ACOSTA LEFT SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS AFTER SEVENTH IN JAPAN

Pedro Acosta described the Japanese MotoGP as his first genuinely difficult race in some time after finishing seventh, despite qualifying third and starting from the front row. The Red Bull KTM rider said he could not explain the sharp contrast between Saturday’s pace and Sunday’s performance, and suspected the problem went beyond the switch to the hard tyre.

Acosta lost ground at the start, first to Marco Bezzecchi and then Alex Marquez. Marquez later served a double long-lap penalty, allowing Acosta to recover that place, but Enea Bastianini had already moved ahead. Acosta then fought the Trackhouse Aprilia riders for fifth. As he tried to attack Raul Fernandez for the position late in the race, Ai Ogura passed him, leaving Acosta seventh.

“Tough one,” Acosta said afterwards. “Really long time without that tough one.” He felt the bike and tyres had not worked well together, particularly under braking and on corner exits. “I was struggling a lot to stop the bike and even then to have some grip in the drive area.”

He said the lack of grip was most noticeable early on, improved for a period, and then returned towards the finish. The sensation was puzzling because the bike otherwise felt normal to him. “Really strange,” he said. “Now we have to check all the data with the team, because it’s something that was the first time that I have this feeling.”

Acosta did not believe there was a clear mechanical fault. Instead, he pointed to a possible setup issue affecting braking and acceleration, while stressing that the team needed to examine the data before identifying the cause. He also rejected the idea that the tyre change alone explained the drop-off: “I don’t think that just changing the tyres, and I was that fast and I was that slow.”

Bastianini’s fourth place offered KTM a useful comparison, Acosta said, and a chance to understand what had gone wrong with his own package. “It’s not our day,” he acknowledged, but added that he was pleased to see his fellow KTM rider running strongly and bringing back information for the team to study.

Despite the lost positions and unexplained grip problems, Acosta called seventh “not a disaster” and said, “P7, we survived, I would say.” His focus quickly shifted to the next round in Indonesia: “Let’s move onto Mandalika.”