As Pedro Acosta arrives at Brno in Czechia this weekend for the ninth round of the MotoGP season – which doubles as his 50th premier-class Grand Prix start – his career can be considered in one of two, completely opposite, ways.
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You could view his winless half-century of MotoGP starts as underwhelming, given the hype that preceded the KTM rider’s 2024 arrival as a rapid-fire Moto3 and Moto2 champion before stepping up to the premier class.
You could view that same half-century as borderline remarkable for a factory that hasn’t won a Grand Prix since October 2022, and which has gone through a raft of riders who haven’t been able to hold a candle to the 22-year-old Spaniard.
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Neither viewpoint would be wrong.
But on the evidence of 2026 to date, Acosta’s glass has to be seen to be, at worst, half-full. Next year, the liquid in it might cascade over the edge.
Acosta’s feisty, brave, slightly cheeky and ultimately futile defence against Marc Marquez at the most recent Grand Prix in Hungary saw him demoted to MotoGP’s bridesmaid once again, but, equally, elicited renewed optimism.
Once Acosta becomes Marquez’s teammate at the factory Ducati team next year – a deal that’s been done but is yet to be announced as the sport’s teams wait for their five-year contract to run the series with MotoGP promoters MSEG to become public – wins, plural, are surely coming.
“It’s a matter of trying,” Acosta said in Hungary after his 13th MotoGP podium saw him take over from American rider Colin Edwards as the man with the most visits to the rostrum without a victory in MotoGP history.
“Last year I was struggling a lot in qualifying; now I’m coming back and have been much more consistent. Last year, I was crashing a lot in this moment of the season. We will arrive soon … it’s a matter of keep believing.”
TAKING ON THE CHAMP
Acosta couldn’t have tried much harder to make Marquez blink in Hungary last time out. And against a reigning world champion on a superior bike at a track that accentuates Marquez’s most outsize superpower, that in itself deserves praise.
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Marquez targeted the Balaton Park round – on an anticlockwise circuit that plays to his greatest strength of predominantly left-handed corners – in his hasty return from right shoulder and right foot surgeries following his crash in the Le Mans sprint race in France less than a month earlier.
The Ducati rider admitted he’d come back at the previous round at Mugello in Italy just to shake off the cobwebs and be ready for a track where he dominated the sprint and Grand Prix in 2025.
In two years, nobody has been able to lay a glove on the seven-time MotoGP champion in Hungary. But Acosta – three times – got within fingertips of doing exactly that.
On Saturday, Acosta came within 0.053 seconds of denying Marquez pole; for context, just two other riders, Ducati pair Fermin Aldeguer and Fabio Di Giannantonio, were within half a second of Marquez’s pole time of 1min 36.785secs. Acosta then finished 1.5secs in arrears of Marquez in the 13-lap sprint, and comfortably ahead of anyone else.
Come Sunday’s 27-lap main event, and despite the searing temperatures, Acosta knew that mirroring Marquez’s medium front, medium rear tyre strategy would only lead to one outcome. The Spaniard backed himself, had the soft rear Michelin fitted to his KTM, and set out his stall.
The plan was obvious; bolt at the start while his soft rear tyre offered superior grip, then defend like hell when it wore down and Marquez inevitably grew larger in his mirrors.
Time, then, to execute.
Two laps in, and with several of the front-running contenders out of the equation after the latest MotoGP first-corner crash caused by Aprilia’s Jorge Martin that sparked emotion and strong debate, Acosta bullied his way past Marquez for the lead at turn five and put his head down.
Martin wipes out 5 riders in mass crash! | 00:53
Five laps in, he was 1.637secs ahead of Marquez and asking serious questions.
Marquez weathered the storm, and methodically climbed back into contention. By lap 14, Marquez was through on Acosta at the turn 9-10 chicane, only for the younger Spaniard to retake the lead as Marquez ran wide, then keep it as they arrived at the final corner side-by-side, Acosta deftly escorting Marquez to the very edge of the track and staying in first place.
It could only last so long, though. Marquez again came through at the turn 9-10 chicane on the next lap, held his line, and dared Acosta to chase.
Within a lap, the lead was nine-tenths of a second. By lap 23, Marquez led by 2.7secs, Acosta nursing his well-worn tyres home as third-placed Francesco Bagnaia, Marquez’s teammate, was no threat behind him.
Marquez eventually won by 1.343secs to take a perfect 37 points from the Hungary weekend, hacking 30 points off championship leader Marco Bezzecchi’s lead in 24 hours after the Italian was one of the riders cleaned out by Aprilia teammate Martin at the first turn.
Acosta, though, had made his point. Bagnaia was the next-best finisher, 10 seconds behind the KTM rider. Everyone else was irrelevant.
