Pol Espargaró and Jorge Martin’s return: “The fear comes in the hours before getting on the bike.”

Returning to the track after a serious accident is one of the toughest challenges a MotoGP rider can face. The body heals with time; the mind doesn’t. Jorge Martin is confronting exactly this as he returns to racing, and according to Pol Espargaró, he has an unexpected ally: the pressure of the fight for the world title.

The rider from Granollers speaks from firsthand experience. He suffered a serious injury at Portimão and later made his return to the bike. In an interview with the newspaper Mundo Deportivo he explained how a rider’s mind works before and after getting on the bike.

For Espargaró, the real psychological hurdle doesn’t arise on the track, but in the moments of solitude before the race weekend, when the mind anticipates the risks and brings back the worst memories. "The fear comes in the hours beforehand; the day before getting on the bike, you think about how you’ll feel going through that corner, whether things might go wrong or you might crash again," he said.

According to the Catalan rider, the solution is to follow the usual routines to the letter, leaving no room for negative thoughts. And it’s important to remember that "this is a high-risk sport, where what happened to me can happen to you at any moment".

All the tension built up beforehand disappears in an instant when the helmet goes on and the lights go out. "Once you’re on track, there’s no fear. You take natural lines and ride on instinct," Espargaró explained. At over 300 km/h, concentration wipes out all thoughts of risk: "You visualize everything you need to do and stop thinking; you can’t afford the luxury of thinking about anything else".

In Martin’s case, the direct battle for the championship adds another layer to an already complex mental process. For Espargaró, it is precisely this extreme pressure that acts as a barrier against the ghosts of the past. "The pressure of fighting for a world championship takes up so much space in your head that you don’t have time to analyze it," he stressed.

In other words, the need to outperform your direct rival shifts all your attention to the ultimate goal: winning the title. Espargaró warns, however, that managing what happens around a rider during the race weekend isn’t always easy, with the press and the surrounding atmosphere constantly reminding him of the past. The track will show whether the fight for the world championship will really be enough to keep those memories at bay.

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