Pedro Acosta’s passionate tow rant: “You f*** laps for others; we need to stop”
“We are not stupid, we know where we disturb, and where we don’t"
Pedro Acosta let loose with an epic rant about the tow controversy on Saturday at Silverstone.
Pecco Bagnaia initially complained about the spate of riders seeking a tow throughout qualifying at the British MotoGP, which several others later echoed.
“I agree,” Acosta said to media including Crash.net at Silverstone.
“I understand we can wait in the pitlane. I can even understand that we wait on the out-lap.
“But, the worst thing for me, if for any reason your lap is f******, then you stop in the middle and f*** the laps for the other guys. This, for me, is not correct.
“We are not stupid, we know where we disturb, and where we don’t. It is many races already with this - I think we need to stop.
“I remember [a Moto3 rider] started from the pitlane, he already lost five positions on the grid. We need to make a rule - when you start a lap, don’t f*** the lap of the other guys.
“Now, it’s easy. You go out, you stop at Turn 6, and the problem is that you don’t know what a guy will do. We go fast and if a guy stops in front…
“It means you go slower. What happened with Bastianini and Marc - I was behind - there was more asphalt. If your lap is f***** you can stop on one side, but on the track between the white lines.
“You cannot imagine how fast we arrive. Any movement from the other guy decides if you are faster or not.”
Acosta stopped short of accusing his rivals of spoiling their own laps to impact other riders, saying: “I won’t say they f*** their own laps. But there is a race for everything.
“You know when Formula 1 [cars] put dirty air to other cars? This is the same. If you f*** up the performance of the other guys, you are faster.
“I understand if you make a mistake, and one day you don’t realise. We are humans and we can make mistakes. But, when it becomes something normal, it is dangerous. For this reason the Moto3 guys do this, the Moto2 guys do this…
“It is not for our safety. It is for the safety of the new guys, and the safety of the championship.
“Because if you are fast enough to win it doesn’t matter if you start first or fifth.
“If this becomes a tradition at every weekend, it is heavy…”
Acosta describes racing without wing
Acosta qualified ninth, then finished Saturday’s sprint race in fifth.
He clashed with fellow KTM rider Brad Binder, an incident which sent his wing spiralling into the air.
Acosta described riding without a wing for the remainder of the sprint: “Everything was not so bad. It was quite tough to manage for two laps until I understood how to ride the bike without the wing.
“It meant I was losing time with Marc and Brad. But after, I recovered with Brad before Marc crashed.
“It was a good race, after all. The first that we started quite well. We made overtakes like at the beginning of the season. We were quite fast to be in the group with Marc. For this, we need to be happy.”
He described his wing-less KTM: “Like a plane with only one wing! It’s the same with a bike.
“The problem I had is that the whole bike wanted to go like this because only one wing was [putting] pressure on the floor.
“The same, in the corners. On the right corners it was easy to lose the front. Also, the wheelie.”
James was a sports journalist at Sky Sports for a decade covering everything from American sports, to football, to F1.
