Penalty adds to Martin's messy day

MotoGP title contender Jorge Martin’s messy start to the Spanish Grand Prix weekend continued with a three-place grid penalty for blocking Jerez pacesetter Alex Marquez.

The stewards ruled that Aprilia rider Martin had impeded Marquez’s Gresini Ducati through Turns 3 and 4 in the final two minutes of the afternoon session.

The penalty applies only to the main race on Sunday, not the sprint.

It was the culmination of an odd day in which Martin crashed both on his post-session lap round to the grid to do a practice start in the morning then into the final corner in the afternoon. He admitted Friday had been "a bit of a mess" overall.

Though he hinted that there had been other technical problems with his bikes during the day, he said those falls were entirely down to not giving enough margin for his tyres being cold.

“Just a lack of temperature,” he explained.

“So maybe a bit of some mistakes from my side. But nothing to worry about. It's just normal crashes because of cooling the front tyre.

“And if tomorrow we have this weather, I have to be more careful with this.”

Martin made it straight through to Q2 in ninth place, and said his main objective for Friday had just been to improve his soft tyre pace and give himself a better chance in qualifying - which has been his main struggle lately.

“With the soft, we are really focused on that because it's where I had some issues in the past,” Martin admitted.

“But we are making steps with the soft. The main target, I was able to go through Q2 just with one time attack because I had some issues and I couldn't make two time attacks. So I'm happy, it's acceptable to say that we are into Q2.”