Pedro Acosta vows revenge after last-lap Le Mans MotoGP overtake

Pedro Acosta has vowed “we’ll see each other in the next race” after VR46 MotoGP rider Fabio Di Giannantonio overtook him in the French Grand Prix.

The pair swapped positions on the final lap, after Fabio Di Giannantonio launched his Ducati on Pedro Acosta’s inside at the penultimate corner.

The move pushed Di Giannantonio up to fourth, with Acosta admitting that he defended too hard on the final lap as he felt the Italiah was closer to him than he actually was.

While the overtake was clean, Acosta was somewhat frustrated, though he offered a tongue-in-cheek response: “I insist; I thought he was closer, but I’ll save that for next time,” he told Spanish media, according to Motorsport, on Sunday at Le Mans.

“Nobody gets past me while I’m looking at them. We’ll see each other in the next race.”

Acosta was running in the podium battle for much of the grand prix, before dropping back in the latter stages.

Reflecting on his race, he admitted: “Being honest, quite angry, because we lost a good opportunity for the podium.

“But in another way, on the other hand, it’s one of my best weekends here in Le Mans. It’s the first time that I finished both races.

“For this, from here to the moon! Anyway, I’m quite happy. It was a tricky warm-up, low temperatures, I was expecting a wet race.

“The rain never came. For this, I’m quite happy. We made a good start, we managed to make the first 10 laps quite fast. Then maintained the pace the next seven, and then suffered in the last nine.

“For this, I’m quite happy anyway.”

“I had to invent something…”

Di Giannantonio said he planned to attack Acosta into Turn 9 on the final lap, but was too far back, which meant he had to “invent” a pass into the penultimate corner.

He says he recalled a similar move he made on Marco Bezzecchi in Moto3 when deciding where to pass Acosta.

“I saw that Pedro was riding really good and it was really difficult to attack him,” the Italian said.

“I was preparing the attack on Turn 9, but I was really far away on the last lap.

“So, I had to invent, in a fast way, the attack and I just got a little deja vu from 2018 when I did the move on Bez in Moto3.

“So, I said, ‘Ok, let’s try to do it on Pedro’, and it worked.

“So, I’m happy because it was one place more, which is good, but also one place more for the championship. So, it was good.”