“Time for KTM to give some answers”: Pedro Acosta reacts to Brno MotoGP retirement

Pedro Acosta was forced to retire with yet another technical problem on his KTM RC16 in the Brno MotoGP, and he thinks it’s “time for KTM to give some answers”.

KTM technical problems have been a theme of the last few MotoGP races, especially since Catalunya when an Acosta breakdown led to the huge crash for Alex Marquez.

There was another technical problem for Acosta in practice at Brno on Friday, and a second of the weekend – which Acosta said was “exactly the same” as the one he had on Friday – left him out of the race on the final lap.

“Now I’m not even disappointed,” Pedro Acosta said after the race.

“I did not make anything wrong, for this what is not in my hands I cannot change. 

“It’s what it is. Now it’s time for KTM to give some answers and try to analyse why we are having these reliability problems, because there are many already.”

He added: “KTM now should send everything to the factory, try to understand what is going on and give some answers because it’s already many times that happened– not exactly this thing, but some problems around.”

Acosta added that the problem was a different one to what he had at Barcelona, but his race until the retirement had been one conditioned by concerns over front tyre pressure.

The Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider had been running fourth early on but dropped to fifth intentionally to try to use Fabio Di Giannantonio’s bike to increase his front tyre pressure. But Di Giannantonio simply pulled away once he had the clean air, so Acosta dropped several more seconds to ride behind Joan Mir.

Acosta was faster than Mir so could keep up comfortably, and he was in position to try to keep fifth on the final lap before the bike cut out at turn one.

“Our target was from third to fifth, we were in fifth position,” he said.

“I was having some problems with the front tyre pressure. I let past Diggia [Fabio Di Giannantonio], then he was faster than me and I was not taking again this result that I needed, for this I rolled off again. 

“I let Joan [Mir] past and [it] was clear that I was faster and I was able to make laps behind really close to try to bring the tyre [pressure] up. I was in the ideal spot, and then just the race was one lap too long. “

Acosta said the tyre pressure issue was about he and KTM “playing with everything we have”.

“We know that we are not in the level to battle with Aprilia and Ducati and we are just playing with everything we have,” he said.

“Maybe if I was slightly closer to Ogura, this should not happen, but anyway Diggia was faster than me even if I was in the correct tyre pressure. 

“Tyre pressure was not the problem today.”