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Three years after his arrival in the Grand Prix, Pedro Acosta is preparing to compete in his first MotoGP race, with two world championships in his pocket and all eyes on him. Expectations for the Red Bull GasGas Tech3 team rider, the only rookie of the season, are higher than ever, but Acosta doesn’t want to set any bar for his debut in the premier class.
“I’m very excited for this first MotoGP race. I did many laps with the RC16 over the winter, but I can’t talk about goals now. It’s still too soon. There will be so many unknowns for me, so I don’t know what to expect. I’ll try to have fun,” Pedro said during a press conference. “I don’t know how several things twill go, how they’ll go in a race weekend, but this first round will help me understand where to improve.”
Although he still has to figure out the championship, the KTM rider already knows in which areas he’ll have to make progress: “I’ve already seen in last year’s races that my lines are different than the ones Brad and Jack follow,” he explained. “I’ll definitely have to learn from the KTM riders, who are at a very high level. We saw how competitive Brad was last year. He’s the rider I have to watch.”
The young Spanish rider has come a long way in the past three years, but he doesn’t see big differences between the moment of his debut in the Moto3 and his entry in the MotoGP.
“Not much has changed. I was a rookie then, and I still am. I still live at home in Spain, so what can I say? I have new goals in front of me this season, but I haven’t changed much,” the nineteen-year-old said. Then he explained which category change was more complex for him: “The one from the Moto3 to the Moto 2 was certainly a huge change. I was very young, and the big change, more than the category, was in the attention of the media. That was the first season where there were high expectations for me, and I was expected to win the title. It was hard, but now I have more experience and this makes everything easier.”
After what Acosta demonstrated during the tests, many, in and out the paddock, will be waiting to see him write new pages of records, including that of precocity belonging to Marc Marquez. The youngest ever MotoGP winner, at the age of 20 years and 63 days.
“This isn’t the time to think about that record,” Pedro said. “It’s a different era for the MotoGP. The bikes have changed a lot. We’re at different times in our career and, despite having done several laps, I haven’t yet faced a race with the other riders. It’ll be hard, and everyone’s expectations are high, but they’re useless.”
