Why Martin made the call that blew his MotoGP points lead

As Jorge Martin dived into the Misano pits and none of the riders around him followed him in, it became obvious that the San Marino Grand Prix was about to deliver a major swing in the MotoGP title race.

Unfortunately for Martin, it also became obvious almost as quickly that the swing would not be in his favour.

"As soon as it started to rain, I saw him enter the box, and in my mind everything changed. I said 'OK, I have to not crash, because he will take zero points'," said his main title rival Pecco Bagnaia matter-of-factly, discussing that moment in a post-race interview with MotoGP.com.

Bagnaia's initial hunch was a little wrong - Martin did score a point, from a lap down, thanks to several backmarkers having rolled the dice on a bike switch too - but in the end what had been a healthy 26-point lead turned into a sickly seven-point one, with Bagnaia now in a strong position to retake the initiative in the title race in the second part of the Misano double-header in two weeks' time.

So why was it, in the end, that Martin ended up the only rider in the top 10 at that point in the race to make that decision?

WHY DID MARTIN PIT?

"Because it was raining. I mean, what do you want me to say?"

It was as simple as that for Martin - except not really. In the end, there were several angles to what had proven a dreadful miscalculation.

Firstly, his admission that he didn't quite have his priorities right - in prioritising the best possible race result rather than maximising his result relative to specifically Bagnaia.

"I didn't do the right strategy, that's for sure," he said.

"I was thinking more about the race and not about the championship. So I thought that for winning the race it was better to stop. And I stopped.

"Next time I will just wait behind Pecco and do the same."

There was also the factor of Pramac team-mate Franco Morbidelli being caught out by the conditions on that lap, and that the rain levels weren't exactly minimal - "from corner 3 to corner 11 it was raining a lot".

But finally, even though Martin emphasised the outcome was "100% my fault", he did also acknowledge that he and his team hadn't communicated enough about the weather going into the race.

"We didn't speak about it. I didn't know exactly what was coming. So that's why maybe I stopped.

"For sure it's really important to communicate with the team, and maybe this time we missed a bit of understanding between us.

"I mean, it was 100% my fault. But yeah, it's always useful to get feedback and have more information before the race."

WHY DIDN'T OTHERS PIT?

Bagnaia's works Ducati team-mate Enea Bastianini was the first rider who had the chance to react to Martin's decision - running third behind the title protagonists in that moment.

And Bastianini offered a wonderfully exotic explanation for why he didn't follow Martin's lead, suggesting that his local knowledge had guided him the right way in the nominally-Sammarinese but territorially-Italian race.

"I thought to stay out," he told MotoGP.com. "Because here when it starts to rain, when it rains a lot, the track smells a bit.

"It smells a bit of water. And today no. Also it was cloudy but not too much.

"I thought 'OK, it will be a light rain, I prefer to continue', at the end it was the correct choice."

Bagnaia corroborated this, pointing out that it simply didn't smell like it had when it rained on Thursday.

He also said he, unlike Martin, had kept a close eye on the radar pre-race and knew heavy rain would not come - a revelation that was followed by a humorous exchange with race winner and his 2025 team-mate Marc Marquez about team manager Davide Tardozzi's weather prognostications.

Bagnaia: I was quite sure the rain was not arriving. But Davide before the race said it would not rain. So... [Bagnaia makes a face]

Marquez: So next year I shouldn't believe Davide?

Bagnaia: Never believe Davide in terms of forecast. But it's incredible, eh? Every time he says a thing, it's the opposite. Every time.

Marquez, of course, has a famously keen sense for the conditions, and when asked whether he'd considered pitting when Martin did, he tellingly told MotoGP.com: "No. No. No-no-no."

But he did acknowledge that Martin hadn't done something "very crazy" and hinted it was potentially a race-winning move had the rain simply kept at the same level.

"It's true that I said 'I will follow the local guys'," Marquez said, chuckling. "And the local guys stayed out. They know better than me. I said 'if they stay out, I stay out'."

Yamaha's Fabio Quartararo echoed Marquez's view that the track was heading towards being untenable for slicks.

"Luckily the track dried pretty fast. One more lap of it raining would have been quite critical, because I could see from the kerbs that if you were riding with lean angle the bike was completely spinning.

"For me, I had nothing to lose. If I had put in the rain tyres I knew I would have finished at the back, but I thought I would play."

But Jack Miller - who characteristically surged forward for a while in the wet - was "trying to do maths in my head - but I'm not really good at math" in terms of laptimes, and he was convinced the rain would've had to get heavier still to warrant a switch to wets.

He, and most of the field, was right. The championship leader wasn’t.