Pedro Acosta benefitted as Maverick Vinales helped “open the eyes” at KTM - Exclusive

Pedro Acosta’s crew chief Paul Trevathan has credited Maverick Vinales and Manu Cazeaux for helping steer KTM out of a difficult start to the 2025 MotoGP season.

Vinales joined KTM via a place at the Tech3 team this season, bringing the experienced Cazeaux with him.

The pair first worked together when Vinales joined the premier class with Suzuki in 2015, celebrating a debut victory in the following year’s British MotoGP.

Their paths then temporarily split when the young Spaniard was tempted away by Yamaha for 2017.

Cazeaux, who later remarked that if Vinales had stayed at Suzuki, “he would have fought for the championship”, was reunited with Vinales at Aprilia before switching to KTM.

But after losing ground over the winter and enduring a frustrating opening round in Thailand, Vinales and Cazeaux were the first within the KTM camp to find a clear direction for the RC16.

“We did it in warm-up in Argentina,” Vinales later explained. “Basically, I was looking to have more rear weight. Trying to control a little bit better the rear slide when I go into the corner.

“You could see on the videos that we always got sideways in braking, but I wanted to have it so that - even if it goes sideways - it is more under control. Then I can hit the apex in a better way, and touch the gas better.

“It all starts from the braking. But still there is room to improve further.”

As well as bike set-up, Vinales also “opened the window” on how a smoother riding style could work just as effectively with the orange machine, offering a contrast to the more aggressive approach used by the factory duo of Acosta and Brad Binder.

Not everything was directly transferable, but the new ideas were warmly welcomed by Acosta and Trevathan.

"Maverick has helped the whole team"

“It's fantastic to have good team-mates,” Trevathan told Crash.net. “It helps the development of the rider. It helps the development of the bike. And it opens the eyes.

“These guys don't always want to believe that somebody can do something better than them! But when you see the data and work in the right way, you can learn from this.

“Maverick's natural style is quite opposite to Pedro's. So it was just another way of getting the same lap time. And it opened up [new ideas] for sure.”

Trevathan added that Acosta embraced the new perspective without ego.

“Pedro really took that well – there was no ‘ah, shit, arsehole!’. It was like, ‘Okay. Interesting. Let me try that. Let me see. Let me understand’.  That’s something he's really good at.

“So, for sure, Maverick has helped the whole team, opening the windows a little bit to really understand that there are more possibilities.

“Also, his crew chief, Manu. Because [Maverick] was suffering at the beginning and Manu did a very good job of taking the bike in the direction for him.

“It didn't work for all of us, because it's a Maverick thing. But he worked well, and he's a very open guy.

“So all this experience coming into the team also helps a lot.”

Vinales put his KTM into the race lead in Qatar only to be stripped of the factory’s first podium of the season due to a post-race tyre-pressure penalty.

The 30-year-old’s campaign was later ruined by a shoulder injury.

Meanwhile, after a frustrating start, Acosta took over as KTM’s top rider, scoring twelve podiums in the second half of the season to reach fourth in the world championship.