The pilot Peter Acosta looks back on his first season in MotoGP and is already thinking about the next one.
About Manuel Pecino / Motosan.es
The 2024 MotoGP season now consists of just one weekend, two races. Peter Acosta, rookie driver of the year, is already thinking about 2025, reviewing all the mistakes he made this year and drawing on the experience he gained throughout the season to converse with Manuel Pecino. For now, we look back at his arrival in MotoGP and the long-awaited victory that is looming on the horizon.
The MotoGP rookie of the season has suffered more than 20 crashes this season, but how many suits has he worn?
"Not bad, not bad. They've been pretty safe, but apart from the crash in Austria, where that suit was damaged, the others haven't been much."
Do you repair them or replace them?
“No, no, they are fixed. Crashes happen when they happen. In the end, if you don’t push hard, they don’t come, that’s clear. We are in a situation where we have to push to stay at the front. Some crashes are my fault. The one in Japan, for example, on Sunday, I knew that being behind Pecco, with the pressure problem this weekend and everything else, it was difficult to be in contention. That incident happened because I wanted to overtake Pecco to be in front, because I know it’s an advantage to be in front. So I think in that case it was because I wanted to push to get a result, but I think you also have to keep pushing in that way. Maybe without crashing so much, but you have to keep pushing like that, because that’s the only way to learn from the other riders and be in front.”
Pedro Acosta's MotoGP debut
Was MotoGP more difficult than you imagined, or maybe we should use the word 'more complicated'?
“No, neither, maybe. There were many new things that I didn’t imagine would be so decisive. I think you arrive in MotoGP as a very basic rider; a bike without traction control, without anti-wheelie, now you change gears without a clutch, which was not the case six years ago… So we arrive as riders who don’t have a great understanding of what electronics are at this level. At the beginning of the year they gave me everything they could find, but you realise that when you understand and know more or less what you need, it’s a big step forward in terms of speed. And above all the work in the box, because we’re already talking about small details of point of view, I’m not talking about ten degrees, I’m talking about five, four. You see that these little things make a very big difference, they are the ones that are perhaps the most difficult to grasp at the beginning. In my case, they were putting things as they saw them on the computer, and I wasn't too worried. Now that we've taken a step forward, I think in terms of speed, all these things are even more noticeable."
Acosta started to take in the box…
“I’m starting to ask for more than maybe seven races ago. It’s true that, especially since they changed my telemetry, we’ve made a big step forward, because I think we’ve come to understand what I need more or less. We have to understand that there’s not much time in MotoGP to go fast, because from Friday afternoon onwards you have to be competitive. I think they’ve understood what I need to go fast, both in braking and acceleration, so that the bike doesn’t move. I think it will be very important thanks to the reaction speed we have now.”
The long-awaited victory in MotoGP
Pedro Acosta is still without a MotoGP victory, despite his third place in Portugal and his second in Austin…
“It’s taking longer than I would have liked. I haven’t thought about it too much, because even the podium in Portugal was a bit of a gift podium, so to speak. In America, I tell you, that podium, even though I lost it to Maverick, he won the race, but that podium was me. Nobody fell in front of me, and it didn’t happen by the operation of the Holy Spirit, I was there on that podium, and so it’s my first real podium in MotoGP. The truth is that I had high hopes for Jerez, because seeing what Brad had done, what Jack had done the year before, Dani’s good performance, I think we all had a bit more hope for Jerez. We’re getting closer and closer, every time I’m on the bike I’m more competitive. Little by little I'm gaining speed on the weekends, so I think we're, maybe not by the easiest path, but we've arrived where we want to be."
Pedro Acosta acknowledges that the road is not entirely easy...
“We took a direction that was not the right one in my part of the box, but I understood what I needed to go fast, in the sense that we tried a lot of things, and in MotoGP there is not much time to try things. I think we got a little lost, and the best thing we did was to know when to stop and go back. You could see at Silverstone, I think, that we were comparing the new exhaust with last year’s. You still see in many races that they compare the new aerodynamics with the one from the beginning of the year, it’s not normal. When we already bring something, it’s because we know it works well, so I think not having done the Mugello test hurt us a lot. We were still a little bit thinking yes, thinking no, and I needed more time than Brad to understand a yes thing, a no thing, or a maybe thing. I put everything in "maybe". Often it is better, in quotes, to be selfish, because if a factory brings something it is because they think it is better, but it is not always like that, that is why there are tests. So it is often selfish but if you do not have a clear idea and it is a decisive moment, or a decision that from now on we will follow until the end, it is often better to stop and say, "look, leave it there, we will try it again in Valencia".
Who makes the decisions?
"We take them ourselves, but it's clear that what I maybe didn't know, or took too long to say, that you shouldn't try so many things. The problem was not testing a fairing, the problem is that I was testing a lot of things, and we have to understand that with these things you also have to restructure the bike a little bit and change the settings or the electronics or something else a little bit. So if I was already struggling to do my job, it was my job plus a burden, let's say. I think the best decision I made was to know when to stop after Austria, to take a step back and say to myself: what was I going fast with at the beginning of the year, right? Put it on the bike and see how we do the next race."
As a driver, it is also important to know how to go back?
"I think you have to have a very tight circle first. The problem is that when things go wrong it is very easy to have doubts, to do this or that. If the circle of people around you does not protect you from X things, or does not give you the answers to X things, or does not take care of you because it is an individualistic sport, it does not matter what we do as a team, and I think even the people in the team have to take care of the rider, because if the rider is doing well, the result comes for the team and for the factory. I never look for who is responsible, I try to find a solution to take responsibility for X things. Often you step back, you are scared, but what have we done in these four or five races? I think it has been very important to know how to step back."
Working with KTM in MotoGP
Pedro Acosta is demanding, just like KTM is of him…
"I think KTM were the only ones who made demands of me, they never forced me to do anything, let's say, but it's normal that the forty or so people who come here and make up a MotoGP team don't come here to take a walk, and neither do I. In the end, I think you have the right to lose, but you have to fight, at least come to fight. I think I have to come here and get good results, because even if the weekend in Japan didn't go well, we competed that weekend, which is very important. After those mistakes, KTM didn't tell me anything, and they were big mistakes, because they were good opportunities. I demand to move things forward, because the problem is that when you don't pull the wagon, it slows down a lot. We all pull the wagon, but when someone in that environment doesn't push the wagon, it slows down considerably. We all have to push, not me and the people who come here for the races, but the people who are in the factory, the bosses… If we want this to work, we have to be clear that to win here we have to push and we have to give everything we have. We all have to push in the same direction.”
Next year, the team will count on Brad, Viñales and Enea Bastianini…
"Maverick won on the Suzuki, he won on the Yamaha, he won on the Aprilia. Bastianini made the jump from Gresini, he's now in the factory team and he's doing well, he's fourth in the world championship. I think he has a lot of information that can help us. And Maverick has a way of looking at things that can help us. Maverick and I, for example, ride quite similarly with Brad, so I think all that, and having a lot of information, is going to help us a lot."
Pedro Acosta always says that there are no friends on the track…
“It’s a philosophy of watching racing, I mean the feeling I had when I started watching racing is that people who came from outside Europe didn’t come to make friends, they came because they wanted to win on a bike. I don’t know, I think we have it a little easier because we’re here in Europe. You’ve had a bad day, you get on a plane, you go home, and at midnight, if you want, you go home to your mother. They don’t do that, so I think it’s a mentality that shows how much they want something. Look at Dani Pedrosa, when he was losing. I didn’t see him smile once on a podium where he didn’t win. So I think that’s the essence of the sport and motorcycling.”
Read the original article on Motosan.es
Manuel Pecino
