MotoGP | How Acosta turned injury nightmare into strength

Pedro Acosta will make his MotoGP debut this season. The young Spanish driver is ready to make his mark and has aroused the highest expectations since his debut in the world championship. He fulfilled them by becoming the youngest ever Moto3 champion in 2021 and arrives in the premier class as Moto2 world champion. However, a setback came in his first year in the intermediate class, which he and his team analyze in the episode “Pedro Acosta, forced to win”, already premiered on DAZN Spain.

“Maybe his expectations were too high and he didn't manage them 100% at that time,” recalls Aki Ajo, team manager of Red Bull KTM. Acosta himself remembers that period, referring to the crash in the first qualifying sessions of the season: “In 2022 I wanted to become world champion, I wasn't going to the races for anything else, I was sure I could do it. But it didn't start the way I wanted. Certain things happened that they made me doubt whether it was possible. If the professional side wasn't going well, you can always look for solutions, the year is very long. In three months a lot of things happened and there was no longer the pressure of the championship, which I had put on myself, but there was more pressure.”

Ajo speaks again: “But as we have spoken many times and as I told you there, we need these difficult moments. If everything goes well and everything is always perfect, this is not the path. When you are a boy like Pedro, who really learn from mistakes and difficult moments, it's the perfect path to take.”

Acosta talks about what he suffered in that 2022 season, between the two World Cups: “I cried a lot that year, I didn't understand anything, what was happening in my life, what was happening in the championship, I didn't understand anything. If I'm here it's to feel good, to have fun, and there will be worse and better moments. I don't think anyone can say “it's not what it used to be” or “in the end the star it seemed doesn't shine”. People can't imagine how little difference between the first and the last, or how fast the last is going. I don't think it's worth being bad for anyone. You don't think about retirement, but it's worth it. And you say to yourself 'if I have to cry, let someone else cry'.”

Then, suddenly, a turning point. “Getting hurt that summer I think helped me a lot,” she says, recalling breaking her femur while training in motocross. In the documentary, the father says he didn't see the training session as a good idea, but in the end he agreed to please his son. “But thanks to this he started, he changed his mentality.”

What changed in Acosta in that moment, why does he say it helped him? “I think it helped me understand that it's very important to move, changing my circle helped me a lot and to see things differently. I decided to start working with Adri, to give him an opportunity thanks to the work he was doing with his school. I needed a change of scenery, someone to push me, to give me a spark. Because there came a time when I was a little tired of everything. Maybe I could have said 'it's over', but I didn't even have a reason to stop.”

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

Pedro Acosta, Tech3 GASGAS Factory Racing

That injury represented a 180º turn in his life, and results have since improved in the second half of the year, with his first Moto2 wins set to be a boost to start 2023 on top. “He even changed his SIM card several times to avoid getting distracted and maintain concentration,” says Ajo. “Pedro, for his age, has a very good basic education and understands life like a much older person. This makes it much easier to concentrate on the work and the work itself.” What came next, you know: Moto2 champion and promotion, with GasGas, to MotoGP.

The documentary “Pedro Acosta, Forced to Win” is now available on DAZN. In it Pedro Acosta reiterates his love for his hometown, Mazarrón (Murcia), which he compares to the Maldives and which he considers the key to not having “freaked out”, since there he sees “every day elderly people leaving their lives into the water to bring home a plate of food.”

There you will be able to get to know even better a rider who, as his manager Albert Valera says, “is like Jorge Lorenzo in the past, he does and says what he feels at all times. The championship needs people like him”. A Valera of whom Acosta remembers: “When I crashed at Le Mans in 2022, in the first race I could have won, he told me 'you're an idiot' and left. Then he came back and made me understand that I had lost the race because I wanted to prove that I could win, out of ego.”

Now all those lessons have been put to good use.