Marco Bezzecchi
Pit Beirer believes Pedro Acosta has realised that he must take the best result on offer instead of crashing as a result of his single-minded belief that only wins would suffice.
Acosta has impressed KTM motorsport director Beirer with how much he has matured since joining the Austrian brand’s works team in the 2025 MotoGP season. Beirer feels Acosta did not step up from Tech3 with the correct mindset, and it ultimately cost him in the standings.
Beirer thinks Acosta would have finished third in the riders’ standings last year if he had the same mindset that he has started the 2026 season with. The 21-year-old ranked fourth last term, but trailed Alex Marquez in second by 160 points and Marco Bezzecchi in third by 46.
A strong start to the 2026 season sees Acosta rank third in the standings at the April break. He even topped the standings after the opening round in Thailand, but the strengths of the Aprilia RS-GP compared to the KTM RC16 have seen Bezzecchi and Jorge Martin pull clear.
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Acosta trails Bezzecchi by 21 points and Martin by 17 through three rounds, with his deficit to the former also aided by the Italian’s crashes during the Sprint Races in Thailand and the USA. Acosta won the Buriram Sprint due to Marc Marquez’s penalty, after Bezzecchi’s crash.
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No other KTM rider has been able to come close to Acosta’s results so far this season. Beirer feels Acosta’s performances are a direct result of his improved maturity and mindset to now accept the best result possible, as he realised winning or crashing was the wrong approach.
Beirer told SPEEDWEEK: “Pedro has matured incredibly. He knows that we might not always have the best bike, but he’s now accepted that you only finish in the top three of the world championship if you consistently get the maximum out of it.
“Nobody has the best bike at every Grand Prix. Last year, driven by our company disaster, he was very negative. He realised at the first race that he wasn’t good enough to win. For him, it was either win or nothing – there was no middle ground.
“But the season analysis clearly showed that if he had taken advantage of the good fourth, fifth, or sixth-place finishes, where he occasionally crashed because he wanted to win, he would have finished third in the world championship last year.
“That was his takeaway, ‘I have to take the points, and my races will come – my tracks will come!’ You simply have to be there for the points, otherwise all the performance is useless. He’s matured incredibly during this time.”
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Acosta has set himself apart from his fellow KTM riders so far this year, with Tech3 star Enea Bastianini the second-best performing racer aboard the RC16 but with just 22 points for P11 in the standings. Works KTM pilot Brad Binder has also only scored 17 points to rank in 12th.
Bastianini is also the only other KTM rider to reach a podium in 2026, albeit in a Sprint after Acosta was also penalised. A post-race tyre pressure penalty demoted Acosta from P3 to P8 in the COTA Sprint, while promoting Bastianini to P3 as Binder still only finished P12 in Texas.
Acosta’s new mindset has played a key role in his results so far this year, too. KTM test rider Pol Espargaro believes Acosta is almost in his “prime” now that, like Beirer, he has seen the Mazarron native show more maturity with his approach to racing than simply chasing wins.
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