Martin was a winner in his maiden season in MotoGP in 2021 and was expected to add to this in 2022 with the Pramac Ducati team.
But the 2022-spec Ducati he was on wasn’t as competitive as the factory team version, which ran a slightly older engine owing to the latest version being too aggressive.
Martin only scored four podiums in 2022, matching his 2021 tally, and was overlooked by Ducati to join Francesco Bagnaia at the works team in favour of Enea Bastianini – who won four grands prix on a year-old Gresini-run Desmosedici.
Having won two sprints already in 2023, including on Saturday in Germany, Martin celebrated his first grand prix victory since 2021 on Sunday after beating Bagnaia in a thrilling duel by just 0.064s.
“It was fantastic, it was so emotional to win today because I struggled quite a lot last season to be competitive,” he said.
“It was really frustrating. I came back this season and have been strong almost everywhere, and being on the podium many times but I was missing that Sunday victory.
“Today was a tough race, Pecco improved a lot today. He did an amazing step from yesterday,
“I saw this already in the warm-up. I was looking at the data; it was the same rider, he improved that sector two quite a lot.
“I tried to do the same as yesterday, try to make a small gap but saw I was taking too much out of the rear tyre.
“It’s better that he caught me and see what happened at the end.
“When he overtook me, I changed the strategy a little bit. I tried to fight straight back. It wasn’t easy, he was pushing a lot, it wasn’t easy to keep the concentration.”
Martin’s decisive overtake came on lap 24 of 30 when he outbraked Bagnaia into Turn 12, something he says wouldn’t have been possible in 2022.
“The engine in general is working better everywhere,” he said of the improvements made by Ducati with the 2023 bike.
“The most important thing that they thought of was the connection with the throttle. I felt it straight away.
“Last year I was struggling a lot to recover that spin, with rear grip. For sure, for one lap I had that new tyre grip, but as soon as the tyre dropped it was really difficult to manage it.
“Where I feel it the most is the braking. I feel it a lot. Last season maybe the engine was pushing [into the corners], but something changed and I feel like I can brake hard.
“Last season it would be impossible to overtake Pecco on braking, or anybody. Today I was strong. So, I think the braking is the point where I improved the most from last year.”
