Pedro Acosta, celebration amid controversy: "Maybe it's better to finish 2nd than to win like this"

Acosta in P1 for the first time since he’s been racing in MotoGP, but he isn’t thrilled: the penalty to Marquez was decisive.

Pedro Acosta had dreamed of a different first victory, but in the MotoGP sprint race at Buriram he claimed the gold medal thanks also to the sanction handed to Marc Marquez. The two had staged a fantastic battle: at the last corner of the penultimate lap, the Ducati rider overtook his rival and ended up pushing him wide, off the track. A move deemed unfair and worthy of a penalty (drop one position). In the final part of the last lap, the KTM rider capitalized on the champion’s slowdown—he had to give the position back—to take the win. He would have preferred to win in a different way, but that’s how it went today, and he pockets 12 points that put him at the top of the overall standings.

Aside from the much-debated episode, the Red Bull KTM Factory rider is satisfied with his performance today and spoke about it to DAZN España: "It’s nice to start the season with a battle with Marc in the Sprint. We’ll see what happens in tomorrow’s race, which looks tough, but we can be happy. It’s true that I would have liked to really win, without being let through. It was a very nice battle."

Asked about Marquez’s maneuver, Acosta shared his thoughts without criticizing his rival and hinted that he would have calmly accepted defeat if the penalty hadn’t been applied: "We know that with this heat it’s hard to stop the bike. And especially in that final moment, many times it’s better to release the brakes and let it run rather than hit the rider in front of you directly. It was definitely one of the best fights I’ve ever had in MotoGP. If there hadn’t been a sanction, we would have finished in the same situation. We have to be happy because we’ve started the season quite well."

At the end of the race and immediately after the Sprint, the two-time world champion hadn’t understood the situation; he was surprised by Marquez’s slowdown: "The truth is it caught me a bit by surprise, because I didn’t quite understand what was happening. Maybe I would have preferred to finish second rather than win like this, but in any case we needed to be there for this to happen. We had a great battle, we kept our feet on the ground, which is important to win this race. We can be satisfied."

It was inevitable to talk about his prospects for the long race, which could be more complicated for Acosta and the KTM RC16: "First of all, we have to try to survive at the front in the first corners, which is what gave me a bit of breathing room today. And from there we’ll see what pace Ducati sets, what pace Bezzecchi has, because today he was the strongest, and we saw how easy it is to make a mistake. We’ll have to keep our feet on the ground, stay calm, and go step by step."