The sun and the heat returned at the Sachsenring today, setting the perfect stage for a packed-action Super Saturday of MotoGP! After qualifying in 10th on the grid, Pedro Acosta's mistake in the Tissot Sprint saw him finish at the back, in P22, a result far from the potential shown so far in Germany, while Augusto Fernandez finished P16 after qualifying in fifteenth on the grid.

Augusto Fernandez returned to his garage eager for more after one of the best Fridays of 2024 so far, as we saw the Red Bull GASGAS Tech3 rider be much more competitive all day through. He did not make it to the top 10 after PR, and sat in P15, but he finished just 0.329 seconds from the Q2 tickets, an extremely encouraging result. In P15 after Free Practice 2 a bit more than one second from the fastest time, Augusto Fernandez took his chance in qualifying 1 as he exited early into the session behind Sachsenring king Marc Marquez. In his first run, he set a 1’20.419 placing him provisionally in third. He did not improve his time in the final time attack session, and that lap placed him in P15 on the grid. As lights of the Tissot Sprint went out in the afternoon, Augusto did not take the best start and lost some positions to P17. From there, he had to recover the lost ground on the rest of the riders. Although he rode at a decent race pace, he could not make up for the lost time. Eventually he finished in 16th. The results are not there yet on the paper, but Augusto has been closer to his rivals so far this weekend, so let’s try to make the difference in the main race.

Despite two crashes on Friday, rookie Pedro Acosta made the top 10 cut in a tight Practice, finishing 8th. As track conditions look much better than yesterday, lap times flew all over the place on Saturday morning in qualifying. Before that, final adjustments were made in Free Practice 2, one that Acosta closed with the tenth fastest time in 1’21.124 (+0.771 secs). At 11:15, the fight for the ultimate pole position before the summer break kicked off. Pedro Acosta set a lap in 1’20.348, one that placed him 10th on the grid. As the lights went out for fifteen laps of sprint bliss at 15:00 LT, Acosta dropped a few positions in the first turns to exit lap one in P14, but we saw the rookie making it back progressively to the top 10, as he passed the likes of Fabio Quartararo, Marco Bezzecchi, Jack Miller and Alex Marquez, with Brad Binder at sight. Lap 3 was his fastest in 1’20.955, the 8th fastest lap of the sprint. Ahead, Marc Marquez was going all in to make it up from his P13 on the grid. Acosta was riding at a solid pace, almost closing the gap on Alex Marquez who had passed him, but we saw him making a mistake in sector 4 as he went straight. That meant he lost all the positions and found himself at the back, and he logically finished in P22. The young Shark will be looking forward to the main race on Sunday as he hopes to take better advantage of his tenth place on the grid, when lights go out on Sunday at 14:00 local time (GMT+2).