A Win For The Ages 🏆

Hi everyone, 

So, where do start on that one? From when the chequered flag dropped – well, maybe a corner or two before that to be honest – I was on this massive rollercoaster of emotions. One minute crying like a baby, the next one fist-pumping and high-fiving everyone in sight. The feelings are hard to put into words really. So I'll do my best – and I better do it quick because my voice is pretty much gone after talking for the last two hours solid, and it'll be completely gone by tomorrow I'd reckon.

It's been a long time – I was told the win at Assen 2016 was my 25th MotoGP race, today was my 103rd. The last time I won was a big old shock in the wet, I was a kid really ... this one, I've worked my arse off so much since to arrive here and get this, so it means so much. 

Everyone at Ducati has had my back despite me being well off my best this year until this weekend, and I can't tell you how much that means. Of course you hear the noise from the outside, and believe me I was desperate to do well. Nobody can put more pressure on me than I do on myself, it's just the way I am. I want to do well for me, for the team, and get the results I believe I can achieve. So for everyone at Ducati to stick with me, be there for the bad and all of that, makes the good even better for me and I hope for them as well. It feels amazing to get a 1-2 here with my teammate Pecco (Bagnaia), it'd been a long time since Ducati won here, Loris Capirossi in 2006. I was 11 at the time! So, that's a fair way to snap a drought! 

It's hard to be too reflective so soon after a win, but what this weekend does show me was that the approach I took for Jerez paid off. I came here wanting to be quiet and put my head down, work away methodically in FP1 on Friday and FP4 before qualifying just to do laps on my own, do my own thing. So when Fabio (Quartararo) started to come back to me in the race, and I knew I wasn't under pressure from behind and sitting in second, it was time to go for it. Get out front, do the laps like I'd done them in practice, put my head down. I'd done the time out there by myself, and now it was time to repeat that. There were a lot of laps left – nine I think it was – and that's a long time to be out the front by yourself when there's that much on the line. But you've got to have a crack at it, don't you? I don't think I've ever ridden that precise in my entire life, 25 laps in a row like that felt fantastic. 

I've never won a race like that in my life, they've always been battles or something like that at the last corner. I've always wondered what it would be like to do the old Jorge Lorenzo-style race, get out the front and cruise home the last five laps, so I'm glad I did that – but it's not as easy as it looks. The more time you have to think, the more you can trip yourself up.   

To hear everyone clapping and applauding in the pit lane when I came back in after the race, that's one of the biggest memories I'll have from today. I try to be a genuine person, try to be happy and say hello to everyone, and maybe this connection means something … I feel like there's a lot of people who want me to do well. I don't try to be anyone else, just be me and hopefully people like that. Some of them might not, but that's OK, I'll just be genuine. So coming back into the pit lane, seeing all these people who were happy for me for just being me … that was awesome. 

Winning takes a bit of a load off, but we learned something this weekend about how to work and that's what we need to do week after week now, because we know it works. But that's for Le Mans in a couple of weeks. We have a test here at Jerez on Monday and there might be a few beers going down at some stage in the next little while too. I want to thank everyone for their support and I'll try to do it again soon, eh?

Cheers, Jack