Pedro Acosta admitted that if he had kept up with Marc Marquez in the fight for victory at the Aragon Grand Prix, he would have had no tire performance left. The KTM rider finished second, just 1.7s behind Marquez's Ducati.
Starting from sixth, Acosta moved up to third early on. A brilliant pass on Bezzecchi at the end of the back straight on lap 6 put him right behind Marquez, and he kept the pressure on for the next several laps. Despite his RC16 clearly not matching the GP26, Acosta wouldn't let Marquez escape.
It was only on lap 13 when Marquez picked up his pace, consistently lapping in the 1m46s bracket, that Acosta had to concede. "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.
Acosta also explained that he knew the risk of pushing too hard. "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," he added. Tire wear has long been a weakness for KTM, but the Austrian manufacturer has made progress in the last 18 months.
To adapt, Acosta has started changing his riding style to preserve tires. "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," the 22-year-old explained.
Acosta believes KTM's one-lap pace is holding him back, often starting further down the grid compared to his Ducati and Aprilia rivals. In the opening 13 rounds, he has qualified on the front row just three times, with an average starting position of sixth. When asked what he is missing to win a MotoGP race, he said: "It's missing many things, but at the moment, I want to concentrate on the ones that I have."
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