There were high expectations placed on Pedro Acosta before his debut in MotoGP. After impressing in pre-season tests, the Moto2 and Moto3 world champion did not disappoint at the Qatar GP.
Starting from tenth on the grid, the young Red Bull GasGas Tech3 rider staged a recovery, not hesitating to fight and overtake riders like Maverick Viñales (Aprilia) and Marc Márquez (Gresini/Honda), even coming close to a podium finish. However, he faced tire management issues in the final stages of the race in Losail and ended up ninth.
In an interview with DAZN, Acosta made a peculiar comparison about his MotoGP debut: ‘It was beautiful. Everything was so beautiful that it couldn’t go so well the first time. It’s like when you lose your virginity. Everything seems to go well and then you mess up somewhere. Well, you mess up’.
Spanish, who was considered the driver of the day for the La Grada program of DAZN, also remembered his times in the lower classes: ‘The way we were overtaking riders, the confidence I had, that maybe I couldn’t overtake from so far away, being in Moto2 or Moto3 these things came out to me, or at most I could enter with so much speed and then stop. I missed these things a bit in Moto3, real competition bikes‘.
For Acosta it was a ‘perfect’ Sunday, where the vibration problems of the bike were solved, although later he felt problems in tire management.
