Pedro Acosta from “pissed off” to Malaysian MotoGP podium: “Remove all the controls”
Pedro Acosta turned a disastrous warm-up into a MotoGP podium at Sepang after telling KTM to “remove all the controls.”
With KTM struggling badly with tyre wear in recent events, including Saturday’s Sprint, Pedro Acosta looked to have little chance of making the same soft rear last double the distance in Sunday’s Malaysian MotoGP.
14th in warm-up underlined a bleak outlook for Acosta, but it also prompted a radical change of strategy.
“I was super pissed off after the warm-up, because we touched something in the bike and I had no power out of these last two corners. I was losing a lot,” Acosta explained.
Rather than increasing the electronics, to try and save the tyre but killing power, Acosta asked to go in the opposite direction.
“I said to the boys, 'Look, we cannot be worse than that. For this, let's go completely in the other direction. And if we f**k up, it’s my fault’,” he said.
“For this, remove all the controls, and we go racing.
“It was difficult again to battle for the victory, but we were much closer than we expected. For this, I'm quite happy.”
Once the grand prix began, Acosta quickly challenged Francesco Bagnaia for second behind Alex Marquez, only for the Ducati rider to retaliate each time.
But as the laps went on, it was Bagnaia who began to fade, allowing the KTM star to finally make a move stick on lap 13 of 20.
“With Pecco, it's always nice to battle,” Acosta said.
“We were losing a lot [to Alex Marquez] when I overtook Pecco in Turn 9 and he passed me back early on the race.
“But anyway, for how hard the race was yesterday, I think we managed it in the best way today.”
After clearing Bagnaia, who later stopped with a tyre issue, Acosta briefly dared to dream of chasing down race leader Marquez.
“Alex showed a little bit more pace than Pecco and me in the beginning, but later I was able to more or less match his lap times,” Acosta said.
“I was dreaming at one stage to catch him. But it's true that he was quite far already.
“For this, with three to go, I said ‘okay, now it's the moment just to be safe.’”
Acosta took the chequered flag 2.7s behind the Gresini Ducati race winner for his third grand prix runner-up finish of the season.
The next best KTM was Tech3’s Enea Bastianini in seventh (+15.3s).
Acosta remains fifth in the world championship but is now 26 points behind Bagnaia with two rounds to go.
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