A title to be won and records to be made – Aragón
Rookies Cup finale
Motorland Aragón has dramatic changes of elevation and every combination of corner radius and pace imaginable.
It means thrills and overtaking, especially at the last corner. The slipstreaming battle down the long back straight produces a leader, the braking zone changes that, then a mid corner swap is likely, but get the exit wrong and the race can still be lost.
David Alonso is leading the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup and the Colombian 15-year-old has a 38 point advantage going into the last 2 races at Motorland so only David Muñoz can challenge him for the title.
Who is favourite?
Muñoz won the final 2 races last year but that was in Valencia. The 15-year-old Spaniard had far less luck in Aragón where Alonso picked up his first Rookies win.
So Alonso has the better form at Aragón and is on a roll, totally at home on his KTM, 3 wins in Austria, 6 for the season making him very much the favourite to take the Cup.
He could make it 8 victories in Aragón and that would put him in hallowed company, matching Bo Bendsneyder’s record for 8 wins in a season.
It would also give him 9 victories for his Rookie career, not quite as good as Karel Hanika’s 10 over 2 seasons but equalling the score of Bendsneyder, Can Öncü and current Moto3 World Championship leader Pedro Acosta. Alonso has alraedy matched Acosta’s 6 wins in one season.
A new winner?
Of course it could go the other way and if Alonso misses out on victory in the final event of the year then the record for the number of different winners in one season might be matched. The record is 8 from 2011, also a 14 race season. 2021 has seen 6 winners so far but a number of Rookies fancy adding their name to the list.
Tatchakorn Buasri is rolling with Alonso and crossed the line just behind him last time out. The 20-year-old Thai now has 4 podiums and a 5th place to his name, all in the second half of this season.
Perhaps a win for Buasri then. And what about Marcos Uriarte, the Spanish 16-year-old always runs up front and has a 3rd and a 2nd this season. 17-year-old fellow countryman Ivan Ortolá has even better form, two 2nds and two 3rds including one of each in Austria.
Converting speed to victory
Another Spanish podium achiever is Alex Millan but while the 16-year-old took Pole at the Austrian GP, the races did not work out at all well for him and those podiums came from the first two weekends in the season.
Perhaps our 8th winner hasn’t been on the podium yet. Collin Veijer regularly runs up front and the 16-year-old has briefly led races, who knows, Rookies racing is never predictable. The last Dutch winner was Bendsneyder, back in 2015.
Dutch, Spanish, Thai or Colombian, there is nothing predictable about who will win the last 2 races of the 15th Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup season. These are Rookies races 181 and 182 and we know they will be full of drama and excitement.
Broadcast
This weekend’s Rookies Cup races can be seen live on www.redbull.tv and on TV stations around the world.
Race 1 is at 16:30 CET on Saturday and Race 2 is on Sunday at 15:30, the show starts 10 minutes before the race.
