Pol Espargaró, speaking to DAZN, praised Pedro Acosta, but also spoke of the expectations surrounding the Spanish rider in his debut season in MotoGP.
In addition to Acosta, Pol commented on KTM’s performance at the Le Mans GP, saying that it was a difficult weekend for the Austrian manufacturer.
– ‘It’s important that he feels and understands that. It was a very difficult weekend for KTM. If we open the aperture a little and look at the other factory riders, we see that Brad Binder started last and finished eighth, fighting hard. Jack Miller behind Brad Binder, Augusto Fernandez, had to go out with the softer front tire, as far as I know, to make the bike turn, so it wasn’t one of those easy weekends like, for example, we saw in America with Pedro Acosta.
He added about Acosta: ‘Even so, he’s paying a bit for being the rookie in the category. It’s difficult for him at the start of the weekend, but little by little he’s picking up speed until Sunday, when he has some spectacular races, but this process is very natural and very normal, what happens is that we’re not used to it, but it’s logical, what all rookie drivers do when they enter the category. The problem is that Pedro has adapted to the categories and, above all, in MotoGP he’s being so fast that we always see it as a problem, as something out of the ordinary and it’s something that’s very common and should be like this every weekend. The problem is that, obviously, with Pedro we’re used to other things.
He finished: ‘Even so, it’s good that he’s drawn good conclusions, that he’s improved the bike for Sunday, that he’s experienced the race in the warm up and I hope that in Barcelona we’ll have a much more active Pedro from the start of the weekend and that he can fight for the race on Sunday.