\u201cThis reminds us of what could also happen with the new weekend format next season.\u201d These were Pedro Acosta\u2019s words when asked about the crashes involving half the MotoGP field on Friday at Mandalika. With more sessions taking place in ever-shorter succession, the riders would have to take greater risks, and valuable practice time would be lost. The KTM rider was not asked for his opinion: \u201cI was informed about it, that\u2019s all. There was no discussion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spielberg winner himself was not one of the riders who crashed \u2013 his brand-mate Enea Bastianini, however, sent his RC16 off the track twice. Ranked fourth, the rider from Murcia was the fastest rider in the field not riding an Aprilia RS-GP in the timed session. Acosta also set the fourth-fastest time in the first free practice session: \u201cWe\u2019re the best of the rest! I\u2019ve already matched my qualifying time from last year on the very first day of the weekend.\u201d <\/p>\n
He is still a long way from being on a par with the riders from the Trackhouse or Aprilia works teams; in the afternoon, the rider with start number 37 was almost seven tenths off Raul Fernandez\u2019s pace: \u201cWe\u2019re well behind Aprilia. It\u2019s incredible how fast they are here. This year they\u2019re just as good as they were in 2025. Raul Fernandez in particular put in some very good laps towards the end of the qualifying session.\u201d There\u2019s still room for improvement for the rider and team ahead of qualifying: \u201cWe\u2019re losing over 0.4 seconds in just three corners in Sector 2. We first need to find out why we can\u2019t keep up in this section. In sectors 1, 3 and 4, we\u2019re not doing badly.\u201d <\/p>\n
It remained unclear why the KTM frontrunner, having started third, could only manage seventh place at the finish during the previous Grand Prix race weekend. The laps at the Mandalika International Street Circuit did nothing to shed light on the matter for the Spaniard: \u201cWe haven\u2019t found any answers for what happened at Motegi. But our result on Friday makes up for that. We should be pleased about that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Beyond that, the joy remained muted. Once again, it was only Acosta who made it through to Q2. Brad Binder finished 17th. Vi\u00f1ales managed 21st, whilst Bastianini could only manage 21st.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis reminds us of what could also happen with the new weekend format next season.\u201d These were Pedro…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-641289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}