Pedro Acosta: I thought ‘F**k, let's not put the race in the bin for nothing’
“Look how many points I lost in the races that I crashed... Maybe less is more at the end of the season"
Brad Binder’s non-start combined with Pedro Acosta’s first double points weekend since Mandalika put the MotoGP rookie back into fifth place in the world championship standings.
The GASGASG Tech3 rider made swift progress from 13th to 5th and was hunting down Alex Marquez, but a scare at the final hairpin prompted Acosta to make sure he brought the bike home.
“I lost a lot of time overtaking Maverick, Fabio and Rins,” Acosta said. “Then when I was catching Alex, the temperature of the front tyre went super high and it was quite difficult to manage.
“With about 5 laps to go I lost the front in the last corner and thought, ’F**k, OK, let's not put the race in the bin for nothing’.”
Acosta went on to finish 1.4s behind the Gresini Ducati rider.
“Don’t get me wrong, I was pushing to get that fourth position, but what I hadn’t recovered [to Alex] in 15 laps, I was not recovering in 1 lap.
“For this, it was necessary for me, was necessary for us - was necessary even if one day we are going to fight for a championship - that maybe less is more at the end of the season.
“Because have a look how many points I lost in the races that I crashed. A lot.”
Acosta has suffered 12 non-scores this season, and has suffered the most falls of any rider with 26 accidents.
“Don’t get me wrong, but put a 5th place in every track that I crashed and it’s many points at the end of the season.
“I need to put this also in my head! Maybe when you ride without pressure, you go flat out, but sometimes we need to slow down a bit.”
Acosta also explained he also needed to gather as much data as possible on the KTM aero.
“It was quite important to see the difference between the fairing we used yesterday in the sprint and the one that we were using today,” he said.
“It was the new homologation and the old one. It’s quite difficult to understand why one fairing is better than the other. But the good thing is that they are making a super nice investigation about it.
“[The fairing] was better today because minimum I was able to overtake.”
Acosta will take a slim 3-point advantage over future team-mate Binder into the new Barcelona finale, as the pair fight to be the top non-Ducati rider in the world championship standings.
Binder withdrew from the Sepang restart due to a shoulder injury in the red-flagged Turn 2 pile-up.
Peter has been in the paddock for 20 years and has seen Valentino Rossi come and go. He is at the forefront of the Suzuki exit story and Marc Marquez’s injury issues.
