{"id":224958,"date":"2025-10-19T11:02:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T11:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224958\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T11:02:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T11:02:06","slug":"worst-race-on-calendar-fears-come-true-for-fuming-pedro-acosta-in-australian-motogp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224958\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Worst race on calendar\u2019 fears come true for fuming Pedro Acosta in Australian MotoGP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KTM\u2019s Pedro Acosta says his fears of the Australian Grand Prix being his worst MotoGP race on the calendar proved \u201cexactly like this\u201d after finishing fifth.<\/p>\n<p>The 21-year-old has enjoyed consistent podium challenges since <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/teams\/red-bull-ktm-factory-racing\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">KTM<\/a> introduced updates after the summer break.<\/p>\n<p>Taking a hard-fought second in Indonesia, and with a number of big names absent for the Australian Grand Prix, this weekend\u2019s Phillip Island round presented a good opportunity for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/racer\/1040772\/pedro-acosta\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pedro Acosta<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>After taking third in the sprint, the KTM rider fought for the lead early in the grand prix before fading 7.930s adrift to fifth at the chequered flag.<\/p>\n<p>An unhappy Acosta told TNT Sport afterwards that he was only at \u201c70%\u201d of his full potential on the RC16 and still suffered \u201ca hole\u201d in his tyres.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, difficult because when you make a race at 70% of your performance and you even end up with a hole in the tyres that you can\u2019t manage, it\u2019s critical, I would say,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor this, we need to keep going because it is the only way.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>MotoGP has celebrated two first-time winners at the last brace of races now, with rookie Fermin Aldguer triumphant at Mandalika and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/motogp\/news\/1084701\/1\/raul-fernandezs-first-motogp-win-tear-scare-tears-helmet\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Raul Fernandez taking top honours at Phillip Island<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Acosta believes he and KTM are close to being able to win races, but admits it is \u201cquite tough\u201d to ride like he is currently.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I think we are close, but we need to wait for our moment,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew that this track was going to be difficult before coming here.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is our worst race of the calendar for me, but also for the bike.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd it was exactly like this!<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe hope that now there are coming better races for us, like Sepang, Portugal, like Valencia, and we expect to just improve because it is quite tough to race like this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>KTM\u2019s next-best competitor behind Acosta was his team-mate Brad Binder, who was over four seconds further back in eighth.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>With Aprilia securing a double win at Phillip Island, it is now 47 points clear of KTM in the battle for second in the manufacturers\u2019 championship.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our MotoGP Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KTM\u2019s Pedro Acosta says his fears of the Australian Grand Prix being his worst MotoGP race on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,6399,806,805,803,804,10734,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-224958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-ktm","11":"tag-motor","12":"tag-motor-sports","13":"tag-motosport","14":"tag-motosports","15":"tag-pedro-acosta","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}