Acosta tops Practice as KTM chases home win

Pedro Acosta completed a perfect first day at KTM’s home race as the factory star led the way in Practice at the Austrian Grand Prix on Friday.

Acosta, who is seeking his first MotoGP win before leaving KTM at the end of the year, will be joined in Q2 on Saturday by joint championship leaders Marc Marquez (Ducati) and Jorge Martin (Aprilia), as well as their nearest challenger Marco Bezzecchi (Aprilia).

Having topped the Free Practice 1 session in the morning, Acosta resumed his apparent domination of the day by shooting straight to the top of the timesheets in the afternoon. He remained there as most of the pack worked on setups for the races on the weekend, and went into the more competitive final quarter of an hour with a margin of almost half a second over the field.

First to crack as the competitive action hotted up was Alex Marquez, who lost it on the way out of Turn 1 despite having picked up his Gresini Ducati to vertical. This puzzling accident brought out the red flag, but not before his brother Marc had banked his first serious flying lap and moved up to second place on the timesheets.

But despite a yellow flag putting paid to Acosta’s parallel effort just before the stoppage, the KTM man was still sitting pretty with an edge of 0.491s.

The session resumed with just under 12 minutes left on the clock: time enough for two runs. Several big names, including Bezzecchi, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Francesco Bagnaia and Raul Fernandez were out of the critical top 10 at that point. Alex Marquez, now on his spare bike, also had work to do to book a safe passage into Q2.

While Bezzecchi, Di Giannantonio and Alex Marquez were able to produce times good enough for the top 10 during a tense final few minutes, Bagnaia and Fernandez could not even come close.

Up at the front, meanwhile, Acosta ruled the roost all the way to the end. While Fermin Aldeguer was able to close to within just over a tenth of his fellow Murcian, Acosta looked to have plenty in hand. Indeed, he rolled out of his final lap after setting the fastest times of the afternoon in the first three sectors.

Ai Ogura impressed on his return to racing action with third-fastest time aboard the Trackhouse Aprilia, while Marc Marquez will have to face more questions about whether he was showing his true pace after clocking fourth-fastest time. Martin was fifth on the factory Aprilia.

Surprises inside the top 10 included former Spielberg winner Brad Binder on the second factory KTM and Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo, who knocked Honda’s Luca Marini out of 10th spot after the chequered flag.

We want to hear from you!

– The Autosport.com Team