Pedro Acosta won the Qatar Airways Grand Prix of Austria at the Red Bull Ring on Sunday 20 September, holding off Jorge Martín by 1.017 seconds after starting from third on the grid. It was Acosta’s first victory in the MotoGP class, and Martín’s second place, added to his sprint win a day earlier, returned him to the top of the championship. MotoGP’s race classification records the finishing order.
Martín and Marc Márquez reached Austria level on 274 points after San Marino, with Marco Bezzecchi 33 points back, the picture set out in Bettista’s San Marino report. The official standings published after round 15 show Martín on 306 and Marc on 294, with the rest of the season’s dates carried on the Bettista calendar.
Acosta won it from the second row
The race ran 28 laps and was decided by fractions. Acosta crossed the line in 42 minutes 16.996 seconds, with Martín, who had started from pole, 1.017 seconds back and Bezzecchi third, 1.209 seconds off the winner from fourth on the grid. Ai Ogura finished fourth for Trackhouse, 2.139 seconds behind, and Marc Márquez could manage only fifth from the front row, 7.339 seconds adrift. Brad Binder’s sixth place put two KTM riders in the top six at the Austrian round.
The win ended a long wait for Acosta. Motorsport.com’s report of the result notes that he had taken eight second-place finishes across the previous two seasons and this one before winning, and that KTM’s wait for a premier-class victory dated to the 2022 Thai Grand Prix, which Miguel Oliveira won in the wet.
Saturday handed Martín the initiative
Martín won Saturday’s 14-lap sprint from pole in 20 minutes 57.387 seconds, ahead of Marc Márquez by 1.026 seconds and Bezzecchi by 1.675, per the official sprint classification. Those two results gave him 32 championship points across the weekend, the 12 for the sprint win plus the 20 for second place on Sunday. Marc Márquez collected the same weekend total of 20, but by a different route: nine for second in the sprint and 11 for fifth in the race. The net swing was therefore 12 points in Martín’s favour from a weekend that had started with the two level.
Aprilia left Spielberg leading the tables
Bezzecchi’s third place lifted him to 264 points, 30 behind Marc, while Acosta’s win put the KTM rider fourth on 234, four clear of Fabio Di Giannantonio. In the same official standings, Aprilia leads the manufacturers on 442 points to Ducati’s 432, and Aprilia Racing leads the teams on 570. The Spielberg round therefore changed the leadership of both tables as well as the riders’ championship.
Nakagami stood in for Mir at Honda
The weekend also carried the substitution Bettista reported before the event: Takaaki Nakagami replaced Joan Mir at Honda, a change confirmed in MotoGP’s announcement on 16 September.
The standings after Spielberg
Martín leaves Austria 12 points clear of Marc Márquez, with Bezzecchi 42 off the lead and Acosta’s first win having drawn him to within 72 points of the top. The manufacturers’ fight sits 10 points apart, Aprilia’s 442 against Ducati’s 432. Seven rounds of the season remain, and every remaining date and venue is carried on the Bettista calendar.
