Pedro Acosta: “Maybe the most important day of our season…”

Pedro Acosta has pinpointed the end-of-month MotoGP test at Jerez as “maybe the most important day of our season”.

Scheduled for Monday, 28 April, the day after the Spanish Grand Prix, the one-day outing will be the first official testing opportunity since pre-season wrapped up in Buriram.

“It is maybe the most important day of our season,” Acosta said of the Jerez test. “We have to try many things.”

Like all KTM riders, Acosta has endured a disappointing start to the 2025 season.

The young Spaniard, promoted to the factory team on the back of a stellar rookie campaign featuring five Grand Prix podiums, has only scored 16 points so far this season, for 13th in the world championship.

That compares with 54-points and fourth in the world championship after the opening three rounds of his rookie season at Tech3.

Despite strong qualifying results - 7th, 5th and 4th respectively - Acosta and his RC16 have struggled to convert one-lap speed into race performance.

“Talking about myself, we are much more competitive than last year in qualifying. Good,” he said.

“But then we go to the Sprint races and the grip suddenly is like [gone].

“When we have grip, it's easy to be competitive… But it's difficult to understand why there is this drop in performance between Q2 and the Sprint race.”

Vibration Woes Continue for KTM 

A key issue for Acosta is persistent rear-wheel vibration.

“Always more or less when I talk about problems, I am talking about vibrations," he said. "It's a topic every time I enter the box. We need to find a solution because it's already one year like this.”

The Spaniard made a distinction between typical 'chatter', which can often be seen on TV, and the unsettling vibration he’s experiencing.

“For me, chatter is when the rear or the front wheel is jumping, like the save of Quartararo in Q1 [at COTA]. 

“Vibration I feel when I touch the throttle and the rear wheel is like [shaking]. It's not jumping, but it's making [life] difficult. 

"And it's like a snowball, the vibration of the whole bike becomes bigger, bigger, bigger.”

The large 'salad box' at the back of the KTM this season, perhaps housing a mass damper, is assumed to be an attempt to soothe the vibrations.

Factory team-mate Brad Binder is currently the top KTM rider, in eleventh in the world championship, with Tech3 riders Enea Bastianini 12th and Maverick Vinales 17th.

The final grand prix before the Jerez weekend is next weekend's Qatar round, where Acosta thrilled on his MotoGP debut one year ago and KTM took a pair of runner-up finishes with Binder.