Pedro Acosta is a gangly, slightly scrawny figure in his bright GASGAS-red team clothes. He wears a near permanent smile that manages to balance exactly where cheeky ends and sassy begins. He looks like the teenager motorcycle racer that he is, like a kid fresh out of the Red Bull Rookies and ready to tear up Moto3.
Until he opens his mouth, that is. Then you are sitting across the table from a wizened old veteran, a man who sounds like he has a decade or three of racing and life experience to build on. "An old head on young shoulders," as GASGAS Tech3 crew chief Paul Trevathan puts it. Which is why KTM have fast-tracked the 19-year-old Spaniard into MotoGP, giving him one of their best crew chiefs to work with.
After three races, their faith in Acosta has been more than justified. The Spaniard has adapted much more quickly than even the most optimistic pundits had predicted he would. Battling near the front at the first round in Qatar, his first podium at Portimão, inherited after Maverick Viñales suffered a mechanical failure, and then a front row start, and a fourth and a second place at the Circuit Of The Americas. Acosta is fourth in the championship, and leading KTM rider. And he is only just getting started.
Recent comments