Moto3: Austrian agony for Oncu as Garcia takes win with last lap pass

The 10th round of the 2021 Moto3 World Championship, the Austrian Grand Prix, saw the series return to the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg for the second time in the space of a week. Romano Fenati started from his first pole position since the British Grand Prix in 2017, as he went in search of his first victory of the season.

At the start, Romano Fenati made the perfect launch, and got the holeshot at turn one, leading from Tatsuki Suzuki and Deniz Oncu, the Turk taking the lead at turn four on the opening tour.

Oncu went on to lead lap one, and engaged in battle with Fenati and Pedro Acosta, who joined the front two to fight over the lead, slightly detached from Masia behind in fourth. 

Masia was able to erase the gap between himself and the leading trio on lap six, bringing Dennis foggia and Sergio Garcia with him, and these six would fight for the victory until the end. 

Oncu was the standout rider among them, leading for a vast period in the second half of the race. As Acosta, Masia, Fenati and Garcia battled behind him, the #53 was able to establish himself small margins of advantage to protect his lead. 

Indeed, it was Oncu who led onto the final lap, ahead of Acosta, who had a small gap back to Garcia. Acosta made his move for the lead at turn three, but ran wide on the exit. Oncu duly took advantage, and the lead back, squeezing Acosta to the edge of the kerb as he did so. 

Acosta lost drive as a result of Oncu’s defence, which opened the door for Garcia to challenge his title rival. Acosta blocked the line well on the straight between turns three and four, and his late braking meant Garcia had to push right on the limit to pass the #37. Garcia missed the corner slightly, but he had taken the line away from Acosta who, in trying to out-drive his rival on the exit of turn four and through turn five, lost the rear and almost threw himself out the front door. 

Garcia was able to make a strong third sector, carrying good speed through turns six, seven and eight, and finally was able to be in position to make his move on Oncu for the lead at turn nine. 

Garcia had crashed at turn nine on the final lap last week, but this time he executed perfectly the move on Oncu, and covered the line brilliantly into turn 10. It was a fantastic final lap from Garcia, who took his third win of the season, and closed his championship deficit to Acosta down to 41 points. 

It was more disappointment for Deniz Oncu, who led comfortably for so much of the race. But, quite simply, Garcia had the better race craft on the final lap. It is coming for the young Turk, though, and surely before the year is out he will have many more opportunities to take that first victory in the World Championship.

While Garcia was taking first place from Oncu, Dennis Foggia was taking third from Acosta. The Italian had been mostly anonymous for the majority of the race, only really coming into play at turn three on the penultimate lap when he moved up into the podium battle. It is undeniable that Foggia only had the chance to make the podium because of Acosta’s mistake at turn four on the final lap, but the important thing when a rival makes a mistake is to take advantage of that error, and make them pay. That is precisely what Foggia did to Acosta, making a solid move down the inside of the championship leader at turn nine, and giving the Spaniard no space to reply at turn 10. A good ride and a good result for the #7, especially after not scoring in the mixed conditions one week ago.

It is strange to see Pedro Acosta out-battled on a final lap, but that is what happened in Austria. Perhaps, he is not immortal in the lightweight class, as some would seem to make the case for. However, it is important to not treat this race disproportionately. Acosta made two mistakes on the final lap and one other in the race, where he was deep into turn four and nearly collected Oncu, who was leading at the time. He spent the entirety of the final 10 laps with a track limits warning, and from what was probably his worst final lap of the season he came away with fourth place and a championship lead that is still more than 40 points. 

Behind Acosta was pole sitter Fenati, whose pace seemed to run out in the closing stages of the race. The Italian completed the top five ahead of Jaume Masia, who was once more beaten up by his competitors in the battle, and then John McPhee in seventh. 

Izan Guevara started 11th, and by lap five he was 15th. From there, he fought his way back to be in podium contention by the penultimate lap. However, he was pushed back from sixth by Jaume Masia and John McPhee in the final lap. Nonetheless, a strong ride from the rookie, whose impressive season is – somewhat fairly, somewhat unfairly – lost beneath the excellence of his compatriot and fellow rookie, Acosta.

Darryn Binder finished ninth having fought for the top six for much of the race. He was also involved in the incident which ended Ayumu Sasaki’s race, but the FIM MotoGP Stewards decided that the #40 had done nothing wrong. This was the right decision. The contact between the two was unfortunate, but more unfortunate was that it appeared to be the right handlebar of Sasaki that touched with Binder. The Japanese could do nothing, but if the Stewards were to penalise that move, they were to penalise hard racing. Sometimes hard racing doesn’t work out for everyone involved, but that does not automatically mean that someone was at fault.

The top 10 was completed by Kaito Toba, who finished ahead of Tatsuki Suzuki in 11th. Filip Salac was 12th, ahead of Stefano Nepa, Jeremy Alcoba and Andi Izdihar, who completed the points. 

Carlos Tatay, who returned to action this weekend after missing last week’s race, finished 16th, ahead of Lorenzo Fellon in 17th, Yuki Kunii in 18th and Riccardo Rossi in 19th.

Gabriel Rodrigo came back from pit lane and a ride through penalty – for taking out Ryusei Yamanaka (who did not start for a broken wrist sustained in the incident with Rodrigo yesterday) and Tatsuki Suzuki in two separate incidents on Saturday – to finish 20th, ahead of David Salvador, who took out his teammate Andrea Migno early on. Maximilian Kofler missed out on successive points scoring finishes in 21st, while Elia Bartolini finished 23rd and last of the classified finishers.

Andrea Migno and Ayumu Sasaki were joined on the sidelines by only one other rider, that being Adrian Fernandez, who retired seemingly with a mechanical issue. Only three retirements is perhaps a symptom of only having between six and eight riders in the lead group at any one time, instead of 15 or 20. This Austrian Grand Prix was a fantastic race because of the smaller front group.