Pedro Acosta’s chart-topping time in Friday practice for the Valencia Grand Prix has once again raised hopes that the KTM sensation could finally break through for his maiden MotoGP win.
The Spaniard has been fielding questions about that elusive first victory for much of his sophomore campaign, and they only grew louder when Gresini rookie Fermin Aldeguer scored an impressive victory in Indonesia and Trackhouse’s Raul Fernandez stood on the top step of the podium just weeks later in Australia.
But while Acosta has been facing increased external pressure to match those high expectations, he has been quietly building momentum of his own, and a first win feels closer than ever.
In each of the last five weekends, he has been on the podium, either in the sprint race or the grand prix, showing remarkable consistency on a bike whose performance has fluctuated drastically from track to track.
During the flyaway rounds, Acosta made no secret that the final two European races represented KTM’s best chances of returning to the top step. In Portimao, he led most of the sprint before losing out to Alex Marquez, while third was the maximum possible in Sunday’s race.
Valencia now offers him the final opportunity to get the monkey off his back, and Acosta seems intent on seizing that chance. An early flying lap in the hour-long Practice put him firmly on top of the timesheets, half a tenth clear of Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi.
Pedro Acosta, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing
Photo by: Javier Soriano – AFP – Getty Images
Considering Acosta had only one previous day of MotoGP running at Valencia – his first official test at the end of 2023 – it was an impressive way to start the weekend.
Nevertheless, the Spaniard refuses to believe he is the favourite for victory this weekend, highlighting how closely the field was spread on Friday.
“The problem here is that everything is super tight – it’s ridiculous,” he said. “I think one second [covers] 19 guys. With one replier [replacement rider] and one guy that was missing a lot of races like [Jorge] Martin, it’s ridiculous that we are in one second. You can imagine how high the level of MotoGP is at the moment.
“It’s true that we were having a lot of problems making the time attacks with the soft front and maybe [it was] unexpected.
“But anyway, we have to be happy. We were working a lot on race pace and on tyre life. But there’s still a lot of work to do because many things are unexpected at the moment.”
While acknowledging that KTM has some issues to fix overnight, Acosta is also aware that Circuit Ricardo Tormo is better-suited to the RC16 than most of the venues that closed out the flyaway stretch.
Pedro Acosta, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images
The fact that even team-mate Brad Binder was able to finish the day half a second off the outright pace – despite struggling on one-lap pace all year – shows the KTM is going well around the Cheste track.
“Here we arrived at a track that is better for us, maybe,” he explained. “If you check the last couple tracks, we have this Turn 2 in Indonesia that is super fast and our bike is not turning. Then we went to Phillip Island where we destroyed the tyres, and these long corners are not our favourite ones.
“In Malaysia, you have these two long straights with long acceleration and you are burning the tyres. And then we arrived in Portugal and it looked like our bike was not that fast like Ducati or Aprilia in the last corner.
“Here, it looks like we have to stop the bike more and then accelerate. It’s another way to ride the bike. It looks like our [bike] is becoming better because I don’t lose the rear much, and everything is easier to understand. I know, more or less, more where the tyres are and how to try to manage [them].”
Tyre wear will inevitably play a role in influencing Sunday’s outcome, but the Malaysian weekend proved KTM can get on top of that when it needs to.
But a first MotoGP win depends more on his rivals than Acosta himself. While one can reasonably expect him to fight at the front, question marks remain over how competitive his chief rivals Alex Marquez and Marco Bezzecchi will be this weekend.
The younger Marquez devoted a large part of Friday practice to testing a new 2025-specification aero package, and may continue to test it again this weekend. Bezzecchi, hence, looks like a more immediate threat. Aprilia has traditionally struggled at Portimao, but its more versatile 2025 RS-GP suggests he could be a genuine contender this year.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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