MotoGP world champion crashes out AFTER winning race

MotoGP

MotoGP world champion crashes out AFTER winning race

The reverse Oscar Piastri?

Chris Deeley Editor

Experienced sports writer covering F1 and other motorsports since 2023

Sunday 29 March 2026 17:54

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There are certain times when a motorcyclist just shouldn't do a wheelie.

A little background, before we get to the Looney Tunes crash you're here for. Jorge Martin has had, it's fair to say, a nightmare year or so since securing a stunning MotoGP world championship in Valencia in November 2024.

After becoming the first rider in the MotoGP era to win the championship with a satellite team, Martin moved to Asprilla for 2025. That partnership started poorly, with a heavy crash in pre-season testing leaving him with fractures in his left foot and right hand, requiring surgery and putting him out of the rest of testing.

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While recovering and training, he crashed again and required surgery on a fractured left hand. He missed the first three races of the season before being medically cleared by round 4 in Qatar – yay! – but crashed on lap 14 and was hit by another rider's bike, breaking 12 ribs and causing a lung issue bad enough to require hospitalisation. Not yay.

Remarkably, he was back in the saddle just three months later. That lasted just five races, before he misjudged a sprint race start, hit team-mate Marco Bezzecchi, broke his shoulder and didn't make it back until the season finale two months down the line.

MotoGP star unharmed by high-speed wheelie crash

All of this is to say, it would be a really good time for Martin, whose season-end exit from the team is already confirmed, to exercise a little bit of restraint.

Having finally returned to the podium last weekend in Brazil, Martin moved onto this weekend's racing at COTA and won a dramatic sprint race to take a one-point lead in the championship. And did a wheelie to celebrate. And crashed.

Miraculously, the unusually high-speed wheelie appears to have left the 2024 champion unharmed.

He was asked pretty bluntly by rival Pedro Acosta in their pre-podium trip to the grid, 'how the f*** did you crash?'

"Bro," he replied, "doing a wheelie in fourth gear! I was doing a normal wheelie and it got stuck sideways, and I thought 'I can't stop!' So I kept upshifting, third, fourth, and thought 'right, I'll drop it', and when I was coming down it went 'FOOM' and I crashed at 200km/h."

Liberty Media, who own both F1 and MotoGP, have certainly got more value than they might've expected from pre-race and post-race laps through just three rounds of each championship in 2026, with Martin's embarrassing crash added to F1 star Oscar Piastri's humbling crash on the way to the grid at his home Australian Grand Prix.

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