Algarve GP
The Murcian champion was proclaimed with the victory in a heart race in which Dennis Foggia crashed on the last lap after an error by another pilot
The way in which the fight for the Moto3 World Championship was closed became a summary of what this category is at the moment. Also in the exemplification of what Pedro Acosta is as a pilot. “If I don’t put emotion on it, who will put it on?” Said the Murcian with a smile on Saturday after qualifying fourteenth on the grid, ten places behind his rival, Dennis Foggia, who since August had been taking bite after bite to the advantage of the leader since the second race of the year. There was speculation about several things before the test: if the KTMs were going to help Acosta, if the Hondas were going to do the same with Foggia, if the teammates of these two, Jaume Masiá in the first case, Xavi Artigas in the second, they were going to act as squires, if Acosta was going to pull a calculator … Nothing at all.
Foggia showed his level from the start, with a first attack that sought to take advantage of the space that the grid had given him compared to the first in the general classification. A rhythm to try to escape, something almost impossible in Moto3, and more so on a track like the Portuguese one, with a straight where the slipstreams shorten the differences and frustrate the breaks. And Acosta also did what he had to do once the traffic light went off: climb positions without pause, so as not to give his rival that escape option, which took him in four laps to fourth place, a moment of the test in the one that seemed to have formed a small group of four (also with Darryn Binder and Artigas) that at that time offered a good panorama to the leader. Because in the worst case scenario, he could lose twelve points with Foggia if he won and he closed the squad, which would have made him stand in Valencia with a mattress of nine. Although this situation did not last long, until Moto3 decided to be Moto3 and show its most boisterous face.
Four turns later the reunification of the grid began, until a group was formed that in some moments reached fourteen members. The typical Moto3 panorama. And with all the drivers, with the exception of Foggia, fighting each curve as if it were the last, without distinction of colors, nationalities or brands. Masiá attacked Acosta (he passed in one lap, the 13th, from helping his partner with his rival to take a place from him in the next); Acosta played it, true to his style, in each set; Sergio García, returned after an injury, was looking for the gaps as best he could; and Binder did his thing, with a final act that advanced the outcome of the race.
Final fireworks
Foggia was trying with moderation to take the first place to look for those 25 points that would keep him alive, something that Acosta fought against. And so he got to the start of the last lap, until Mazarrón took the lead from him, a position for which he could no longer fight, because Binder put in his motorcycle without blinking and without measure, and took him to the ground, next to García . Point and end to the comeback, point and end to the championship. Unopposed, Acosta headed to the finish line to add his sixth victory of the season and confirm himself as Moto3 world champion at the age of 17, the youngest Spaniard to do so.
“Since Friday I already said that it could be here, because with the change we made in Misano I felt very comfortable, I regained that feeling in the braking that we had lost at one point in the year. If there was a circuit to do it, it was this one ”, explained the twenty-second Spanish world champion. «Yesterday it was not very reflected how it had gone, because we were working looking for the rhythm and I think that today it has been demonstrated. Leaving from behind, we have come fast. I couldn’t have imagined a better day, ”analyzed the man who has caused a revolution this year in the motor world in his World Championship debut. «The boom that was generated around me I don’t think anyone has assumed it yet. It was like when Alonso went to Formula 1. You had to abstract yourself from everything, do the only thing we know how to do. I have grown a lot as a person because I have been fortunate since I was little to have people around me who tell me things clearly, who tell me when I do it wrong, “said the champion. An apprenticeship that will come in handy for your next adventure: the jump to Moto2 in 2022.
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