2021 Qatar Moto3 FP1 Result: Acosta Greets The Grid

After a long strange winter, the noise of racing machines was back in our ears to distract us from reality once more. After a successful test, Rookie Pedro Acosta continued to shine in the sands of Qatar and on the rather dusty track surface and took control of the timesheets in the first official session of the season. Eight hundredths of a second behind was the more familiar face of Darryn Binder, thriving on the Petronas Sprinta machine. Ryusei Yamanaka in third was almost three tenths off the South African’s time, ahead of testing headliner Jaume Masia.

Class veteran John McPhee also kept close in fifth position and was the last rider to post a time within four tenths of the leader. Andrea Migno took control of the session early on but dropped down to sixth in the closing stages, ahead of the KTM trio of Jason Dupasquier, Kaito Toba and Stefano Nepa. Izan Guevara was another fairly impressive rookie who performed well throughout testing and followed it up with a top ten in FP1, one second off the leader’s pace.

Several of the usual contenders missed out on the top ten but are waiting to pounce as the weekend progresses and conditions improve. One of those men will be Tatsuki Suzuki, although the Japanese rider’s mountain will be a little harder to climb after missing out on testing having tested positive for Covid-19.

Results: