Driver Pedro Acosta looks back on his first season in MotoGP and already thinking about the next one.
Par Manuel Pecino / Motosan.es
The 2024 MotoGP season now only has one weekend, two races. Pedro AcostaRookie Driver of the Year, is already thinking ahead to 2025, reviewing all the mistakes he's made this year and drawing on the experience he's gained throughout the season to converse with Manuel Pecino. For now, we look back at his arrival in MotoGP and the long-awaited victory which is looming on the horizon.
The MotoGP rookie of the season has had more than 20 crashes this season, but how many combinations has he worn?
“Not bad, not bad. They were pretty safe, but apart from the fall in Austria, where this suit was damaged, the others weren't very safe. »
Do you repair them or change them?
“No, no, they are repaired. Falls happen when they happen. Ultimately, if you don't push hard, they don't come, that's for sure. We are in a situation where we have to push to stay ahead. Some falls are my fault. The one in Japan, for example, on Sunday, I knew that being behind Pecco, with the pressure problem of this weekend and everything else, it was difficult to be in contention. This 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 this case it's because I wanted to push to get a result, but I think you also have to keep pushing in that way. Maybe without falling 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 debut in MotoGP
Was MotoGP more difficult than you imagined, or maybe we should use the word “more complicated”?
“No, neither, perhaps. There were a lot of new developments that I didn't imagine were so decisive. I think you come into MotoGP as a very basic rider; a motorcycle without traction control, without anti-wheelie, now you shift without a clutch, which was not the case six years ago… So we arrive as riders who do not have a great understanding of what electronics is at this level. At the beginning of the year they were giving me everything they could find, but you realize that when you understand and know more or less what you need, it's a big step forward in terms of speed . And especially the work in the box, because we are 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 first. In my case, they put things as they saw them on the computer, and I didn't worry too much. Now that we've taken a step forward, I think in terms of speed, all of these things are even more noticeable. »
Acosta started to take in the box…
“I'm starting to ask more than maybe seven races ago. It's true that, especially since they changed my telemetry, we've taken a big step forward, because I think we've managed to understand what I more or less need. We have to understand that there is not much time in MotoGP to go fast, because from Friday afternoon you have to be competitive. I think they understood what I need to go fast, both when braking and accelerating, so the bike doesn't move. I think it will be very important thanks to the speed of reaction we have now. »
The long-awaited victory in MotoGP
Pedro Acosta is yet to take a MotoGP victory, despite his third place in Portugal and his second in Austin…
“It's taking longer than I would have liked. I didn't think too much about it, because even the podium in Portugal was a bit of a gift podium, in quotes. In America, I tell you, this podium, even if I lost it to Maverick, he won the race, but this podium was me. No one 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 little 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 the easiest route, but we've gotten to where we want to be. »
Pedro Acosta recognizes 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 no There's not a lot of time to try things. I think we got a little lost, and the best thing we did was know when to stop and go back. We could see at Silverstone, I think, that we were comparing the new exhaust with last year's. We still see in many races that we compare the new aerodynamics with those at the beginning of the year, this is not normal. When we already bring something, it's because we know it works well, so I think the fact of not having done the Mugello test has done us a lot of harm. We were still kind of thinking yes, thinking no, and I needed more time than Brad to figure out one thing yes, one thing no, or one thing maybe. I put everything in “maybe”. Often it is better, in quotation marks, to be selfish, because if a factory brings something it is because it thinks it is going better, but it is not always like that, that is why there has tests. So it's often selfish but if you don't have a clear idea and it's a decisive moment, or a decision that from now on we will follow until the end, it It's often better to stop and say, “look, leave it there, we'll try it again in Valencia”.
Who makes the decisions?
» We take them ourselves, but it's clear that maybe I didn't know, or took too long to say, that we 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 even have to understand that with these things you also have to restructure the bike a little and change the settings or electronics a little or something else. So if I was already struggling to do my job, it was my job more of a burden, let's say. I think the best decision I made was knowing when to stop after Austria, to step back and say to myself: what was I going fast with at the start of the year, right? isn't it? Put him 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 first have to have a very tight circle. The problem is that when things are going badly, it's very easy to have doubts, to do this or that. If the circle of people around you doesn't protect you from X things, or give you the answers to X things, or take care of you because it's an individualistic sport, it doesn't matter what we do as a team, and I think even the people in the team have to take care of the driver, because if the driver is doing well, the result comes for the team and for the factory. I never try to find out who is responsible, I try to find a solution to take responsibility for X things. A lot of times you step back, you're scared, but what have we done in these four or five races? I think it was very important to know how to go back. »
Working with KTM in MotoGP
Pedro Acosta is demanding, just like KTM is towards 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 people who come here and who form a MotoGP team don't come here to walk, and neither do I. In the end, I think we have the right to lose, but we have to fight, at least come to fight. I think I have to come here and get good results, because even though the weekend in Japan didn't go well, we competed that weekend, which is very important. After these mistakes, KTM didn't say anything to me, but 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're all pulling the wagon, but when someone in that environment isn't pushing 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 We have to push and we have to give everything we have. We all need 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 is now in the factory team and he is doing well, he is 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 pretty 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 there are no friends on the track…
“It's a philosophy of watching the races, I mean the feeling I had when I started watching the races was that people who were coming from outside Europe were not coming to be make friends, they came because they wanted to win on a motorcycle. 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, so I think it's a mentality that shows how much they want something. Look at Dani Pedrosa, when he was losing. I haven't seen him smile once on a podium where he didn't win. So I think that's the essence of sport and motorcycling. »
Read the original article on Motosan.es
Manuel Pecino
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