KTM with “extra motivation” as Pedro Acosta finds “stability” over “expectations”

The opening half of the 2025 MotoGP season was tough in general for KTM, but it ended with two podium finishes in Czechia courtesy of Pedro Acosta that now serve as “extra motivation” for the Austrian factory, according Aki Ajo.

Acosta began the season as a first-year rider in the factory KTM team, but was upstaged in the beginning by Maverick Vinales in the Tech3 team who took top-six finishes while Pedro Acosta flirted with a possible switch to Ducati for 2026 - a possibility which subsided before the Czech MotoGP.

But it was Acosta who took KTM’s first podium finishes of the season in Brno, finishing second in the Sprint and then third in the grand prix in Czechia.

Red Bull KTM Factory Racing Team Manager Aki Ajo thinks that Acosta’s performances in Brno were important for KTM, and were a result of the Spanish rider’s work to better manage expectations in the first half of his second season in MotoGP – and his first in a factory team.

“For sure it’s extra motivation for all of us, but of course especially for the riders, especially when the winter time was a little bit tough for us for many reasons,” Ajo told MotoGP.com’s Gear Up preview show ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix.

“I think, for example in Pedro’s [Acosta] case, the expectations at the beginning of the season were quite high. After last year, his first season in MotoGP, it was quite high.

“Then it was maybe turning a little bit around and then, I don’t say negative, but it was some disappointment, and then the expectations were not high enough in one moment.

“Now we find, for me, like a stability for this, and I see – already before the summer break but especially now – that Pedro also cleared his head a lot and tried to keep all the focus and work as simple as possible.”

Ajo added that it was expected that Acosta would encounter problems in 2025, and that the Spaniard has has been effective in his process to resolve those.

“I always used to say that when we build a project, when we build a rider, career, and everything, that if we don’t face the problems, if we don’t go deep, how can we grow,” Ajo said.

“This we can see with many riders, with many projects, and I think in Pedro’s case it’s a little bit the same.

“Last year was going really well, it was a really great start for him. On the other hand, we, people with experience, saw that ‘Hey, where are the problems coming?’

“Without the problems, without learning from problems, I think we cannot be really strong.

“So, I think this was a quite quick process in the last months from Pedro, he did it very well.”