MotoGP | Acosta: “Ducati is strong, but it’s one of the times we’re closest”

On the eve of the race, Pedro Acosta had warned that Misano could be a good weekend, but that he would have to stay “calm” in FP1 to avoid a crash that could derail his goals.

“It’s been a long time since a Friday has gone so well, I don’t think a Friday has gone so well all year,” Acosta said at the end of the day. “I’m happy because, even though FP1 was a bit tiring, because it was one of those sessions where you think: ‘Please, let’s finish this’. I think we’re getting faster and faster in changing things on the bike and, above all, things that help me to be faster.”

A “calm” that he had already said he wanted to use in FP1. “We took it easy because it had been many Fridays since I finished without a crash. And from Aragon we decided to take FP1 more calmly: in the end it is a training session that doesn’t count for anything, so we approached it to finish it and do the starting tests. Something I hadn’t been able to do for a long time”.

At the end of the day, Acosta qualified comfortably for Q2, with a good feeling and a pace not too far from the Ducatis, still the fastest bikes.

“Maybe it’s not the fastest bike of the whole year, but it’s the most consistent, the most precise, the one that allows me to put everything together in a fast lap. With another bike maybe I could have done two tenths more, for sure, but maybe I wouldn’t have been able to put everything together to do the lap.”

“I think the change of telemetrist also helps a lot, because now we are more able to get to the point we want. Little by little we are changing the things that are worthwhile.”

Acosta insisted on Thursday that he didn’t want to have a big crash, but he finally hit the ground in the afternoon practice session, his 16th time this year. That puts him at the top of the list of riders with the most crashes, along with Marc Marquez. “Today’s crash was more of a slide, a silly thing. Today the bike was going really well, I went long and tried to get the bike in, but it didn’t go in. It was an acceptable mistake.”

Acosta was right on Friday with his predictions from Thursday and has his plans for Saturday too. “We need to work a lot on the race pace in FP2 and see where we can be in qualifying. We know that Ducati is very strong here but it’s one of the times where we are closest in terms of feeling. We need to work on some things because from Friday to Saturday we always make a good change, let’s see where we can go from here,” he concluded.