Spaniard beats Aussie to MotoGP history in US thriller as rookie stakes his claim: Talking points
MotoGP fans were forced to wait an extra week for on-track action after the cancellation of the Argentine Grand Prix, but a Texas thriller more than made up for it.
The headline results belie the on-track action. Maverick Viñales took pole, won the sprint and ultimately dominated the race, but his route to the top step and a slice of history was long and winding, delivering what will surely go down as one of the year’s best spectacles.
As much as Viñales won the round, he was far from the only story. The continued rise of Pedro Acosta was of at least equal significance, with the Spanish teenager threatening to totally up-end the calculus in the championship fight.
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And with Marc Márquez continuing his rise and Ducati stumbling over an unexpected speed bump in the development of the 2024 bike, the thrilling fight for victory could be a glimpse at what we’re in for in the championship battle.
MAVERICK VIÑALES ENDS DEBATE WITH HISTORY-MAKING VICTORY
Maverick Viñales’s epic Americas Grand Prix victory makes him the first rider in MotoGP history to win races with three different manufacturers, having visited the top step with both Suzuka and Yamaha before his long-awaited first Aprilia triumph.
He’s only the fourth person in the history of motorcycle grand prix racing to achieve the feat, after Mike Hailwood, Randy Mamola, Eddie Lawson and Loris Capirossi did so in previous eras.
It also means he’s beaten Jack Miller to the feat, the Aussie having come close in Valencia last year on his KTM, following victories on Honda and Ducati bikes.
It mercifully ends weeks of debate about Viñales’s place in history following his sprint win in Portugal. Victories in Sprints and grands prix are separate statistics, though there is considerable argument in the second year of the short format about whether the history book should just merge the two.
In this case at least that argument is no longer important. Viñales sorted it out for himself — and what a way to do it.
Pole, sprint victory and triumphant in the grand prix — there was no more emphatic a way to do the deed.
His Sunday win was most impressive. An average start — though nowhere near as bad as some of those to have afflicted the Aprilia in recent times — left him embroiled in a first-lap melee that ended with him being shunted down to 11th on the first lap.
On any other weekend you wouldn’t have backed Viñales to recover.
But his pace was extremely impressive, aided by his choice of the rear medium tyre. He made ferocious progress until he was duelling just with wunderkind Pedro Acosta for the lead. He made the fight straightforward, and he took the flag by a comfortable 1.7 seconds.
It was the sort of comprehensive performance Aprilia has long tried to coax from the mercurial 29-year-old. There have been many false dawns, but this one feels — at least for now — different, not least because it came off the back of a strong weekend at Portimão too.
It’s a timely reminder of Viñales’s worth just a week after Aprilia lamented that it couldn’t convince Fabio Quartararo to leave Yamaha to join its ranks.
The result puts him up to third in the standings, 24 points off the lead.
PEDRO ACOSTA CAN BE A TITLE CONTENDER
It’s not Pedro Acosta’s speed that’s most impressive; it’s the way he’s made clear and significant steps forward at all three weekends this season.
It paints a foreboding picture of what he might achieve by the end of his debut season.
He’s already a two-time podium-getter, improving from third in Portugal to second in the Americas. He couldn’t celebrate with champagne at the weekend in Texas because he won’t be of legal drinking age in the United States for more than another two years — if you needed a reminder about how young the rookie sensation is.
It’s notable that his highlights have all come over grand prix distances, not the sprints. He clearly has speed, and you might’ve expected that to be better applied to the flat-out half-distance races rather than on Sunday afternoon, when management is more important. Clearly he has the right head on his shoulders.
After three races he’s duelled with every important title protagonist this season. He’s managed to finish ahead of all of them too in the last two weekends, coming out ahead of the likes of Marc Márquez, Jorge Martin, Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini.
He’s up to fourth in the championship standings and only 26 points off the title lead.
Yes, the Ducati riders behind him were hobbled by the soft rear tyre, which proved the wrong choice next to Acosta and Viñales’s mediums.
But that’s not enough to write off this result as fortunate.
Acosta is proving he can do the business.
On a bike that’s been up to the task at all three tracks visited so far this year, it’s no longer a question of when Acosta will get his first win. It’s now about how forceful a championship challenge he can mount.
BRAKE PROBLEMS COST MÁRQUEZ COTA FAIRYTALE
Marc Márquez — in that typical way he’s been underplaying expectations — said he’d eagerly sign for a podium in the lead-up to the Americas Grand Prix.
As was predictable beforehand, a podium was the minimum he was set to achieve on Sunday — or at least it should have been.
A crash from the lead ended what had been a punchy race at turn 11, having just got past Acosta at the time.
But the tumble on the brakes had an explanation. All race the Spaniard had been struggling with front brake issues, requiring him to pump the brake lever several times to slow down the bike.
His solution to that problem was to hasten his charge into first place to see if the clear air helped matters — something he managed even after having lost some bodywork in a skirmish with Jack Miller earlier in the race.
That doesn’t sound much like a rider still searching for his groove on his new bike.
While it would be an exaggeration to say the seven-time Texas winner was back to performing at his best around a circuit he traditionally dominates, he looked frighteningly close — perhaps unsurprising given he’s already finished twice on the sprint podium.
Two failures to finish on Sunday leave him 44 points down on the title lead, but with all not quite well with the 2024-spec Ducati bikes and the front of the field looking otherwise wide open, there’s still plenty of time for him to make that back up.
JORGE MARTIN IN CONTROL, BAGNAIA NEEDS TO FIND SOMETHING
Jorge Martin’s perfect podium streak came to an end with a subdued fourth place in Texas, but this was still a productive weekend for the championship leader, who grew his advantage to 21 points, up from 18 points.
It’s still unclear who his chief title rival will be — if in fact there’ll be just one or two — so that’s good news whichever way you cut it, but it’s especially good when compared to reigning champion Francesco Bagnaia.
Bagnaia never really got up to speed in Texas. He played a role in the early battle for the lead, but he never looked like he had the pace to make it sustainable, and by the flag he was a distant fifth.
Having finished a lacklustre eighth in the sprint, the Italian saw his title deficit blow out to 30 points, up from 23 points.
It’s too early to read too much into the points picture, but there was a crucial admission unearthed by the quiet result.
Bagnaia is suffering much the same chatter problem on the 2024-spec Ducati as Martin, contributing both to fading through the race.
Martin pointed this out back in pre-season testing. It’s taken Bagnaia longer to raise his voice about it publicly, though he remains ultimately unperturbed by it, likening it to the factory team’s early struggles in previous years with new bikes before everything clicked by the middle of the season.
It does, however, set up an interesting comparison not only with Martin, who’s getting more out of the bike despite the same problem, but also Bastianini, whose ability to find pace from the tyres late in the race remains undimmed, delivering him a podium at the weekend.
Bagnaia doesn’t currently look like he has the handle on his main Ducati rivals that he used to. While the competitiveness up front will keep his points deficit naturally in check, it’s harder to imagine him landing the sort of forceful blows that won him his two championships in the last two years.
He’ll need to find another gear to drag himself back to the front.