Tyre fears stopping Pedro Acosta from dreaming big on Friday at Malaysian MotoGP

Friday pacesetter Pedro Acosta says he has “no expectations” for the rest of the MotoGP Malaysian Grand Prix weekend as he is wary of KTM’s ongoing tyre wear issues.

The 21-year-old suffered two crashes on Friday at Sepang, but was still able to top the afternoon session with a 1m57.559s.

The factory KTM rider said on Thursday that the final three rounds offer the Austrian manufacturer good opportunities to fight for strong results, as Pedro Acosta’s wait for a maiden victory goes on.

And while he was fast on Friday, he is cautious of setting expectations because of the KTM’s repeated struggles of late with managing tyre wear.

“For sure, not the best way to start two sessions, crashing quite early,” he said.

“In the end, we have to try to avoid these mistakes because the only thing they give us is a loss of time.

“We have to be more focused from the beginning.

“But, anyway, it was a good day. We were thinking we were going to suffer and, more or less, we saved day one with two KTMs in Q2.

“Super happy about Pol [Espargaro] to see him again in Q2. We have to keep going. The pace was not so bad, but tomorrow we need to check tyre management again.

“Well, no expectations. We know that our tyre degradation is quite high, and I think the best way is not to think too much.

“Try and get a good rhythm tomorrow, and focus on the things that can make us better.”

Acosta lost a decent chunk of track time in Practice due to his early crash, which then put him under threat to secure a Q2 spot when light rain fell during the session.

He says he was ‘thankful’ for the rain, as it forced him to push with “nothing to lose” at a point when he was already out of the top 10.

“I mean, thankfully, my lap to enter into Q2, it started to rain, and I just went because if it started to rain, then I have nothing to lose,” he added.

“For this, I was quite happy about this lap, being in P6. Then, thankfully, the rain stopped and gave us more time on track, which is what I was missing.

“At the beginning, the pace was quite ok, but I was missing a bit of time at the beginning [of the session].”