Pedro Acosta left the Thai MotoGP season opener with the world championship lead, but also a clear idea of where KTM still needs to improve.

The Spaniard produced the surprise performance of the weekend, taking a debut sprint victory after a late penalty for Marc Marquez before finishing second in Sunday’s grand prix.

Saturday marked KTM’s first win since 2023 and the weekend ended with the Austrian manufacturer leading the MotoGP World Championship for the first time.

However, Pedro Acosta believes the Buriram battle revealed a key weakness compared with rivals Ducati and Aprilia.

“Well, it looks like this year our top speed is not great compared to Ducati and Aprilia,” he said. “I’m struggling a lot in the first two sectors of the track.”

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The fastest speed of the Thai MotoGP weekend was 345.0km/h by Jorge Martin during qualifying for Aprilia, while Enea Bastianini recorded the fastest KTM at 342.8km/h. Acosta’s own best was 341.7km/h.

During Sunday’s grand prix, Marquez topped the speed charts at 339.6km/h. Acosta and KTM team-mate Brad Binder both reached 336.4km/h.

Despite that deficit, Acosta was able to compensate in the final sector, especially the heavy braking zone for the last corner, scene of his many overtakes.

“It’s true that since I’ve come to Thailand, even in the other categories, I was always having a fast T4 and it’s the only place that I was able to overtake,” he said.

“Because then you have this last braking point, and it was my only card in the pocket that I was able to use. For this, I was just trying to maintain the space and then try to attack there.”

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Acosta now heads to round two in Brazil holding a seven-point championship lead over Marco Bezzecchi.

However, improving KTM’s single-lap performance is also high on his priority list after qualifying only sixth at Buriram.

“We have to anyway keep working because you can also see that Aprilia and Ducati are still being super-fast in the time attack,” he said.

“This will make our life more easy. It’s true that we are not so bad like last year in time attacks also, but still a way to go.”

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