Pedro Acosta stayed on the podium at the Portugal and Americas MotoGP GPs, contributing greatly to what is one of the best starts to a season ever for Tech3 – not only in the current GasGas Tech3 partnership, but since the beginning of the MotoGP era in 2002.
After three rounds, Hervé Poncharal’s team has scored 61 points and is in fifth place in the championship (only seven points behind the other rider, Augusto Fernández). It is clearly the best start since Tech3 partnered with KTM in 2019. Up to that point, the best they had achieved after three rounds was 18 points – twice, including last year with the Sprint races.
In the Sprint races, GasGas Tech3 scored 11 points, and without them, they would have 50 points in the championship – a comparison we will use for context, as Sprint races were only introduced in 2023. Without them, the best start for Tech3 with KTM had been in 2020, with 18 points in three rounds – meaning that even then, it was far below the 50 points that the team has accumulated this year counting only the first three main races.
This record has only been surpassed three times since 2002: in 2008, at the time with Yamaha, they had 51 points; in 2012, they had collected 72 points; and in 2017, they reached 63 points in three rounds.
In terms of actual results, the difference is even more evident. Neither with Yamaha nor with KTM, Tech3 had managed to get two podiums in the first three races – a feat that owes much, of course, to Acosta, with the third place in Portugal followed by the second position in Austin. The closest they had come to achieving the same was in 2012, when Andrea Dovizioso started the season with three consecutive top five finishes.
