Red Bull GASGAS Tech3 leaves paradisiac Lombok island full of dreams after Pedro Acosta grabbed his fourth Sunday podium in MotoGP™, brilliantly finishing 2nd of the Pertamina Grand Prix of Indonesia. It was not without any stress though, after he was under investigation for tyre pressure post race, but luckily, P2 got confirmed for good and it was time to celebrate in the garage for real! Augusto Fernandez was unlucky and was forced to retire following a technical issue on his bike.

Was a weekend from the rookie again. Wrapping the morning's ten minute-warm up in 4th after 7 laps, Pedro Acosta was ready to go, looking to improve from his 6th Tissot Sprint result from the past day. From his third position on the grid, the shark took a rocket start to hold P3 and exit T1 behind Jorge Martin and Enea Bastianini, with Marco Bezzecchi just behind. With hot first laps, Pedro made a nice and clean move on Bastianini in the final turns of lap 3 to start the fourth lap in second, while Martin had already dug a small gap of 1.3 seconds at the front. Behind, Franco Morbidelli had overtaken Bezzecchi, and his comeback on Bastia gave Pedro some space to breathe a bit and grow a small gap of 0.6 seconds. With ten laps done, Martin was one second ahead of Acosta who had himself grown the gap on the third by 1.2 seconds, but we also started seeing the medium tyres coming into effect with laps going down and more riders pushing at the back. The 1-2 Martin-Acosta settled for a while as four riders behind were battling out for 3rd, with Bastianini blocked by Morbidelli, and that allowed the shark to grow his gap even bigger to 2.5 seconds from 3rd. Eventually on lap 16 Bastia finally moved up to 3rd. Beast unleashed, the shark was soon going to be under threat. As 7 laps remained, Bastia was coming back in hot on Acosta, but the #23 crashed in T1 on lap 20 giving Acosta a much needed break, and he found himself 3.5 seconds from the next rider, Morbidelli. After a missed start, Francesco Bagnaia had gone past Morbidelli with just 5 laps remaining, and that was 5 long laps to try keeping it cool, as a fourth podium in MotoGP™ appeared to be on the horizon for the young rookie. That was job complete for Acosta who crossed the line in 2nd! Incredible performance from the rookie, who starts the overseas tour in the best way possible!

After his crash in the Tissot Sprint on Saturday, Augusto Fernandez was hoping for better fortune on Sunday, but it was just not. Starting from the back of the grid again in P21, Augusto took a rather good start to gain some positions, and the multi-rider crash of the opening lap allowed him to gain a total of 7 places as he exited lap 1 in 14th, behind Fabio Quartararo. Fernandez tried to settle into his race pace but struggled a bit to find confidence with the new tyres, and it is only halfway through the race that we saw his lap times get better. He had already been overtaken by Takaaki Nakagami since lap 7 for a while, when a technical issue occured on Augusto’s bike, forcing him to retire from the race 8 laps before the checkered flag. It is another DNF for the #37, but there were some positives from the second half of his race that he will take to the next race, as the team will now travel for the final round of this tripleheader, the Japanese Grand Prix!