With the MotoGP paddock assembled again at the Red Bull Ring in Austria, it was time for the annual “what I did on my summer vacation” essay by the MotoGP riders. Which are usually pretty much identical: a week of actual holidays, followed by two weeks of training and conditioning to prepare for the second half of the season. If I were a teacher, I would accuse them all of having copied each other’s homework.
To be fair to the riders, the length of the break didn’t give them much choice in the matter. The second half of the season are five pairs of back-to-back races, with little time to train and prepare in between. The objective for the summer break was to build up some strength and fitness to last through to November.
That was particularly true for Jorge Martin. Though he already returned to action at Brno, that was more like familiarizing himself with the bike than actually trying to be competitive. “I feel like in Misano and then Brno we did four preseason days,” the Aprilia racing rider told us. The break gave him time to focus on his fitness again.
“It was super good, because I recovered a lot of time which I lost because of the injury,” Martin said. “It was a bit different than a usual summer break. I trained more motorbike, I trained more physical condition. I had three or four days to rest, but the rest was like a preseason for me because I had to prepare this second half of the year which will be a long one, really intense.”
