Business at the Front, Party at the Back: Acosta Wins in Austria
Pedro Acosta finally has his first MotoGP victory, and he did it at KTM's home Grand Prix 24 hours after throwing away the Sprint. Business at the front. The party, one suspects, will follow.
Pedro Acosta had waited 55 MotoGP Grands Prix to win one.
On Saturday, he had a two-and-a-half-second lead in the Sprint with three laps remaining and fell off.
Then he crashed again in warm-up on Sunday morning.
Excellent preparation.
Fortunately, the Sprint isn't really a Grand Prix. It's more of a Grand Prix's impatient younger brother. Same clothes, half the attention span and home in time for tea.
The proper one was on Sunday.
And Acosta won it.
At KTM's home circuit. On the motorcycle he will leave at the end of the season. Twenty-four hours after chucking himself into the gravel while comfortably leading the warm-up act.
This one mattered.
Acosta had been fast from the moment somebody opened the garage on Friday. Fastest in FP1. Fastest again in practice. Front row in qualifying. Comfortably leading Saturday's Sprint before briefly becoming interested in something on his dashboard and crashing at the Turn 2 chicane.
Then, because apparently the lesson required reinforcement, he crashed again during Sunday morning warm-up.
By the time he arrived on the grid he looked furious.
Not wildly furious. Useful furious.
The sort of furious where everyone else should probably make alternative arrangements for the afternoon.
Jorge Martín initially appeared to have other ideas.
The championship leader made the perfect start from pole, while Marco Bezzecchi briefly made it an Aprilia one-two before taking the lead himself. Martín took it straight back.
Acosta, meanwhile, had been shuffled down to fifth.
No panic.
Ten metres here. Another dozen there.
Eventually Bez went.
Then there was Martín.
The interesting thing was what Acosta didn't do.
This is a man whose usual interpretation of half a gap is that somebody has kindly left the door open.
There were opportunities. At one point he got sufficiently close to Martín to realise that continuing with the manoeuvre might result in two motorcycles attempting to occupy the same bit of Austria, so he backed out.
Perhaps Saturday had taught him something.
Not fear, obviously. Nobody appears to have installed that.
Patience.
He sat behind Martín. Watched him. Waited.
Then he passed him.
And that was more or less that.
Martín stayed close enough to ensure nobody in the KTM garage enjoyed lunch, but Acosta controlled the race beautifully. When the gap came down, he responded. When it went beyond a second, he managed it.
No mistakes.
No dashboard.
No gravel.
Very disappointing.
Behind them, Marc Márquez was having a considerably less relaxing Sunday.
He had started second but gradually disappeared backwards. The Ducati looked nervous underneath him, he made mistakes and both Brad Binder and Fermín Aldeguer came past.
At one stage the reigning champion was seventh.
This was significant because Martín was second and MotoGP continues to insist on awarding points for these things.
Marc recovered well. He got Binder back, then Aldeguer, and dragged the Ducati home fifth, 7.339 seconds behind Acosta.
Those recovered places mattered.
He still leaves Austria 12 points behind Martín, but for a period in the middle of the race it looked as though the damage might be considerably worse.
There was another slightly startling aspect to all this.
Ducati had won ten of the previous 12 Austrian Grands Prix.
Their first bike home on Sunday was fifth.
Somebody may want to ring Bologna and make sure everything's all right.
For Martín, second place completed an excellent weekend. Pole position, Sprint victory, second in the actual Grand Prix and, perhaps most importantly after Misano, no repeat of the arm-pump problem which had threatened to become a rather unpleasant subplot to his championship.
He tried to stay with Acosta but eventually the rear tyre simply went away. Afterwards he said he'd initially thought everything was under control before Acosta began gradually disappearing up the road.
There are worse ways to discover things aren't under control than while extending your championship lead.
Bezzecchi took third.
Seven days earlier he'd managed 13 corners of his home Grand Prix before crashing out of the lead at Misano. In Austria he struggled on Friday, worked on his riding overnight and ended the weekend with third in the Sprint and third in the Grand Prix.
He loses a little more ground to Martín but gains on Marc.
More importantly, he has stopped falling away.
With the flyaways coming, that'll do.
Ai Ogura finished fourth, which deserves considerably more attention than fourth normally receives.
He's just returned from a broken thumb, qualified fifth, finished fourth in the Sprint and then finished fourth again over 28 laps on Sunday, only 2.139 seconds behind the winner.
Apparently, rehabilitation is going well.
But this was Acosta's day.
And not simply because he'd finally won.
His entire Grand Prix career is intertwined with KTM. They gave him his opportunity. He won Moto3 and Moto2 world championships with them. They brought him into MotoGP. He has now stood on a premier-class podium 16 times.
The first 15 were missing something fairly obvious.
Nobody in MotoGP history had collected more podiums without winning.
That's gone now.
Crew chief Paul Trevathan was in tears. Senior KTM management looked like people who had spent the previous half-hour being told not to think about something.
Acosta understood what it meant too.
He called it a way of "closing a circle" with KTM before his move to Ducati next season and, in typically elaborate fashion, summarised Saturday by saying he'd "f*cked up".
Hard to improve on that.
He did try, though.
On the slowing-down lap Acosta returned to the Turn 2 chicane where he'd thrown away Saturday's Sprint.
Then he pretended to crash again.
He laid the KTM over, climbed off and laughed.
It was childish, unnecessary and extremely funny.
Twenty-four hours earlier he'd been sitting there wondering how he'd managed to make such a complete hash of things.
Now he was a MotoGP winner.
Which brings us, inevitably, to the hair.
Pedro Acosta is currently sporting what may be the finest mullet in elite sport.
There is an old description of the mullet.
Business at the front. Party at the back.
Well, the business is done.
First MotoGP victory. KTM's home Grand Prix. A weekend which involved two crashes, one enormous, missed opportunity and finally the result everybody has been waiting for since he arrived in the premier class.
As for the party at the back, Acosta has never given the impression that this particular element of elite sport requires much coaching.
Austria may wish to secure any loose furniture.
The shark has finally won a MotoGP race.
And somewhere in Spielberg tonight, that mullet is going to have an absolutely enormous evening.
