Red Bull Rookies/Assen: What are Kratochwil’s plans at the halfway point? Tips from Öncü

The 20th season of the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup enters its second half following Saturday’s race at the Dutch TT. Assen is always something special and has very often played a decisive role in determining the Cup winner. From a German perspective, all eyes are once again on Fynn Kratochwil, who has moved up to fifth in the overall standings following his third and second-place finishes at Mugello. The teenager from Thuringia made it unmistakably clear afterwards that he wants more. He also mentioned that he likes the Assen circuit. No wonder – last year, on his way to the Moto4 Northern Cup title, he bagged four wins from four starts there. So it will be interesting to see how the young man fares in the Netherlands this coming weekend.

Beñat Fernandez has led the Cup ever since he won the first race at Jerez. He remains fast, cool, consistent and quite clearly the man at the top. He still is, and yet Mugello showed that even such a dominant rider can be challenged. Thanks to his one-two finish in Italy, 17-year-old Japanese rider Ryota Ogiwara jumped from fourth place – 31 points behind the leader – to second place, now just 14 points off the top spot. The 18-year-old Spaniard finished second and fourth at Mugello. However, the one-two finish earned Ogiwara a lot of points.

The Netherlands has seen more one-two finishes in the Rookies Cup than any other country. At Assen, there were eight one-two finishes out of a possible 12. On six occasions, the Dutch rider who secured the one-two went on to win the Cup. So much for the statistics.

Pro shares Assen tips

So who better to offer insights into what it takes to achieve the Dutch double victory than Can Öncü? After all, the Turkish rider has done it twice: two consecutive doubles in 2017 and 2018. The only ‘double-double’ in the history of the Rookies Cup. “At Assen, you have to try to find the perfect balance everywhere – between yourself and the motorbike. You have to be very good at hard braking, but you mustn’t brake too hard; if you make a mistake going into a corner, it affects the whole sector, as the corners flow into one another.”

“You can’t just set the bike up to be good under braking, because there are also lots of important fast corners,” he goes on to reveal. “You need very clean lines; you have to ride very smoothly. Assen is a huge challenge. If you can get everything right at Assen, you can succeed anywhere, because it’s a real test: lots of demanding corners, long corners, double corners,” concluded Can Öncü, who won the Cup in 2018 and, at the end of this season in Valencia, became the youngest Grand Prix winner of all time as a wildcard rider.