MotoGP Austria Practice: Acosta dominates, Bezzecchi scrapes through, Bagnaia sinks

Friday’s MotoGP Practice ends with Pedro Acosta topping the timesheets. After already taking FP1 in the morning, the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider put himself ahead of everyone with a best lap of 1'28"371.

With 13 minutes left in the session, Alex Marquez crashed on the straight after Turn 1: Gresini’s number 73 Ducati was heavily damaged in the incident. The red flag was shown, but the rider suffered no significant physical consequences and later returned to action with the other Desmosedici available in the garage. The stoppage was due to the need to clean up the track.

Acosta is eager to win his first MotoGP race, and KTM’s home GP is the perfect opportunity to achieve that goal. Closest to him are Fermin Aldeguer on the BK8 Gresini Ducati GP25 and the returning Ai Ogura on the SuperFile Trackhouse Aprilia.

Reigning champion Marc Marquez finished fourth, 204 thousandths behind his future teammate. Also in the top 5 is Jorge Martin with the factory team’s No. 89 Aprilia.

Fabio Di Giannantonio set the sixth fastest time with the Pertamina VR46 team’s Ducati, ahead of Brad Binder’s KTM. Also going straight into Q2 are Alex Marquez, Marco Bezzecchi, and Fabio Quartararo. Bez struggled a bit; there will certainly be work to do in the Aprilia garage to understand what the Rimini rider is missing.

Luca Marini was pipped by Quartararo by just a few thousandths. Pecco Bagnaia only 18th, 885 thousandths off, and into Q1 for the fifth Grand Prix in a row. Raul Fernandez also had a tough time with the other Trackhouse Aprilia; his 19th time at the Red Bull Ring is surprising.

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