“Great for him”: MotoGP champion praises Pedro Acosta after breakthrough MotoGP win
Fabio Quartararo jokes it’s taken “a long time” for Pedro Acosta to take his first MotoGP win.
Pedro Acosta’s first MotoGP has been a long time in the making, the Spaniard finally getting it done today in Austria after “a long time”, as Fabio Quartararo joked afterwards.
Acosta joined MotoGP in 2024, when KTM was into the second season of a winning drought that stretched from the end of 2022.
Coming into this year, the only factory with a longer winning drought was Yamaha, for whom Fabio Quartararo’s win at Germany in July 2022 remains the most recent victory.
Acosta’s Austria win, then was not only a landmark for himself, but also KTM as a factory.
It was also a win that came after devastation on Saturday, when the Murcian crashed out of a 2.5-second lead in the Sprint. To rebound in such a way, especially after another crash in Warm Up on Sunday morning, stood out to 2021 champion Quartararo.
“It took a long time,” said Quartararo on Acosta’s Austria win.
“It’s great for him, because crash in the Sprint, crash this morning, and he was the fastest all the weekend.
“So, this weekend he really deserved the victory.”
“I tried my best”
Quartararo’s own race was almost opposite to Acosta’s. While the KTM man went from fifth on the first lap to first by the finish, Quartararo started ninth and ended up 16th.
“I just tried to do my best and this was what I expected,” the Monster Energy Yamaha rider said.
“I gave my best, I tried to stay with Pecco [Francesco Bagnaia] in the first laps, but I knew I was going to use my tyres.
“But I knew it was going to be difficult to finish in the points today, so I tried my best.”
He added: “So I prefer to enjoy at least 10 laps and survive at the end.
“At the end, I prefer to push my maximum, and at least I enjoyed the first part of the race until Di Giannantonio overtook me.”
Quartararo added that there was nothing to learn by riding around without any grip at the end.
“I knew already, like yesterday in the Sprint my tyre was destroyed at the end,” he said.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen today, but I felt what was going to happen.
“I think my last laps were like [Izan] Guevara at the end.
“We struggled a lot. The amount of spin that we had was big.”
Alex joined the Crash.net team in August of 2024 having covered consumer and racing motorcycle news at Visordown for two years.
