GasGas rookie Pedro Acosta has emerged as the unexpected star of the 2024 MotoGP season. Given his title-winning form in Moto2 and Moto3, expectations for his rookie MotoGP season were always going to be high. But few expected him to be the fastest KTM RC16 rider this year, often outperforming experienced riders like Brad Binder and Jack Miller.
The 20-year-old attributes much of his success to the Red Bull Rookies Cup – the MotoGP feeder series that he won in 2020. Eurosport India recently premiered a six-part documentary series, called Born Racers, chronicling motorcycle racing’s young talents as they try to prove their worth in the Rookies Cup. So, we caught up with Acosta at the Thai GP to learn more about why this series played a pivotal role in his career, his approach to racing in MotoGP, and more.
Firstly, congratulations on what has been a stellar rookie season for you. What would you consider your strengths as a rider, and what areas do you feel you still need to work on?
I’m quite strong at braking, but I still need to work a little bit more in the corners and be a little more smooth, because this is where I normally suffer at tracks like Assen and Silverstone. But we are working on that. The team and other people around are also helping me to understand how to achieve this. We are getting better.
We’re nearing the end of the season. Do you think you’ll get your first MotoGP win this year?
We hope! We have tracks that we can say are good for us, like here in Buriram or Malaysia, where we had the winter test. Also Valencia was good for us last season; we saw that Brad (Binder) and Jack (Miller) were quite competitive [over there].
You were chasing your breakthrough win in Japan when you crashed out. Does something like that change the way you approach races in terms of how much risk you’re willing to take? Or is it worth taking the risk to beat the Ducatis?
I think [my] approach has to be the same. [Japan] was the moment when were close to winning a race and I think we need to stay in this direction because it’s the one that is working for us. [As for beating the Ducatis], there’s no other way. At the end, we need to take risks to be closer to them and then we can fight. For this, we need to know where the limit is, but always try to be quite close.
What are the RC16’s strengths and weaknesses compared to the Ducati GP24?
We are quite strong at braking, that’s easy to see. We need to improve qualifying, that’s for sure, because now Practice and Q2 are the two most important sessions in MotoGP. We need to try to be a little bit more in front to fight for victories.
You’ve been quite open about the fact that you wouldn’t be racing if it wasn’t for the Red Bull Rookies Cup. How pivotal was this series in your road to MotoGP?
At the end, Rookies Cup was everything for my career. My family didn’t have the money to afford my racing and the Rookies Cup was the most affordable way and offered similar opportunities to everyone to enter the [MotoGP] championship. Also, having Red Bull and KTM behind you, if you have a good championship in the Rookies Cup, it opens many doors having these two partners behind you.
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