“Time to chill” - Acosta ends Marquez chase after front-end scare in Misano MotoGP

A front-end scare convinced Pedro Acosta it was “time to chill a bit” just as he was closing on the Marquez brothers late in the Misano MotoGP.

The Red Bull KTM star had set his fastest lap of the race on lap 23 of 27 and was almost within reach of the race-leading Marquez brothers.

But after an unexpectedly tough weekend, Acosta settled for a podium finish he judged as even better than his runner-up ride at the Previous Aragon round.

“Even if I finished third, it was much better race overall than Aragon,” Acosta said.

“We had a really tough weekend. It's not so normal that I struggle as much as I did in the braking points. But we turned the weekend around by making a good job last night. We have to be happy. We battled with Ducatis, with Aprilias.”

Pressed on what had changed on the RC16 after Saturday’s sixth place in the Sprint, Acosta replied:

“We changed the whole bike completely, I was struggling a lot yesterday, and like I say, this was a track where I had expected the bike should work much better, because last year we had really good pace.

“But anyway, the pace at the end of the race was quite good, as also in Aragon.”

Acosta closed to within 1.687s of race leader Marc Marquez when he called off his charge after one scare too many.

“It was going to be tough and at the end, in Turn 7, I locked the front, and that was exactly the moment that I said: ‘Okay, now it's time to chill a bit’,” Acosta said.

“I had good gap with Aldeguer behind and said P3 will be more than enough for how tough this weekend was.”

Acosta, who will return to Misano as Marc Marquez’s factory Ducati team-mate in 2027, is now up to fifth in the world championship, ahead of the injured Ai Ogura.