Cause of 300kph Pedro Acosta Austrian MotoGP FP1 crash identified?

In first practice for this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, home manufacturer KTM suffered three crashes.

Brad Binder crashed at turn 2b, the second part of the first sector chicane, and Pedro Acosta had the same crash towards the end of the session.

When Acosta crashed, he remounted his KTM RC16 and started another lap without pitting, going on to crash heavily at turn four. 

Acosta locked the front at, according to the on-board TV graphic, around 305kph or 190mph, and fortunately separated from his bike as it headed towards the inside wall. 

Acosta was okay, and competed in Practice on Friday afternoon, but failed to make Q2.

Simon Crafar, on the MotoGP world feed commentary, immediately concluded that “the front locked as he touched the brake.”

For Crafar, the video of the crash indicated that the front tyre was unloaded and lost grip as Acosta touched the brake. 

“To me, there’s for some reason no weight on the front at that moment, and no grip," he said.

Subsequent replays then showed the left side of Acosta’s fairing, which showed significant damage and the absence of almost all the wings.

“That does answer something,” Crafar said. “He’s clearly going to have less downforce, isn’t he? 

"As he gets it into that straight, the front is going to be glued to the road less because the wings on the left-hand side were damaged from the initial crash on the left [in turn 2b], so it will have less downforce when he goes to grab that brake.”

Acosta was 11th-fastest in Friday practice at the Austrian MotoGP.