ACOSTA SAYS KTM TEAMMATES BINDER AND BASTIANINI MUST IMPROVE AFTER MISANO

Pedro Acosta says he needs his KTM teammates Brad Binder and Enea Bastianini to make a step forward after the pair finished well off the pace at Misano in the 2026 San Marino Grand Prix. While Acosta delivered another strong KTM result by taking P3, Binder and Bastianini were left fighting much further back, and the Spaniard believes their difficulties are complicating his own job of finding speed race after race.

Acosta’s podium at Misano was his fifth of the season and his second consecutive rostrum in 2026, following P2 at Aragon. In San Marino, he was only 2.326s behind race winner Marc Marquez, but the gap to the leading group underlined the contrast within KTM: Bastianini came home P8, 20.858s adrift of the front, and Binder finished P11, 23.905s from the lead. Tech3 stand-in Pol Espargaro was also far back in P14, 31.792s off the pace, with the report noting he is deputising while Maverick Vinales recovers from injury.

Before speaking to the media at the podium ceremony, Acosta reportedly checked where the other KTM riders had finished. Seeing how far behind Bastianini and Binder came, he called for improvement—both to raise the overall KTM level and to give himself more options in how to attack each circuit.

“I was checking how the other KTMs were because, in the end, I need that they also improve to let me have the opportunity to see other ways,” Acosta told TNT Sports 2. He added that the process of learning how to go fast at every track is made harder when the rest of the team is struggling: “Because now, it’s a matter of discovering how to go fast at every track, and this makes everything more difficult. For this, it would be good if the other KTMs could make a step, or I can help the KTMs to make a good step.”

The Misano podium also had a clear impact on Acosta’s championship position. The result moved him up to fifth in the riders’ standings with 209 points after 14 rounds. The report highlights how rare Acosta’s consistency has been within KTM: he is the only rider so far to have taken a Grand Prix podium on the RC16 after 14 races.

Bastianini enters the next phase of the season as KTM’s next-best performer in the standings, sitting P12 with 92 points, ahead of Binder in P13 on 83. The same pattern appears in their recent results: Binder has not finished higher than P7 in the first 14 rounds, while Bastianini’s best result so far is P6.

Beyond the immediate race outcome, the article also points to how these seasons’ performances have shaped KTM’s future plans. It says Bastianini and Binder’s results helped convince KTM not to retain either for 2027. Bastianini is set to join Trackhouse once his factory KTM deal for Tech3 ends, while Binder has signed with BMW for the 2027 WorldSBK season, marking a switch away from MotoGP.