Pedro Acosta on racing Marc Marquez: ‘Completely awesome, a dream come true’
Pedro Acosta says sharing the same race track with Marc Marquez is a ‘dream come true’.
The sensational MotoGP rookie not only shared the same tarmac with Marc Marquez in Qatar, but Pedro Acosta instead managed to battle against the eight-time world champion which involved him overtaking Marquez at turn one.
Although Acosta was unable to keep the same pace as the leading riders around him, Acosta showed his immense talent and was only overtaken by Marquez when he made a mistake.
Speaking about Marquez and the battle they enjoyed, Acosta said: “It’s quite nice because in the last couple of weeks they are showing this overtake and in my phone I saw many pictures from my first press conference in Jerez a long time ago.
“Also, in 2013 when he won his first world championship in MotoGP, I was in the Spanish championship federation and at the trophy gala I have a picture with him because this didn’t happen again for many years.
“But I’m so happy to share a track with him, so happy to learn and spend six or seven laps behind him in the race was completely awesome. A dream come true, for sure.”
Prior to the Portimao weekend getting underway, there was some speculation that the young Spaniard might need to undergo surgery to fix an arm pump problem.
But Acosta, who was very quick again during FP1 in Portimao, admitted on Thursday that his arm is fine.
“Everything is okay with the arm,” said the reigning Moto2 world champion. “If you look at the replays on lap 14 I was smoking the tyre.
“It was more than clear that I was going to suffer in the last part of the race.
“Also, when I was riding in Moto2 with the Dunlops we did 24 laps wide open and this [strategy] came a bit from there.
“Anyway, it is what it is and we need to not make this mistake in the future.”
