How MotoGP’s enigma rider could be KTM’s key to keeping Pedro Acosta

The 2025 British Grand Prix offered a moment to breathe for KTM, as investment from major shareholder Bajaj Auto from India has saved the Austrian brand from bankruptcy. What happens next is still to be determined, but Bajaj is set to take greater control in KTM decision-making as part of its near €600 million investment.

KTM’s MotoGP project does still have question marks over it, though Bajaj is thought to see value in it in the medium-term at least. So, for the time being anyway, things will carry on as they currently are for KTM.

But, if the British Grand Prix was anything to go by, KTM can’t continue exactly as it is. The low-grip, cold and windy conditions at Silverstone exposed all of KTM’s weaknesses with its 2025 bike.

None of its riders made it through to Q2, while Pedro Acosta took its best grand prix result in sixth and 7.1s from the victory. Maverick Vinales was the next-best KTM in 12th, while Brad Binder was only 14th courtesy of a tyre pressure penalty for Honda’s Luca Marini. “Horrendous” was how the South African described his afternoon.

Since the start of the year, most of KTM’s stable hasn’t sounded overly happy with the direction the RC16 is going. But Silverstone saw the veil to their frustrations really slip. Acosta really let some steam off to the media on Sunday after the British GP.

“It was a race of hopelessness,” he said. “It’s quite sad to see that you try to be perfect in acceleration and pick up [the bike] and [lean] angles and try to be close [to the others] and then lose everything in acceleration for the clear thing that we don’t have this amount of grip that the other bikes have.”

The previous day, Acosta sat down and demanded KTM to find a fix to its issues soon. When Crash.net asked him after the grand prix if he needs to be more patient, he snapped: “I don’t accept and I’m not patient. That’s it. Opportunity passes one time in life. I will not take all of my life to be a champion in this championship. I need help from the factory. That’s it.”

He went on to reiterate that he has another year on his contract with KTM, that “I really believe in this project” but “I don’t want to come here with KTM and just burn fuel.”

These comments came literally the day Acosta, in year two of MotoGP, turned 21. And in some ways, it highlighted the immaturity that is reasonable to expect from a sophomore whose world championship experience dates back only four years.

Linked to a factory Honda move for 2026, that avenue looks like it may have been closed on him as Jorge Martin looks to activate a clause in his Aprilia contract to leave the brand at the end of the year. Perhaps that’s why there has been this reasonably sudden and sharp tone shift from Acosta.

What is definitely true here is that KTM doesn’t have much time to convince Acosta of a long-term future, with 2027 factory deals to be inked very early next year. But KTM does at least have something it can use to steer the RC16 in the right direction, and ultimately placate Acosta.

Maverick Vinales is showing other KTM MotoGP riders the way

After seven rounds in 2025, Acosta’s points tally stands at 58 and just 8.2 points per round. That’s quite the contrast to the 101 he scored at the same stage of his rookie campaign. He’s still the leading KTM in the standings, but not by much.

Maverick Vinales’ first year on the KTM has been something of a surprise hit. His run to a shock second in the Qatar before it was stripped from him due to a tyre pressure penalty was the kind of freak performance MotoGP’s most peculiar rider is famed for. But subsequent top five runs in varying conditions across the Spanish and French GPs proved there is something deeply encouraging there.

The British GP was tough for him, as it was all KTM riders, and after seven rounds he’s sat on 45 points - 55 less than he managed at the same stage last year. However, if his Qatar podium stood he’d be on 65 and at a 9.2 points per round average. It’s marginally better than where Acosta is, but that’s significant.

After a low-key winter and start to the season, Vinales quickly became KTM’s reference rider, to the point where the likes of Acosta and Binder took their bikes in the direction Vinales had been working in.

“In the beginning of the season was not easy because I didn’t feel the flow on the bike,” Vinales tells Crash.net in an exclusive interview at Silverstone. “But we started to talk with Manu [Cazeaux] my crew chief and he said ‘Ok Maverick, just focus on the feeling, forget about lap time because the lap time will come. You’ve always had the speed to be in front, so just focus on the feelings’. Then I started to focus more on the feelings to better understand the bike and started to get the flow in the corners. As soon as I understood this, I started to be faster and faster. Now we are on the point where one tenth will put us really to the point to fight for races.”

Regularly this season Vinales has been the level-headed rider in the KTM stable, always reminding the media (and perhaps his stablemates at the same time) that developing a bike is a process. It’s a far cry from the rider whose frustrations at Yamaha boiled over to such a degree that he was ousted from the team during the 2021 campaign, having weeks earlier quit his two-year deal.

Vinales has been through the frustration phase of an unpredictable project, so understands how better to approach things. Acosta, clearly, has not - and that’s understandable, given he’s been champion twice in the first five years of his grand prix career.

