The intrigue and discord surrounding Martin's frightening crash

Jorge Martin's MotoGP pre-season-wrecking crash at Sepang has been a source of much intrigue - and considerable behind-the-scenes discord - in the championship's paddock.

And MotoGP's control tyre manufacturer Michelin has now found itself denying suggestions that its product might be responsible - following Aprilia's insistence that neither rider error nor bike fault could account for the incident.

The crash, which was actually Martin’s second highside in only 45 minutes, came at the Malaysian circuit’s Turn 2 only two hours into the start of track action on Wednesday. It was a vicious off-throttle highside, spitting Martin into the air then the asphalt and leaving him with a broken metacarpal in his right hand and three fractured metatarsals in his left foot. He also suffered a significant head impact in the crash - with pieces coming off his helmet - but avoided any obvious injury from that.

Speaking to the media after the crash, Aprilia team boss Massimo Rivola made it abundantly clear that his team would be holding out for a satisfactory explanation to the accident - because it couldn't find one on its side.

“It was a bad crash for apparently no reason,” he explained. “No mistake from his side, no mistake from the bike’s side.

“The tyres were in the right pressure and right temperature - but we have no explanation, in fact.

“I will leave it to you to get more information. I just asked to know the curriculum, the history of the [rear] tyre. If it is a fresh one or an old one.”

Teams and riders are limited in how critical they can publicly be of the product given Michelin's contract with the championship - but Rivola’s careful words are very much reflective of the fury within Aprilia at the loss of its star rider only half a day into the 2025 season.

Michelin boss Piero Taramasso says the company has taken the same approach it usually does when an issue with tyres is suggested or suspected.

“Of course when something like this happens,” he explained, “we look at the tyre and at the data.

“Last night, Aprilia sent us the data, so now we’ll look more deeply on that, but the first thing we looked at was the history of the tyre, and from that there’s nothing strange.

"The tyre was built last season, it was never warmed up - it’s not a preheated one.

“This is the specification that we use in several tracks like Assen, Aragon, Silverstone, Barcelona, Misano.

“It’s a tyre that normally works well, and there was nothing strange about it.”

It’s worth noting that - amid an unusually crash-heavy first day of testing - there has been criticism of not so much the tyres themselves but the allocation provided by Michelin in terms of how it fits the track.

“We have not enough soft tyres on the rear,” explained Martin’s team-mate Marco Bezzecchi, "and that is the only one that is working here in Sepang.

“When I ride with the medium rear [the tyre Martin was using when he crashed], it is very difficult, very tricky. The grip level is very low. I don’t know about the crashes from the other riders, but that’s what I felt from my riding.”

Ducati's Pecco Bagnaia was another rider to allude to this, and even described Tuesday as a day to "sacrifice" in order to save the actual useable rear tyre for later in the test.

This was @88jorgemartin's awful highside in his first hours with the number 1 plate