German MotoGP: Pedro Acosta’s last chance to break Marquez’s youngest winner record

Pedro Acosta has his last chance to break Marc Marquez’s record as the youngest MotoGP race winner in this weekend’s German Grand Prix.

Marquez took a first MotoGP victory in only his second race, at COTA in 2013, at the age of 20 years and 63 days.

Acosta - who beat Marquez’s youngest back-to-back MotoGP podiums record earlier this season - turned 20-years-old on the 25th of May.

That means he will be past the +63 days when MotoGP restarts after the summer break, with the British MotoGP at Silverstone, on August 4.

Sachsenring is therefore his last opportunity, although the Tech3 KTM rider has always played it down as a ‘different era’.

“Well, I don't think so,” Acosta previously said of achieving the youngest winner feat. “At the end, it's a different MotoGP era.

“You can talk and you can think about this, but this MotoGP era - it's a different moment between our careers.”

Acosta won last year’s German Moto2 Grand Prix but with no KTMs on the MotoGP podium for the past five grand prix races, since Acosta’s runner-up finish in COTA, victory will also require a significant step in form for the RC16.

"We are heading to Sachsenring, a track where I have a bit more luck in general, and I think that it will suit our bike better,” said Acosta, who crashed out of seventh on the last lap of Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix.

“Our weekend in Assen was not bad overall, we were able to do a good race and be competitive until the crash, on a track that is normally not one of my best. Our approach in Germany will be the same as usual, step by step on a new track, so let’s see how we feel on Friday first!

“I am looking forward to it, let’s have a good one before the summer break!"

Tech3 KTM team manager Nicolas Goyon at least expects a better weekend than at Assen.

“Sachsenring has a very different layout than Assen, and I think that it will be a good opportunity for us to bounce back,” he said. “It is the shortest track of the championship, left-hand sided, where you spend a lot of time on lean angles, and braking hard.

“We believe that Pedro Acosta will enjoy these specific characteristics, he won last season in Moto2 with a decent gap, and he will be extremely motivated to perform after his crash in the final lap in Assen.”

However, after a stable weekend in The Netherlands, the Sachsenring climate might also spring a surprise: “The weather looks a bit uncertain at the moment, so we should get ready for different scenarios to happen.”

Acosta would have had an additional chance to break Marquez’s record if the Kazakhstan round had not been postponed from June 14-16.

On the other side of the Tech3 pit box, team-mate Augusto Fernandez salvaged two points with 14th place after another difficult weekend at Assen.

"I am looking forward to heading to Sachsenring and I hope to be more competitive than Assen, where we struggled quite a lot,” he said.

“It will be very different to Assen, with fast corners and a lot of braking, but it is a layout that I like very much.

“Last year was not bad for us, we are in different places right now, but I want to be more competitive, so we will give our best."

Fernandez finished eleventh as a MotoGP rookie at the Sachsenring last year.