Pedro Acosta admitted he would have had no tyre performance left if he had kept up with Marc Marquez in their fight for victory at the Aragon Grand Prix. The factory KTM rider finished second, just 1.7s behind Marquez's Ducati.
After jumping from sixth to third early on, Acosta pulled off a brilliant pass on Bezzecchi at the end of the back straight on lap 6, before hounding Marquez for the lead. Despite his RC16 clearly not being a match to the GP26, Acosta kept the pressure up on Marquez, preventing his countryman from running away at the front.
It was only on lap 13 when Marquez picked up his pace and started lapping in the 1m46s bracket that Acosta was forced to concede defeat. "We've got the most out of what we had. The start was a bit better than yesterday's, the first few laps were very good and I managed to latch onto Marc. We can be happy because I'm getting 100% out of what I've got; for now, there's nothing more we can do," he said.
"The intention to catch Marc was there, but the potential we had was another matter. I knew that if I pushed too hard halfway through the race, I'd run out of tyres at the end," Acosta explained. Tyre wear has long been a weakness of KTM, but the Austrian manufacturer has made tangible progress in the last 18 months to give its riders a better chance in Sunday races.
Acosta revealed that he has even begun to change his riding style to preserve tyre life: "Normally, I'm the one that always goes more tight inside the corners and uses more tyres than everyone else. And now I'm trying to change my style a bit. At the end, if I want to be ready when my moment arrives, I need to start to see all the options and see all the ways of racing."
Acosta believes KTM's one-lap pace is holding him back, with the Spaniard often having to start from further down the grid compared to his Aprilia and Ducati rivals. In the opening 13 rounds, Acosta has qualified on the front row just three times, with his average starting position being sixth place. Asked what he is missing on the bike to score a MotoGP win, he said: "It's missing many things, but at the moment, I want to concentrate on the ones that I have. In the end, I'm missing a lot in the short distance, especially in qualifying. Normally, I struggle to be in that first row."
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