Acosta after fifth place at Silverstone: two demands for KTM

• Fifth place at Silverstone, 6.256 seconds behind winner Raul Fernandez
• Sixth top-five finish in twelve races this season, seventh in the standings on 163 points
• Acosta wants KTM to improve within race weekends and to deliver reliable engines

Silverstone was not expected to be a track where KTM could achieve much. The 5.9-kilometre circuit suits neither Pedro Acosta’s riding style nor the RC16 particularly well, and last year the Spaniard failed to reach Q2 directly here. Expectations were correspondingly low when the weekend started with two crashes on Friday. On Sunday afternoon a top-five result appeared on the scoreboard anyway, and Acosta used the moment to talk about something that has been on his mind for months.

How did Pedro Acosta finish fifth at Silverstone?

Acosta started from ninth on the grid and began moving forward on the opening lap. At the end of the 20 laps he was fifth, 6.256 seconds behind winner Raul Fernandez.

The start of the weekend was bumpy. Two crashes on Friday cost him confidence, and after the second one it was „pretty difficult“ to find a rhythm again. Even so, Acosta made it straight into Q2 and qualified ninth, 0.722 seconds off pole-sitter Jorge Martin. Compared with last year, that alone was a noticeable improvement.

The sprint then showed where the limits were. Acosta finished sixth but lost 10.745 seconds to winner Martin. The soft rear tyre became the defining issue, and although the KTM rider preserved it better than several rivals, the Aprilia riders at the front clearly set the pace. He remained confident for the longer Grand Prix: „I have always been more of a rider for long races than for short ones.“

On Sunday the entire field ran the hard front tyre and the medium compound at the rear. Acosta attacked immediately, passing both VR46 riders before the first corner and running as high as fourth. On lap seven he caught Marc Marquez, his future team-mate, and went past without hesitating. He then built a small gap and defended it to the chequered flag. What stood out was less the position than the pace: according to the lap times, Acosta was running almost identical times to the Aprilia factory pairing of Martin and Bezzecchi, who finished on the podium.

The strategy behind it was no accident. Acosta loaded the tyre heavily early on and then tried to hold on to the result over the distance. He describes it matter-of-factly: „But it was pretty much the only option I had… burn through the tires early on and then try to hang on until the end. It worked.“ Fabio Di Giannantonio, who took a different approach, closed in towards the end but stayed behind him in sixth.

Why is Acosta criticising the way KTM works?

What bothers Acosta is a recurring pattern: the team reaches a certain level on Friday and stays there until Sunday. He raised exactly this point openly after the first half of the season.

The Spaniard used the summer break for a conversation with the Austrian manufacturer that he himself describes as uncomfortable. „After the end of the first half of the season there were some uncomfortable questions that I put on the table,“ he explains. His criticism targets the method rather than individual results: „We go out on track on Friday, we are in that position and we stay there until Sunday. That cannot be the case, not with so many bright minds in a MotoGP team.“

Specifically, Acosta names two conditions that he believes must be met if KTM still wants to achieve something in the second half of the season. First, the ability to actually improve over the course of a race weekend. Second, reliability, meaning no further technical failures. What mattered to him was how the squad reacted. The criticism was not taken as an attack but as a starting point: „I’m happy because they took what I said the right way, not as criticism, but as a starting point for tackling the second half of the season.“

At Silverstone, Acosta sees a first sign that the message worked. The team improved across the weekend, and it did so at a circuit that does not suit him. Team manager Aki Ajo draws a similar conclusion and names the next issue at the same time: „The target is to now start the weekends better.“

What is behind the RC16’s engine problems?

Acosta’s demand for reliability has a specific technical background. In the first half of the season the KTM bikes cut out several times without warning, most consequentially at the Grand Prix in Barcelona.

There, Acosta’s RC16 shut down while he was leading, and Alex Marquez ran into the back of him. As a precaution, KTM subsequently reduced the engines’ rev limit. Motorsport director Pit Beirer identified a faulty supplier component as the cause at the Sachsenring. He describes it like this: „We eventually discovered that we were using high-stress parts in the powertrain which did not meet the specified quality standards.“

A detail of the regulations complicates matters here: sealed MotoGP engines may only be opened with the agreement of all members of the manufacturers’ association MSMA. KTM therefore filed a special request, but at first only Aprilia agreed. Ducati, Honda and Yamaha gave the green light only around the Silverstone weekend. The manufacturer confirmed the approval but pointed out that interim solutions were still being used at Silverstone. The engineers are not allowed to open the affected engines until the week before the Aragon Grand Prix at the factory in Austria, and then only under the supervision of an official from the teams’ association IRTA. That allows KTM to avoid having to use additional engines later in the season, which would mean starting from pit lane.

The Silverstone result was therefore achieved under the old conditions, with a reduced rev limit on a fast circuit.

Where does Pedro Acosta stand in the championship?

After twelve of 22 Grands Prix, Acosta is seventh on 163 points. He is 40 points behind Ai Ogura, who holds third place in the overall standings.

Jorge Martin leads on 240 points and extended his advantage to 31 points with second place at Silverstone. Marco Bezzecchi follows on 209. The championship picture is therefore dominated by Aprilia, who also filled the entire podium at Silverstone: Raul Fernandez of the Trackhouse team won ahead of Martin and Bezzecchi.

For Acosta, fifth place was his sixth top-five finish of the season. In terms of the championship table the weekend brought little movement, because his direct rivals also scored. He states his goal unchanged nonetheless: „There is a chance that I finish the world championship third or fourth.“

The Sunday was useful for KTM as a brand as well. Brad Binder worked his way up from 18th on the grid to eighth, his second-best result of the season. Pol Espargaro, standing in for Maverick Viñales because of the latter’s shoulder problems, finished 14th and moved up to 13th after a penalty for another rider, which was worth three points. Enea Bastianini, by contrast, crashed out on lap six. In the manufacturers’ standings, KTM consolidated third place.

What happens next for KTM in the second half of the season?

The next Grand Prix takes place from 28 to 30 August at MotorLand Aragon. The affected engines are due to be repaired by then.

That makes this weekend the first real test of Acosta’s reliability demand. Whether the corrected components also change performance is an open question. So far, all that is clear is that the rev reduction was a precautionary measure and not a development decision.

The second demand, improving within a weekend, is harder to tick off. It concerns how the squad works, not a single component. At Silverstone, KTM demonstrated that it can be done. Acosta himself puts the result in perspective without overstating it: „We have to be satisfied, because it was a weekend from which we expected nothing. Getting into the top five is really something to be pleased about.“ Asked about his expectations for Aragon, he answered briefly that he had none.

Frequently asked questions