Bastianini studies and just misses the podium: maybe he’s finally figured out Acosta’s "secrets"

Great performance by the KTM Tech3 rider, just a whisker off the podium in the Motegi race: will he be able to confirm himself at the same level in the next ones?

The 2026 Japanese Grand Prix gave us back an Enea Bastianini as competitive as someone with his talent should always be. In Motegi he took two very encouraging fourth places ahead of the final stretch of this MotoGP season. Already from Friday things were going well with direct access to Q2 in Qualifying, in which he then earned seventh on the starting grid.

He had finished the Sprint in third place, but going onto the green at the end resulted in a penalty that cost him one position and, therefore, the podium. In today’s race he lost the podium by 78 thousandths after a nice comeback on Marco Bezzecchi, who was really trembling in the finale. The Red Bull KTM Tech3 team rider can leave Motegi with a smile and look ahead with confidence to next weekend’s GP in Indonesia.

Interviewed by Sky Sport MotoGP, the 2020 Moto2 world champion said he was very satisfied with how things went today: "A good race, very difficult at the beginning, because it took me a while to overtake Acosta and so I lost a bit compared to those in front. Mid-race I tried to push as much as possible and I managed to catch Bezzecchi at the end, but unfortunately I couldn’t pass him."

In the closing stages there was a moment when Bastianini had gotten very close to Bezzecchi, but a small mistake may have denied him the chance to then make a decisive attack to grab the podium: "He braked well there; I braked quite hard because I was still a bit too far to attack him at Turn 11. I tried to brake as hard as possible to then launch onto the straight, but it didn’t work. In hindsight it would have been better to brake a little earlier; maybe I would have had the chance to attack at Turn 11. I arrived too late; I needed to get to him half a lap earlier."

The Rimini rider tried to explain why his competitiveness level rose so much at Motegi and admitted that studying Acosta also helped: "In my opinion, we cleared our heads a bit after the race in Austria. I studied Pedro’s data a lot, because he made a big difference, and I tried to understand what he did differently in the last races. Here we tried some slightly different solutions and I felt good right away when we put the soft on the rear. And even better in the warm-up when we tried the hard, a tire I don’t usually like that much. I think that not giving up, studying, and understanding what others do differently helped me."

He’s in the final phase of his adventure with the KTM Tech3 team, and perhaps a turning point has arrived for Bastianini, who had never before had such positive feelings riding the RC16: "I’m happy; what satisfied me the most is finding the feeling I had been missing for a very long time. Not even in Brno or Barcelona last year did I have the Motegi feeling. I’m really happy with fourth place."

Now we need to see whether Enea can confirm himself in the next GPs, and whether what happened in Japan wasn’t just a one-off. We’ll find out next weekend, when MotoGP is in action at Mandalika. In the meantime, it was great to see him so fast again and finally in positions more befitting his value as a rider.

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