Moto3: Foggia takes Mugello win, Acosta maintains points lead

The sixth round of the 2021 Moto3 World Championship took place at the legendary Mugello circuit in Italy. Tatsuki Suzuki started from pole position.

It was a good start for the whole front row, and Pedro Acosta was the one who took the holeshot on his first start from the top three, and the Spaniard led the first lap.

Early on, the group was 15 strong, and the only clear thing about it was that Dennis Foggia’s #7 Leopard Honda was, as usual, monstrously fast. There was almost no comparison between his machine and the others. It has been like this in Moto3 since the days of Danny Kent when he won his world title with Leopard, and still it is the aquamarine machines that have the all-important advantage in the straight, which is even more important in Mugello.

This much was continuously proved by Foggia throughout the race, as even when he dropped from the top 10 he was able to fight his way back inside it and into the leading battle once more. The slipstream is always important to manage in Mugello, and when you’re battling 14 other riders that management becomes even more complicated. It is part of what makes the qualifying strategy so difficult, because you have to plan around the uncontrollable variables of all of your competitors, and doing that 15 laps from the finish at 240kph takes a particular intelligence. 

Foggia proved to have that in this year’s edition of the Italian Grand Prix, as he came out on top in the battle of the top 15 for the podium. The Italian had the fastest bike, which probably made the strategy easier to manage, but there were also some strong moves put in by the #7, one in particular on Ayumu Sasaki on the change of direction between Materassi and Borgo San Lorenzo with just a couple of laps to go. Moves like that allowed him to be in the position to use his straight line speed, which he hasn’t been able to take advantage of more often than not this year. Foggia has a tendency to be inconsistent. After his win in Brno last year he was 21st and 12th in the next two races in Austria; and after his podium earlier this year in Portugal, he crashed out in Spain and finished 18th in France. Next week in Barcelona we will see if Foggia can carry some momentum from this home grand prix victory. 

Joining Foggia on the podium were Jaume Masia and Gabriel Rodrigo. For Masia, it was his first podium since winning at round one in Qatar, one that moves him back up into second in the championship; and for Rodrigo his first since the 2018 Catalan Grand Prix. 

Ayumu Sasaki was quite special to finish fourth considering his experience on Saturday and his involvement in the incident which has left Jason Dupasquier in hospital. Of course, Sasaki will have known there was little he could have done about the crash, but that would not have detracted from the physical pain he will have endured in the race today, in which he equalled his best finish of the season to move up to third in the championship. 

With Pedro Acosta retaining his championship lead, now standing at 52 points over Masia with his seventh-placed finish in Italy, it is a Red Bull KTM 1-2-3 in the championship, a testament to the effort applied to the lightweight class by the Austrian factory, who are building a quite the pipeline of talent to potentially pilot their RC16 MotoGP machine in the future. 

Between Sasaki in fourth and Acosta in seventh were Darryn Binder and Romano Fenati, who both had strong rides but were unable to find the right track position for the final lap. Meanwhile, behind Acosta over the line were Sergio Garcia, John McPhee, and Tatsuki Suzuki. 

Filip Salac was 11th, ahead of Kaito Toba, Niccolo Antonelli, Stefano Nepa and Jeremy Alcoba who took the final point in 15th. 

In 16th was Xavi Artigas, ahead of Izan Guevara, Riccardo Rossi, Lorenzo Fellon, and wildcard Elia Bartolini who completed the top 20 in his first grand prix. Andi Izdihar and Takuma Matsuyama were 21st and 22nd, respectively. 

All six of the retirements happened on the first lap, with Adrian Fernandez and wildcard Alberto Surra going out at the first turn when Surra suddenly lost momentum leaving Fernandez with nowhere to go. Then, at the Savelli corner, Deniz Oncu crashed on his own, before Maximilian Kofler highsided, his rogue motorcycle then collecting Andrea Migno and Carlos Tatay. Everyone seemed okay, apart from some sporting depression for Andrea Migno, who had been fast all weekend, and Kofler was caught up with one of the bikes in the gravel.