“I’m quite happy with my [tyre] choice,” Acosta said.
“I was having many question-marks … the medium [tyre] I tried on Friday was not working as expected, I tried on Saturday and it was not working as expected. We had to choose the least worst strategy, I was only really having the chance for the soft.
“We followed the plan, it was the first time I was able to open a gap in the middle of the race, but at the mid-race I started to drop [with grip] a little bit and started to have more movements [with the tyres]. But the battle was quite nice for the fans, I enjoyed it myself.”
Marquez, too, appreciated the way he’d won as much as the victory itself.
“When a fighter meets another fighter, the battle is there,” he grinned.
“It was on the limit, we had two or three contacts, but always with the correct space. It was two laps … if there was a third one, maybe me or him finish in not a good way …”
Marquez overcomes Q2 crash to win sprint | 00:56
DOMINANT BUT WINLESS: THE TWO SIDES OF ACOSTA’S STATISTICAL COIN
Can not winning – again – while on the podium still be considered a victory of sorts for Acosta, given what he’s riding and who he’s riding against?
Context – historical and current – is everything.
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Since KTM won the 2022 Thai Grand Prix with Miguel Oliveira, every other MotoGP factory besides Yamaha has won at least one Grand Prix … even Suzuki, who quit the sport at the end of that same season.
After eight rounds of his third season, all with KTM, Acosta has dominated his stablemates to an alarming degree.
In 50 MotoGP qualifying sessions, he has a perfect 50-0 qualifying head-to-head record; that his 50th Grand Prix start comes this weekend in Brno is because he crashed out of the sprint race at Phillip Island in 2024 and damaged his left shoulder, missing the full-distance Grand Prix the next day.
Pedro Acosta after eight rounds, 2024-26
2024 (Qatar to Netherlands): 101pts (6th), best Grand Prix result 2nd (Americas), best sprint result 2nd (Spain), best qualifying 2nd (Americas). End of season: 215pts (6th), 1 pole, 4 Grand Prix podiums, 4 sprint podiums, beat teammate (Augusto Fernandez) 20-0 in qualifying.
2025 (Thailand to Aragon): 76pts (8th), best Grand Prix result 4th (France, Aragon), best sprint result 5th (Aragon), best qualifying 4th (Americas). End of season: 307pts (4th), 5 Grand Prix podiums, 7 sprint podiums, beat teammate (Brad Binder) 22-0 in qualifying.
2026 (Thailand to Hungary): 132pts (4th), best Grand Prix result 2nd (Thailand, Hungary), best sprint result 1st (Thailand), best qualifying 1st (Catalunya), leads teammate (Binder) 8-0 in qualifying.
Acosta’s 132 points dwarf the 102 combined for fellow KTM riders Binder, plus Tech3 KTM riders Enea Bastianini and Maverick Vinales, a trio who have 19 Grand Prix wins between them. Of the top 10 in the championship standings, Acosta is the only rider not on an Aprilia or Ducati.
Across the grid, only series leader Bezzecchi (144) has spent more laps inside the top three places in races than Acosta’s 97; Bezzecchi, remember, has won four of this year’s eight Grands Prix and leads the standings by 20 points.
Impressive as that statistical profile is, it’s jarring to realise Acosta is one of just five riders on the 22-strong grid without a MotoGP race victory (Acosta won the sprint in Thailand to open the 2026 season, but that doesn’t count as a ‘victory’ in the sport’s record books).
Toprak Razgatlioglu and Diogo Moreira are eight races into their rookie seasons with Yamaha and Honda respectively. Ai Ogura, who succeeded Acosta as Moto2 champion in 2024, is a second-year rider with 26 Grand Prix starts under his belt. Experienced Italian Luca Marini hasn’t cracked it for a win in 102 Grands Prix, but has never really been on the equipment to do so, either.
It’s not a group where Acosta belongs, but it’s one he’s in.
That statistical anomaly – and supplanting Edwards as MotoGP’s all-time bridesmaid – isn’t likely to last long, though. Once Acosta throws his leg over a Ducati for at least the 2027-28 seasons, opportunities will present themselves, no matter that Marquez will be in the adjoining garage.
For now, relishing the battles with his future teammate will have to do.
“We have to be happy, we made a good show,” Acosta said in Hungary.
“It’s super nice always to battle with the champ … really clean overtakes, some contact but inside the legal side, we can say.
“In the end, it’s never easy to try to re-overtake a guy with that experience like Marc … but if I keep having these battles with Marc, it means we are improving compared to the last couple of seasons.
“It’s clear that I feel much better with the bike than last year. Last year, if I tried to do things like that, I was normally crashing 80 per cent of the time.
“When he passed me, he just went away. But I think everyone can see that I never give up.”