Spearhead Pedro Acosta on Friday at Mandalika: “Best of the rest!”

“This reminds us of what could also happen with the new weekend format next season.” These were Pedro Acosta’s words when asked about the crashes involving half the MotoGP field on Friday at Mandalika. With more sessions taking place in ever-shorter succession, the riders would have to take greater risks, and valuable practice time would be lost. The KTM rider was not asked for his opinion: “I was informed about it, that’s all. There was no discussion.”

The Spielberg winner himself was not one of the riders who crashed – his brand-mate Enea Bastianini, however, sent his RC16 off the track twice. Ranked fourth, the rider from Murcia was the fastest rider in the field not riding an Aprilia RS-GP in the timed session. Acosta also set the fourth-fastest time in the first free practice session: “We’re the best of the rest! I’ve already matched my qualifying time from last year on the very first day of the weekend.”

Pedro Acosta (KTM) vor der finalen Attacke auf Position 4

Foto: Gold and Goose

He is still a long way from being on a par with the riders from the Trackhouse or Aprilia works teams; in the afternoon, the rider with start number 37 was almost seven tenths off Raul Fernandez’s pace: “We’re well behind Aprilia. It’s incredible how fast they are here. This year they’re just as good as they were in 2025. Raul Fernandez in particular put in some very good laps towards the end of the qualifying session.” There’s still room for improvement for the rider and team ahead of qualifying: “We’re losing over 0.4 seconds in just three corners in Sector 2. We first need to find out why we can’t keep up in this section. In sectors 1, 3 and 4, we’re not doing badly.”

It remained unclear why the KTM frontrunner, having started third, could only manage seventh place at the finish during the previous Grand Prix race weekend. The laps at the Mandalika International Street Circuit did nothing to shed light on the matter for the Spaniard: “We haven’t found any answers for what happened at Motegi. But our result on Friday makes up for that. We should be pleased about that.”

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Beyond that, the joy remained muted. Once again, it was only Acosta who made it through to Q2. Brad Binder finished 17th. Viñales managed 21st, whilst Bastianini could only manage 21st.