Pedro Acosta finished the first day of practice at Motegi in fourth place and admitted to being very happy with his traction and how he seems to have taken a step forward in that regard, even becoming closer to the current benchmark bikes in MotoGP, the Ducati Desmosedici.
The GASGAS Tech3 rider began by summarizing his day’s work, having finished 0.147s behind the fastest rider of the day, Brad Binder: ‘The truth is that with so much braking and so many angles, and it’s been going quite well. Above all, we’ve found, at least on my side and with the bike I’m riding, quite a lot of traction’ he said, as quoted by Motosan.
In this way, the rookie feels closer to the Desmosedici, as he explained: ‘Let’s say it was what we were missing and we’re getting closer and closer to the Ducati because we are, especially in my case, able to put everything together more, especially on the attack. So, little by little we’re getting there’.
However, not everything was good: ‘Today, unfortunately, the same thing happened to us again as happened in the Indonesian sprint. So we have to know how to play with this grip that we have now to be competitive’.
Since he was behind other top riders, and especially the KTM of his future teammate, Acosta saw this as something very positive as he had a reference: ‘I think it’s one of the best things that could happen to me today, especially on Friday. Tomorrow maybe it will hurt more, but at least I’ll have clear data to compare myself to see what they’ve done differently and above all, so that the step I can take tomorrow is even bigger, because I’ve had a few races now where I haven’t really had anyone to look at in the data’.