then, next year, come back as the rider he was,” said the Ducati star, who within hours could succeed Martin as champion.
The official MotoGP grid photo for this season had been postponed several times and was finally taken on Thursday in Japan, the 17th stop on the calendar.
In it, Martin posed with the #1 plate that identifies him as the reigning champion. That commemorative picture may well turn out to be the most fleeting of the lot, as everything seems in place for Marquez to seal the title this Sunday.
It is fortunate, then, that the photo could be taken on Thursday, considering that Martin fractured his right collarbone just two days later.
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