Despite matching his best result of the 2025 MotoGP season, Pedro Acosta insists that fourth place isn’t “good enough” given KTM’s current performance.
The Spaniard produced his best results of the season, finishing fifth in the Sprint before matching his best Sunday result of fourth in the main race.
Acosta duelled with factory Ducati rider Francesco Bagnaia for the first half of the race, but dropped back and crossed the line four seconds behind the Italian.
Despite the encouraging signs that the 21-year-old has been demanding from the Austrian marque, Acosta admitted it was “painful” to see the gap between them and the leading Ducati trio.
“We managed a really good weekend, I’m happy with the weekend that we made because if you check more or less all the practices, I was in the top-five or six,” he said post-race to Crash.net.
“This is good, but not good enough. It was a good race, the pace was quite good: faster than the guys behind, slower than the guys in front.
“We finished four seconds behind Pecco [Bagnaia], seven behind Marc [Marquez]. It’s painful to see this number in the screen.”
Pedro Acosta’s hard tyre was ‘fantastic’ during the race
Acosta was the sole rider to race with the hard compound front tyre after he struggled with front locking in the Sprint race.
He admitted that the tyre change benefited him throughout the race, though he also revealed he was initially unsure if it was the right decision.
“I was having a lot of locks, problems, [in the Sprint] and, to be honest, I didn’t want this to happen again,” he stated.
“You need to understand that I’m a guy that maybe needs more the front tyre – maybe more Brad [Binder] style – to go faster.
“Yesterday, it [the medium-compound front tyre] was giving me a handicap.
“For this I go for the hard [compound front tyre]. It’s true that it was taking two laps to warm-up and feel quite okay, but the tyre after that was fantastic. I’m super-happy about my choice.
“I was quite nervous, to be honest, on the grid because I was the only one with the hard, but I said ‘Okay, we are lost already, we cannot be worse.’”
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