Pedro Acosta faced a challenging opening day at the Lusail International Circuit after suffering a shock failure to secure an automatic spot in Q2. The young Spanish sensation competing for the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing squad struggled to find his usual speed on the soft rear tyre, ending Friday's Practice session down in 14th place.
This setback marks only the third time this season that the KTM talisman has missed out on a direct ticket to the pole position shootout. The previous two instances occurred earlier in the year during the Italian and Spanish Grands Prix. However, his ability to fight through Q1 on both of those previous weekends offers a strong ray of hope for the upcoming sessions.
"First thing tomorrow, we'll try to turn things around, because it can't get any worse than today," Acosta remarked during his media briefing, showing full determination to bounce back ahead of Saturday's crucial qualifying runs.
Elaborating on the technical root causes, Acosta explained that his main struggles arose specifically when switching to the soft rear tyre for time attacks. Earlier in the day during free practice periods, while running on medium compounds, he comfortably hovered inside the top five with highly promising pace.
"I was expecting already before coming here that it was going to be a really tough one. But anyway, something strange happened because I was showing a good pace with the medium rear - and then with the new soft, for the time attack, it was completely a disaster," Acosta stated. He added that rear grip and stopping performance dropped significantly compared to heavily worn medium tyres.
Despite the setbacks involving tyres and a minor electronic glitch that forced him to pull off the track early in the day, the young Spaniard remains fully focused on data analysis to unlock the necessary performance.
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