Pedro Acosta “was close to hitting” Jack Miller “20 times” in Malaysian MotoGP Sprint

A setup change cost Pedro Acosta the shot at a better result in the Malaysian MotoGP Sprint, finishing ninth in the end after a battle with Jack Miller.

Acosta and Miller fought for almost the whole race and were ultimately separated by 0.2 seconds on the line, in favour of the Australian.

“Jack [Miller] is always difficult to pass, don’t get me wrong,” Acosta said, before adding that changes made to his RC16 for the Sprint had made it more difficult to overtake.

“At the end, it’s super-difficult to pass people with these changes that we make, because every time I was passing everyone I was running wide.

“Today the pace in the FP2 was quite okay, and it’s painful to see that for a decision like this we lost a possibility, but the good thing is that also I take the last four laps to understand why we were having problems, why not, in what situation and all these things to keep a lot of info.

“For this I finish the race because today was difficult, but we need to be happy to see these problems and know how to come back.”

Explaining more his issues, Acosta said that he was losing out the most in braking.

“Alone it [braking] was quite okay, but when I was behind Jack it was unstoppable,” he said.

“I was close to hitting him like 20 times, then I passed him like eight times, then he passed me back again because I was running wide; then when I was not wanting pass him I started to not [be able to] stop the bike and go wide and try to pass outside.

“It was quite difficult, but anyway we need to be positive.”