It was a red hot Super Saturday that took place at the Cathedral of Speed with a dominating Francesco Bagnaia showing supremacy at the TT Circuit Assen, after he won the Tissot Sprint from the pole position. Red Bull GASGAS Tech3’s Pedro Acosta and Augusto Fernandez qualified in P10 and P22 after the morning’s qualifying ahead of the first fight for the points at stake in the afternoon’s sprint. MotoGP™’s star rookie Acosta was tenth of the 13-lap shootout, and Fernandez finished fifteenth.

After missing out on a direct Q2 ticket in Friday’s Practice, Pedro Acosta had to go through the pre-qualifying stage this morning, one session that he has managed to avoid quite regularly in his young career in the premier class. The GASGAS Tech3 rider pulled a brilliant lap 7/9 in a 1’31.272 in Q1 as thirteen riders fought for just two places, and that one lap was enough for the shark to top the timesheets and head to the next qualifying stage, despite a late crash into the session as we saw him losing the rear. Thanks to the fantastic job of his crew, Pedro was all ready to go for qualifying 2 as he joined MotoGP™ ’s big dogs. His final time-attack was the one powering within the top 10, and Acosta got himself a P10 start for his debuts in the premier class at the iconic Dutch layout. As the lights of the Tissot Sprint went out, Acosta took a rather good start, but got a bit stuck in the first corner, and dropped a few positions. After one lap, he had lost two positions and was in P12 behind Franco Morbidelli. Marc Marquez’ crash at the front saw him going up to eleventh, a position that he held most of the sprint. Miguel Oliveira made a move on him in the final laps, but eventually Acosta regained his ground, and the late crash from Aleix Espargaro secured the shark a top 10 finish.

Augusto Fernandez continued to look for solutions and areas to improve on to close the gap on his rivals on Saturday morning ahead of the weekend. In qualifying 1, he was able to gain a few hundredths on his best from Friday, but his late 1’32.669 was still a bit short and he finished twelfth of the stage, more than two seconds from the pole position time. From P22 on the grid, he gained two positions on the grid over Johann Zarco and Luca Marini to settle behind Lorenzo Salvadori. With a few crashes at the front, Fernandez was in P18 after five laps. The GASGAS Tech3 rider held his position behind Aprilia’s rider, and the few crashes at the front in the final laps gave him the opportunity to cross the line in P15. There were positives in Augusto’s comments, and he will be looking to feed from them for tomorrow’s main race, as lights will go out at 14:00 local time (GMT+2).