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After impressing on his debut in Qatar, Pedro Acosta is ready to measure himself against the new test represented by the Portimao circuit, the first European stop on the MotoGP calendar. A beautiful but challenging track for the 19-year-old, who will be facing a "blind" race weekend for the first time.
"It will definitely be a good weekend. Portimao is one of my favorite tracks along with Australia and it will be fun but also difficult, because it will be the first track where we arrive without having tested with MotoGP before. In any case I will have the full support of the official team and engineers and I will try to have a consistent weekend, which is the key to start learning, " commented the Red Bull GasGas Tech3 team rider.
Although the season is but in its infancy, Tiburón de Mazarrón was able to highlight himself as early as Lusail, with a great overtaking move on Marc Marquez.
"In general, it was a good race. It is true that the first laps were very complicated for me, but then the feeling with the bike was fantastic. It was since Moto3 that I didn't have such feeling from the front tire to pass on the inside and brake at the last moment. The overtaking was good, but then Marc handled the race much better than I did. So, it's not the case to think too much about that maneuver," downplayed Pedro, happy with the kind words spent by the eight-time rainbow winner and the many compliments he received after the race. "In recent weeks many people have seen my overtaking and I found on my phone so many photos from my first press conference, but also a photo taken together with Marc in 2013, the year of his first title, at a Spanish Federation gala. I am very happy to be able to share the track with him and learn. It was great to do six or seven laps behind him in the race. It was definitely a dream come true."
Then among the images from his debut that have stuck out is the Marquez-style save he made in the first practice session at Lusail.
"I saw so many of Marc's races on TV, so many of his saves, but it was a pretty normal thing in FP1, with all the sunshine in Qatar. Anyway, that was a track where I knew the grip and the tires quite well, whereas now we come to a track with a different asphalt and with quite different compounds from what we had in Qatar. So we will have to start from scratch, with our feet on the ground, and without thinking too much about the race in Qatar, because it was perhaps quite unreal," noted the two-time world champion.
Humble and realistic as always, Acosta did not want to make excuses for the drop in performance shown during the Qatar Grand Prix, preferring to explain what went wrong.
"Compartment syndrome? I didn't have any problem," he admitted, "Looking at the replays, you can see that on lap 14 my tire was smoking in Turn 10 and it was more than obvious that I was going to suffer in the last part of the race. It went like this. When I was in Moto2, with Dunlop, we used to do 24 laps flat out, without thinking about the tires, so a little bit depends on that as well. It's a mistake to learn from for the future."
The talented young Spaniard does not feel like he has already arrived and knows he still has a lot to learn.
"In what area do I need to improve?Everywhere. In both races in Qatar we saw that I lost a lot in the first laps and now we will see how quickly I can adapt my style to Portiimao, because this will be the first race I will do without having tested on the track beforehand ," he stressed , "I still have a long way to go and I have to see how Brad rides the KTM. He has improved a lot in the last few seasons, he is a completely different rider than three years ago, he is very smooth, precise and fast. I have to see his data and the way he rides the KTM, because at the moment he is the fastest rider in the brand."
After growing up together with Fermin Aldeguer, the Murcian rider will return to share the track with his MotoGP countryman in 2025. A long climb, from Murcia to the World Championship.
"Me, Fermin, Ana Carrasco and Carlos Alcaraz, we are resonating the name of Murcia. It's important both for us and for the region, because in the past few people knew where it was located, while now more and more are getting to know it," commented Acosta, who seemed quite at a loss as to what advice to give Fermin ahead of the category jump: "It's quite difficult to say just one thing. When you're young, going from Moto3 to Moto2 is a big change, and so is going to MotoGP. The big problem is that in Moto2 you can learn how to handle tires, but then you get to MotoGP without ever having worked with electronics, height devices and ergonomics. There are several things he will have to learn one step at a time after the Valencia test. However, he will get on what is currently the best bike on the grid, and in Ducati he will find many experienced people ready to help him."
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