Bastianini flies, Acosta disappoints: the Spaniard asks KTM for answers

Negative races in Japan for the KTM rider, taken out on Saturday and then not very competitive on Sunday: studying Bastianini could help him.

After the triumph in the Austrian Grand Prix, repeating himself was never going to be easy, but Pedro Acosta hoped things would go much better at Motegi. In qualifying he managed to secure the front row, a promising result ahead of the weekend’s races. But shortly after the start of the sprint race he retired due to a collision caused by Alex Marquez, and in the long race he couldn’t do better than seventh place.

On Sunday it was really strange to see him so uncompetitive, considering that KTM was proving it could be very fast with Enea Bastianini, who finished fourth, just behind Marco Bezzecchi. For some reason the Spaniard couldn’t match that level in the final race of the weekend in Japan.

The two-time world champion was clearly baffled by the situation he found himself in during the MotoGP race at Motegi: "It had been a long time since I’d faced a race like this - reports Marca -. It seems we didn’t find the right combination between bike and tires. I don’t know why I had to open my legs so much to brake and, even then, still had issues with traction. Seventh place isn’t a disaster. It’s true it wasn’t our day, but I’m happy to have seen that all the KTMs were quite fast and made it to the finish."

Acosta explained: "I had no grip under braking, I was slow and then had another drop-off with the tire at the end. Overtaking was difficult for me, which isn’t like me. I don’t know, it’s very strange, because the bike was responding well. I don’t understand how, with the same tires, Enea was so fast and I was so slow. It’s not normal that just changing the rear tire cost me so much."

In the KTM garage they have all the necessary data to try to understand what prevented the Tiburon from fighting for better positions. Taking a look at what Bastianini did will certainly help them understand and improve.

The weekend in Japan should have definitively knocked Acosta out of the fight for the 2026 MotoGP title. Not that he particularly believed before racing at Motegi; he knew he had to pull off a very difficult feat, with 72 points to make up on leader Jorge Martin. Now the gap to the Aprilia rider has become 90, and it’s even harder to imagine the KTM rider being crowned world champion.

It’s true there are six Grands Prix left (unless Qatar is canceled), but it would be truly surprising if, at the end of the season, the champion were someone other than Martin, Marquez, or Bezzecchi. The latter is already at risk of falling out of contention, having accumulated a 49-point deficit to the top and being forced to try to reduce it at the next Grand Prix in Indonesia.

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