Pedro Acosta blasts: "It’s the stupidest rule in MotoGP

Aprilia was simply too strong, and at Mandalika the KTM rider had to settle for being the “first of the rest”; there was also an unpleasant situation during the race.

Pedro Acosta was unable to fight for victory again after triumphing in the MotoGP race in Austria, but he is still trying to get the most out of a KTM that is inferior to both Aprilia and Ducati. He crossed the finish line in fourth place in the race in Indonesia, where Aprilia placed four RS-GP26s ahead of him. He could not have done more today.

The two-time world champion’s race was also marked by several laps in which he was “forced” to tuck in behind another rider to manage his tyre pressure, which had evidently dropped when he was riding in clean air. On several occasions, he deliberately allowed Marc Marquez to overtake him with the aim of staying behind him and increasing the pressure, thereby bringing it back within the limits set by the regulations and avoiding a penalty that would have demoted him in the final race classification. Mission accomplished: fifth place secured.

After the race, the two-time world champion stated bluntly that he does not like the current tyre-pressure regulations: “It’s the stupidest rule in the entire championship, not so much because of Marc’s and my race, but more because of what happened to Martín on Saturday. You cannot decide whether someone will crash; you cannot decide these things. You cannot predict the future and think about what pressure you will use today. Because what is clear is that if you set it too high, it does not work; if you set it too low, you go faster”.

Acosta also suggested a solution, one that others have already proposed but that those who make the MotoGP rules have never adopted: “If we all had a standard starting pressure on the grid, it would take just a moment to check. There comes a point when having tyre pressure that is too high becomes downright dangerous”.

Regarding his battle with Marquez, the Red Bull KTM Factory rider is convinced that it harmed him quite seriously, preventing him from achieving a better result: “Those overtakes were a real nuisance. We lost too much time because I let him go, then he let me go, then I overtook him again, and then he let me go once more. I think we could have had a slightly calmer race, with him ahead or me ahead. I don’t think that group with Ogura and Diggia would have caught us: in the end, I think I lost 5 seconds, and with 5 seconds we would practically have been on the podium”.

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