MotoGP | Acosta at KTM factory: “I should have known it wasn’t my fault”

Pedro Acosta closed the last Grand Prix before the summer break explaining that he had planned to go to the KTM factory during the summer. The reason was to understand what had happened to make the bike go from being competitive and allowing him to fight for podiums to losing competitiveness in a few months.

On Thursday of the British Grand Prix, the first question was, of course, about how the factory visit went, how the journey was and what happened there: “It went quite well, I left happy, I would even say motivated. I think there were a lot of people who explained to me the changes that have taken place from the beginning until now.”

“Many times I forget what a MotoGP team is like from the inside, I still lack experience because I haven’t been able to make comparisons with another team. There are always doubts. The normal thing is that before getting into MotoGP a rider has passed through two or three teams. I have only been in one team (Ajo KTM, ed.), always with the same people. This makes it difficult for you to understand how people work in other places. I think things were quite clear for them and I think they will make the decisions or points we wanted to address quite well,” he continued.

What is clear is that, if Acosta wanted to go to the factory and explained it so openly, it is because something was not working well: “I wanted to understand above all why things had changed so much. Why from feeling good in Barcelona we went to a good Mugello to get to Assen which was a disaster and finally to the Sachsenring, where we recovered on the last day. Above all I wanted them to make me understand what had happened, because I didn’t know what had happened”.

So, was it the rider, the bike, the team, the organization…? “No, I won’t say if it was me or the bike. But I wanted someone to tell me if it was me or not. Because what would have hurt me the most would have been knowing that it was my fault. If it’s the bike, the team or the project, nothing happens. But I want to leave the races knowing that I gave everything I had, if one day you finish second, you finish second and if you finish seventh, nothing happens. But I had to be calm that they would tell me ‘it’s not your fault’”, he added.

“We have put everyone’s points of view on the table, everyone’s experience, they are putting more people because competitions are sometimes not a university degree, computer or numbers. Many times you need practice, a blank sheet of paper to draw. They have put a lot of people who were there at the beginning and with whom they started to get results, who have returned to commit more to the project and I think that now we will make some steps forward,” he observed.

For Acosta, the most important thing was to dispel the doubts that undoubtedly conditioned him in the last part of the first half of the season and to have a direct interlocutor to talk to, without intermediaries: “I think that in the last two races we were all very confused, we didn’t know very well where the words were going. Above all, sometimes I can think of one thing and make a mistake because I don’t know the category or many times the problem doesn’t get to the point. It’s better to arrive and ask ‘who’s in charge here?’, when they tell you who it is, you tell them everything you need to tell them. In the end, many times it’s better to get everything out and feel good and then apologize than to ask permission,” he explained.

“We have come to some pretty good conclusions, the people they have put in place are really in tune with me and we see the races in the same way. Talking at length with Pit (Beirer) he understood the idea that I had. You have to understand that he cannot be present at all the races and many times he cannot be present at the important moments or cannot see them in person. It often happens that I tell one person, he tells another and when it reaches the recipient the message is not understood. From now on we will have someone very close to me so that he does not have to tell the problems, but can listen to them directly.

“With this, with the people they have put (into the project) and with the problems that I have been able to see from the outside and from the press, although not only for me, but also for the project in general, it will be of great help.” A major shock that Acosta hopes will have short-term consequences. “I think that starting from Austria (next race in two weeks) we will take measures,” said the rookie.