ACOSTA SAYS KTM HAS FALLEN BEHIND AS RIVALS ADVANCE

Pedro Acosta arrived at Mandalika with strong recent form, having finished runner-up at the previous two Indonesian Grands Prix. But the KTM rider’s weekend has fallen short of those expectations: he qualified ninth and finished sixth in Saturday’s sprint after receiving a long-lap penalty for exceeding track limits.

Acosta said instability on his RC16 had limited what he could achieve. He described “massive shakes” while pushing to match the pace of his rivals through sector two, and said he touched the green track surface three times. In his view, a top-five result was about the most KTM could manage in the 13-lap race after a difficult qualifying session.

“There was not much more to do,” Acosta said. He added that a higher finish might have been possible if the riders ahead had battled more, but Jorge Martin was simply faster. “Top five was the maximum we could catch today after a bad qualifying,” he said.

The Spaniard also questioned whether the track had changed significantly between Friday and Saturday. Aprilia and Ducati remained quick, he noted, while he continued to struggle. He believes the gap reflects the progress made by KTM’s rivals rather than a decline in his own team’s performance.

“I don’t know how much the other bikes have changed, but my one hasn’t changed so much,” Acosta said. “We are just being fast with more or less the same bike, and Ducati and Aprilia are just faster.”

Acosta said KTM is still quicker than it was a year ago, but that improvement has not kept pace with its competitors. Aprilia, he observed, can be particularly strong at circuits that suit the bike, while Ducati tends to perform well across a wide range of tracks. “It’s not that we’ve become worse; the problem is our competitors have improved more,” he said.