Jorge Martin had passed Marc Marquez and was pulling clear of the field at the San Marino Grand Prix on Sunday when his forearm gave out. The Aprilia rider dropped from the lead to fifth, losing almost a second per lap to the leaders, and crossed the line 14 seconds behind the winner, Marquez.

The 2024 world champion described losing control of the bike lap by lap.

“I started to have issues with braking, then opening the throttle, and every lap was worse and worse,” Martin said after the race. “At the end, I couldn’t do anything; I was completely out of control of the bike.”

The collapse handed the championship lead to Marquez, who now sits level with Martin on 274 points but ahead on countback after five victories to Martin’s one this season. Martin had held a 40-point cushion, 193 to 153, as recently as the Assen weekend at the end of June.

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Barcelona check-up on Wednesday

Martin last underwent arm-pump surgery in 2019 and had been symptom-free since. Misano is in fact a circuit where he says he routinely feels the condition on Friday and then recovers, but this weekend the problem worsened rather than eased, and blocked his right forearm completely by mid-race. He will see upper-limb specialists in Barcelona on Wednesday, then travel to Spielberg for the Austrian round.

“Going under the knife can always bring complications and it is something that has to be carefully assessed,” Martin told reporters, with eight rounds scheduled in the nine weeks between Misano and the Valencia finale in November.

Austria will be the first test

The Red Bull Ring weekend on 18-20 September is the first read on whether the arm can be managed race by race. If it holds, Martin fights on. If it does not, the surgical window opens straight after Austria, ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix at Motegi on 4 October.

Martin was blunt about what is at stake.

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“It could be the big issue of losing this championship or not,” he told reporters at Misano.

He also flagged what other riders have told him about how the condition can behave years after an operation.

“I had arm pump back in 2019 and had surgery for it then. I haven’t had any problems since then. But I know from other riders that the problems returned years later,” Martin told Speedweek.

His next assessment is the Wednesday consult in Barcelona; the next race is at the Red Bull Ring on Friday.

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