Pedro Acosta picks his favourite Portimao overtake | “charisma, style, panache…”

Pedro Acosta overtook Jack Miller, Brad Binder, Marc Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia in the Portuguese MotoGP.

The teenage rookie has made a splash inside the first two rounds of the 2024 season, and became the third-youngest rider to finish on the premier class podium in Portimao.

The talk from inside the MotoGP paddock is that Acosta is an emerging star.

“The rider of the day was Acosta,” Sylvain Guintoli told TNT Sports. “Unreal!”

Michael Laverty added: “He is the gift that MotoGP needed right now.

“All the talk of the aero and the difficulty of passing? He passed four of the hardest riders to pass - Miller, Binder, Marquez, Bagnaia.

“He made it look easy, it was effortless. Even his interview on the podium. He’s got everything - charisma, speed, style, he does it with panache.

“We’re going to be talking about him all season. What a rookie campaign, on the podium already!”

Laverty said about Acosta’s riding style: “Standout. We talked about it in Moto2 and Moto3, his ability to place the bike where it needs to be.

“It’s incredible the control he has to go off line, onto the dirty part of the track, with the rear skating.

“It was his ability to calculate, to work out how he could do it each time.

“The Pecco one was the best one, it meant a lot to him. He had to really think about it, figure out how he could attack.

“Exceptional. Down the inside on the dirty part, the rear skating. He has to give it up, he loses time. His front tyre pressure is going through the roof. He dive bombs into Turn 3. The cleverness… he cuts back, leans it back inside, doesn’t give Pecco a chance to come back.

“He was lucky with Vinales’ gearbox issue to get the podium but he earned it.”

Acosta told TNT Sports about his favourite overtake of Sunday: “Pecco. I was spending many laps behind him. I tried it at Turn 1 but I was wide. I struggled to stop the bike and said ‘okay…’

“I said ‘I need to catch him again’. The Pecco one was nice because it was the first one in Turn 3.”

Acosta was behind only Jorge Martin and Enea Bastianini on Sunday, after finishing seventh in the sprint, which he is still adjusting to.

He said about the grand prix: “It was unbelievable, since the beginning of the race the bike was much better than [Saturday].

“It’s true that in a long-distance race with a fuel tank… it’s more natural for me. I have been racing like this all of my life.

“We tried things in the warm-up to understand what we needed in the first lap, and it worked.”