Pedro Acosta cruised to a second-successive Moto2 victory at the Sachsenring to further close in on series leader Tony Arbolino, who finished second.
The pole-man lost out to Arbolino off the start and settled into second just ahead of Pons’ Aron Canet, though keen to not hang around Acosta soon forced his way through on his title rival at Turn 12 at the end of the opening tour.
The KTM Ajo pilot quickly began to find his rhythm as he relentlessly edged away from the Italian across the opening half of the encounter, Acosta holding a 2.2 second advantage just prior to mid-distance as he elected to keep the gap constant and manage his tools.
The 2021 Moto3 world champion expertly managed his race across the remainder of the contest to eventually take the chequered flag in an assured fashion by 2.7 seconds ahead of the tight battle for second between Arbolino and GasGas’ Jake Dixon.
Having been shuffled back to fifth in the opening circulations, Dixon soon recovered back to third having re-passed Alonso Lopez’s Speed Up bike and taken profit from Canet who crashed out at Turn 13 just half-a-dozen laps in.
He then slowly closed on the Marc VDS racer across the remaining distance before finally arriving firmly within attack range with just a few laps to go, the Briton inflicting heavy pressure through the fast middle potion of the lap – though ultimately Arbolino was able to come up with an answer to every question asked of him to hold on to the runners-up spot ahead of Dixon.
Somkiat Chantra enjoyed a lonely race in fourth to secure his best reuslt of the year so far having also found a way through on Lopez in the early goings, the Honda Team Asia rider coming home over six seconds down on the battle for the remaining podium spots.
Lopez claimed fifth ahead of VR46 Mastercamp’s Manuel Gonzalez and the sister Marc VDS entry of Sam Lowes, with Fermin Aldeguer making late progress to snatch eighth on his Speed Up machine.
Albert Arenas was ninth on the other KTM Ajo bike, while Celestino Vietti held off the sole remaining Pons entry of Sergio Garcia to complete the top ten.
Filip Salac – who came into the German Grand Prix weekend sitting fourth in the riders standings – suffered a tough day en-route to a lowly 13th for Gresini, his team-mate Jeremy Alcoba missing out on a point to Dennis Foggia after receiving a long-lap penalty for taking out Bo Bensneyder and Darryn Binder at Turn 1 on the first lap.
Acosta’s second consecutive victory means he closes Arbolino’s series lead to just 15 heading to Assen for the Dutch TT next weekend, with Lopez holding onto third overall but now just three points clear of Dixon – and 62 adrift of the championship peak.
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