A new race week is upon us as Red Bull GASGAS Tech3 is heading to the beautiful area of Algarve in south-Portugal for the Grande Prémio Tissot de Portugal. It will be the first round of the year in Europe as MotoGP™ gets ready for some fun at the spectacular Portuguese rollercoaster of 4.592 km. After his dreamy debuts in Qatar, rookie sensation Pedro Acosta will take on a new challenge on a track he has zero experience in MotoGP,™ while Augusto Fernandez will be looking forward to getting back to work after he finally saw some light in Qatar's main race.

We do not need to introduce him anymore as he made the highlights of the Qatar Airways Grand Prix of Qatar a couple of days ago. Rookie Pedro Acosta, who completed the perfect start in MotoGP™ with a direct Q2 ticket, a P8 at the Tissot Sprint and a P9 at the main race, will now face a new challenge this week in Portimao. Indeed, the young Shark will try the rollercoaster for the first time on the RC16, and we will have to see how quickly he manages to adapt to this new track. However, having in mind the work accomplished in both Sepang and Qatar earlier this year, everything is telling us that the number 31 has a fast capacity to learn and adapt to new tracks with the MotoGP™ machine, so we will be closely following his evolution throughout the weekend. Acosta won the edition last year in Moto2™, after starting from the front row, so one thing is sure, the Shark likes his fun in Portugal.

Augusto Fernandez will return to Portugal this week, and it will mark his one year anniversary since he rode his first MotoGP™ race! In 2023, the number 37 kicked off his career in the main category at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve, and he scored his first points with a P13 on his MotoGP™ debuts. A year of experience has gone since then, and it will be time for Fernandez to measure the progress made in one year. In the opening round of 2024 in Qatar, Augusto struggled a bit on Friday and Saturday, but he admitted that Sunday’s race was the best he had felt on the 2024 machine since the start of the pre-season, a positive feeling for the Spaniard looking to reunite with the lost feeling from the end of 2023. He will approach this new race week with these positives from Doha, as he heads to a circuit that he enjoys a lot.

Be part of the fun in Portugal and follow Red Bull GASGAS Tech3’s Pedro Acosta and Augusto Fernandez all weekend long, starting with Free Practice 1 on Friday morning at 10:45 (GMT+0), followed by the one-hour long Practice in the afternoon, at 15:00. On Saturday, the boys will be back on track with Free Practice 2 at 10:10, just before qualifying starts at 10:50. Can Acosta and Fernandez put all their chances on their sides and qualify in the first rows? Once we have that figured out, it will be time for the Tissot Sprint at 15:00 as the best of twelve fast laps will take the second Sprint medal of 2024 at stake. Finally on Sunday, the main race of the Grande Prémio Tissot de Portugal is scheduled at 14:00 local time (GMT+0), for twenty-five laps.