Pedro Acosta P9, but “KTM will be at the front again”

MotoGP rookie Pedro Acosta insists KTM ‘will be at the front again’ on tracks more suited to the RC16, after salvaging ninth place in the British Grand Prix.

Despite crossing the finish line over 16 seconds from race winner Enea Bastianini (Ducati), Acosta claimed the Silverstone result was “better than we expected because... we [knew] it was going to be a tough one.”

“P9 is not what we want, but iwe know that it was a track where we were going to suffer.”

The GASGAS Tech3 rider explained that KTM needs to give up some of its braking strength to make the bike work better in the fast corners and therefore more consistent over the full range of circuits.

“From the beginning of our [KTM's] history in MotoGP, if you think about it, we were strong in braking and tight corners. It's nothing new,” Acosta said.

“This season, we were [also] quite fast in these types of tracks, and now we arrive to the average of last season, from P7 to P9.

“But I'm still focused on believing that when we go to [hard braking tracks like] Austria, Misano, Aragon, Thailand, Japan, we will be again at the front.

“[But] we need to understand that we are four guys that are really pushing the braking, for one thing [because] is it our best point. And we start to focus the bike, the aero, the balance, everything, on this type of corner.

“We need to understand that all the project is focused in this line [direction], because it's the way we are [going] fast.

“But the problem is in this type of [fast and flowing] track, we can't do like that.

“Because it's not the way to make ‘V’ [stop and go] lines, it's not the way to brake hard. Because if you brake hard here, you break the speed. And if you break the speed, you are done.

“What we need to do is try to improve the bike a little bit in this type of corner, for example in turning, [so that even if we are] not so good on the good days, but don't be so bad in the bad days.

“Because if you want to fight for a championship, you cannot be first on the good days and tenth on the bad days. You need to be minimum in the top 5 [every weekend].

“If we can fight for 10 victories and 10 top 5s [over a season] we are in the game for the championship. To do this will be a process, I'm sure about that, but we will arrive.”

Although comfortably clear of the next-best KTM rider Jack Miller, Acosta was beaten by seven Ducatis (plus the lead Aprilia of Aleix Espargaro) on Sunday.

“At the end of the day, we can try many things, but we are four guys and they are eight,” he said, indicating that Ducati’s data advantage is the main source of their Sunday dominance.

“They have a lot of information. We see that Yamaha have only two bikes, and for this they are struggling… But we [KTM] are only four bikes, and they [Ducati] are eight.

“[So] they have double or triple [the bikes] of some brands in the championship. This is the advantage that they are having.

“Let's see how it is next year [when Ducati will be reduced to six bikes], because I'm sure that the difference will be much closer, because they will start to lose info.”

Acosta arrives at the half point of his debut MotoGP season holding sixth in the world championship, eight points behind Maverick Vinales and eight in front of future factory KTM team-mate Brad Binder.