5 things you might not have known about Pedro Acosta’s double title-winning rocket to MotoGP™
By Adam Wheeler
There is the ability and there is the weight of numbers. In both ways new Moto2™ World Champion Pedro Acosta can sit peacefully with the billing of a ‘generational talent’. For those who have already seen the spectacular style in which the 19-year-old handles a race bike, here is the hard data behind #37’s surge to the top.
Pedro Acosta’s sprint up the ladder of motorcycle Grand Prix racing is finally slowing down. Two championships in three seasons and an enviable win record – all achieved well before he can even spray podium Prosecco in some countries – means he is MotoGP-bound for 2024 and is the fifth rider to have filtered through the KTM GP Academy to have made the grade (the third from Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup all the way to the premier class).
Fun-loving, slightly wild, flamboyant but also smart and incredibly focused: Acosta will be another lively character on the MotoGP entry list for 2024 and it’s been a rapid rasp of a journey from humble beginnings as a fisherman’s son and as a teenage prodigy that wiped the floor with the competition in the Rookies Cup.
Acosta will need time for the trickiest transition of his fledgling career to-date next year and the technical and profile pressures of MotoGP but there are very few who has arrived so strongly and so brightly to the big stage. Here are some of the milestones.
1.
Pedro Acosta has flown through Grand Prix racing since finishing 2nd on his Moto3™ debut at Lusail, Qatar and then winning his second outing – round two at the same circuit – in April 2021. He was world champion at the first attempt in that 2021 term and then won three races in his first Moto2 season in 2022. At 19 years and 171 days he is the youngest Moto2 world champion (after being the youngest Moto2 GP winner by 83 days) and the second youngest ever in the intermediate category; runner-up to a man he’ll be working with in 2024, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing test rider Dani Pedrosa. As a measure of his prolificacy, Acosta will enter MotoGP with at least 16 wins (so far) from just 56 Grand Prix career starts. As well as being the youngest, Pedro is easily the ‘freshman’ on the premier class grid for ’24. The next nearest experienced rider – Raul Fernandez – has almost double the amount of GP outings.
2.
Hola! Pedro’s Murcia roots means that Spain will retain the biggest demographic in 2024 MotoGP with at least ten representatives. Thanks to 10 Moto2 wins to-date in less than two full seasons, he is the 13th most successful rider in the Moto2/250cc category and the fourth best Spaniard. Acosta’s celebrations at the Sepang International Circuit means that the bandera de España was raised for the 32nd time for a champion in all categories since the outset of the century. He was already the 55th Spanish world champion from a total of 57 different riders so far.
3.
Titles aside, Acosta has accumulated some amazing stats. From just 54 starts at the time of the Malaysian Grand Prix and his Moto2 spoils, Pedro has a 30%-win rate. He has appeared on the podium and sprayed champagne in almost half of all the Grands Prix he has entered. #37 has held Pole Position for nearly 10% of all his GPs.
4.
Pedro will be one of only two riders from the full line-up of 22 in 2024 MotoGP to have won both the Moto3 and Moto2 World Championships. Ten racers have Grand Prix wins in both categories but just Acosta and Alex Marquez have Moto3 and Moto2 gold medals from the FIM. Pedro is the only athlete since the inception of Moto3 in 2012 to have secured two titles riding for the same team.
5.
How about Acosta’s environment? If a rider desires Moto2 championship bragging rights then the Red Bull KTM Ajo team has been the most coveted saddle in recent years. Pedro is the third consecutive world champion under Aki Ajo’s gaze and as part of an important stage in KTM’s GP Academy structure. He follows Remy Gardner (2021) and Augusto Fernandez (2022). Thanks to Acosta’s feats in 2021 and Sandro Cortese and Brad Binder’s past efforts the crew also have three crowns in Moto3. Pedro is the fourth Spanish GP winner for the team in all categories and the second Spanish world champ.