The current KTM bike suffers in low-grip conditions and continues to be plagued by vibrations on the rear. These are inherent problems that contributed to its Silverstone woes. But Vinales’ level-headedness is allowing him to understand where the bike is actually good, and just how to get the best out of the current package.

“For me, in the traction and on the straights,” he replied when asked where the RC16 is good. “The bike is a rocket. It’s massive [the speed], it’s so fast. So, you always have to take profit of this from the bike, which is not easy because not all the tracks are about accelerating and have long straights. But I start to feel that we have started to be competitive on the brakes, we’ve started to be competitive on the fast corners. There is a tiny moment where still we need to improve, especially when you release the front brake before touching the gas. This is the moment I need to improve.”

He adds: “I had this idea that the KTM should be ridden aggressively. Because I saw Po [Espargaro]l, Brad so aggressive on the bike. But when I arrived, I started to ride aggressively - which I like - and I said ‘this is not working, it’s not working at all and I’m slow’. So, I decided to switch and ride smooth, and it seems to work. But now I need to understand how I can ride smooth while pushing a lot.”

That’s been key to Vinales’ step forward on the KTM, but he’s clearly been able to do it more instinctively than his stablemates. Binder admitted during the British GP weekend that he’s still pushing too much, while Acosta’s hard-braking style that won him some big results last year is at total odds to how the bike wants to be ridden now.

What Pedro Acosta can learn from Maverick Vinales

Throughout our interview with Vinales, he was philosophical on the job at hand. Now 10 years in MotoGP, he’s had a lot of time - and a lot of hard knocks - to mature. KTM can consider itself fortunate to have welcomed Vinales into its fold when it did.

Vinales has always been sure in himself that he knows how to make a bike a winner. In the winter, he spoke of how Yamaha went against his advice with the 2017 bike and believes he could have won the title that year riding the machine he wanted. It’s a what-if worth endless pondering, but KTM has clearly gained something this year from his feedback.

“More than to be confident, which obviously you need confidence to be in MotoGP, it’s about that KTM can rely on myself for the future,” he said, when talking about the fact his direction is being used by his stablemates. “This is very important because I want to win, but I also want that KTM will win. That’s why I’m in this project. So, it’s important for them to see this kind of thing and I’m sure they see that with my crew chief Manu we are doing an excellent job on this side.”

At a point in time when the manufacturer you ride for is second-to-last only by virtue that Fabio Quartararo’s Yamaha broke when on course for victory at Silverstone, a rider’s selfishness isn’t going to do you any favours.

Acosta seems to be at this stage of his life: he backs KTM, sure, but his vision (as all young racers are guilty of) is very much focused on the immediate results. That was evident when Crash put to him at Silverstone that his frustrations could stem from the fact he had the breakout rookie campaign he did on the KTM.

“No, I mean it’s for the thing that I signed that contract - to come fight for a championship,” he replied. “That is clear. To fight and even lose, but to fight for it. But I was talking about this problem from the first day of testing I made on this bike. But it’s still there. The problems are not something new.

“Maybe this year the lap times are even closer and even faster, and it’s worse for us. Maybe having more brands being competitive is even harder for us. This looks like we are not as good as we were thinking. And this looks like we need to change things. I read that Yamaha brought a new chassis here. They make a pole position. And he [Quartararo] was going to win the race…”

In the winter, KTM team manager Aki Ajo talking of “keeping things simple” when it came to bike development in 2025. In the past, KTM has been guilty of throwing too many things at the bike. That was the case in pre-season testing, as it scrabbled to find some kind of direction with all four riders running different things.

Quartararo said after the first few rounds that Yamaha was also doing too many things to the bike, and that he needed to be able to adapt himself first to extract form from the M1. He’s currently on a run of three pole positions, a podium at Jerez and a victory near-miss at Silverstone, benefitting more from small chassis, engine and aero updates brought between Spain and Britain.

Acosta gained a bit of a reputation in recent years of being mature and grounded in his approach. But faced with his first truly tricky year in grand prix racing, his inexperience is seeping through a little.

“You’re only young until you’re not; many stars in the championship grow so fast and disappear fast,” he remarked at Silverstone. Arguably, his KTM stablemate Maverick Vinales falls into that category given the trajectory of his MotoGP career.

But there is a lot to be said for how that has shaped Vinales into the rider he is currently, quietly trying to guide KTM through a rough patch: “They only need the same championship as me, so I think the target is the same. And when the target is the same, the relationship is perfect,” he concluded.

Vinales’ approach is, at this moment, the thing that will help transform KTM’s competitive outlook deep into the 2025 season. Should that happen, KTM’s hopes of keeping Acosta beyond 2026 are greatly boosted. Equally, Acosta will benefit no end from taking a look at more than just the bike inside the #12 Tech3 garage…