{"id":746422,"date":"2026-06-19T09:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T09:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746422\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T09:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T09:55:11","slug":"the-story-behind-the-viral-awkward-encounter-between-pedro-acosta-and-franco-colapinto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746422\/","title":{"rendered":"The story behind the viral, awkward encounter between Pedro Acosta and Franco Colapinto"},"content":{"rendered":"

MotoGP star Pedro Acosta<\/a> has explained the story behind the viral encounter with Franco Colapinto<\/a> in the Barcelona Formula 1 paddock, revealing it was sparked by a lost bet.<\/p>\n

F1 paddocks often produce unusual moments each race weekend, but few generated as much attention on social media during the Spanish Grand Prix as the brief encounter between Acosta and Colapinto.<\/p>\n

The moment, captured on camera at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, showed the KTM rider approaching the Argentine while he was signing a shirt. Colapinto, riding his scooter and heading towards\u00a0Alpine<\/a>\u2019s hospitality area, barely reacted at first, leading many fans to speculate that he had not recognised Acosta \u2013 or had mistaken him for just another fan.<\/p>\n

The clip quickly went viral, particularly among MotoGP and F1 audiences.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, speaking during media day at the Czech Grand Prix in Brno, Acosta has revealed what actually happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo tell you the truth, the thing with Franco Colapinto came from a bet that I lost early in the morning,\u201d Acosta told DAZN Spain, laughing. \u201cSo I went over to find him and had to say something stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Spaniard explained that he approached Colapinto simply to complete the challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I said to him: \u2018Mate, great that you came\u2019,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd I think he was signing a shirt and didn\u2019t really connect what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

That initial reaction was exactly what triggered all kinds of comments online. However, Acosta said the interaction ended in a much more natural way than the video suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen he said: \u2018Ah, man. The Shark, The Shark,\u2019\u201d Acosta added with a laugh, referring to his own nickname.<\/p>\n

Acosta and Piastri<\/p>\n

During the conversation, Acosta also spoke about the person he has the closest relationship with in F1: Oscar Piastri<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old explained that the two met some time ago at a commercial event through a shared partner and that the Australian left a strong impression on him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did an event together some time ago through a sponsor we have in common, and what surprised me about Oscar Piastri is that, socially, he\u2019s on a completely different level to us, but he\u2019s very normal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Acosta particularly highlighted the welcome he received both from the Australian and the entire McLaren<\/a> team.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first it\u2019s always difficult, honestly, but he has always treated me really well,\u201d he insisted. \u201cMcLaren and Oscar treated me very well in Formula 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MotoGP star Pedro Acosta has explained the story behind the viral encounter with Franco Colapinto in the Barcelona…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,358979,5747,5746,817,813,816,1802,5745,10734,85,358978],"class_list":["post-746422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-awkward-encounter-between-pedro-acosta-and-franco-colapinto","tag-brno-circuit","tag-czech-gp","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-franco-colapinto","tag-motogp","tag-pedro-acosta","tag-sports","tag-the-story-behind-the-viral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746422","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=746422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}