The MotoGP rookie waging a lone war against the Ducati horde

Acosta rises above all this to ride his KTM RC16 like he’s been doing it all his life. The way he moves about the machine to avoid all these issues is a wonder to see.

How does he do this? Because he’s a natural. All the greatest motorcycle racers have a natural feel for their motorcycles – a call-and-response between man and machine. Your motorcycle is telling you to do something – can you hear it?

MotoGP and Formula 1 world champion John Surtees said that motor racing is about “having a conversation between you and the machine”. If you have that natural feel for a machine you listen to it and it tells you what it needs, then you adjust yourself to those needs.

That’s what Acosta does every time he moves his body this way or that to load the tyres in a different way, or use a different part of the tyres, or minutely adjust throttle opening or brake pressure to help his motorcycle into corners, through corners and out of corners.

The current rear chatter issue is a case in point. Many riders are really struggling with chatter, especially fellow KTM riders Binder, Jack Miller and Augusto Fernández. Acosta mostly avoids the problem because he loads and uses the bike in certain ways. He’s having that conversation.

But what about all the crashes? Acosta currently tops MotoGP’s crash league, with 22 tumbles at the first 16 GPs. So surely that means he’s only fast because he’s riding over the limit?

Here’s a couple more old racing sayings – ancient racetrack lore passed from generation to generation of paddock people – that relate to Acosta’s rollercoaster Motegi weekend of glory and gravel.

“If you’re not crashing, you’re not trying hard enough.”

The path to MotoGP’s summit is littered with broken bones and shattered carbon-fibre

And…

“I can teach a fast rider how not to crash, but I can’t teach a slow rider to go fast.” These wise words first spoken by ‘King’ Kenny Roberts, mentor to Wayne Rainey and many more.

Earlier this year Acosta made a jaw-dropping entry to MotoGP – flinging his RC16 past Márquez and taking podiums in his second and third GP races.

However, there was no way he was going to continue riding that steep skyward curve, because the path to MotoGP’s summit is littered with broken bones, shattered carbon-fibre and twisted aluminium. There is no other way to make it all the way to the top. You go up a bit, you go down a bit, you go up a bit. It’s all part of the process.

This is five-time MotoGP king Mick Doohan talking about his rookie season, way back in 1989. “First time I met Eddie [Lawson, four-time MotoGP champion in the 1980s], he told me a lot of people can go fast on a 500 straight away. Then they have one crash, two crashes, three crashes and they take a big backward step. I’ve never heard a truer word.”

Acosta may be riding a 1000cc four-stroke, not a 500cc two-stroke, but the same applies – these motorcycles bite you – and the only way to locate the limit is by tripping right over it. Again and again.

Acosta’s curve since he arrived in MotoGP runs true to Doohan words: two podiums at the first three GPs, then a crash here, another crash there, a few more here and there, then the inevitable slump in results.

His crew gathered around, explained that this is how it goes and helped him rebuild his confidence by returning to a friendlier, more familiar machine set-up. One step back to take two steps forward.

Acosta regained his confidence and speed. At Aragon he took his first front-row start since COTA and secured his first podium in nine races. Twice at Misano he chased the podium and slid out of fourth place. At Mandalika he had that great ride to second. And at Motegi he took his first MotoGP pole, then crashed out of both races.

“For sure it’s the saddest weekend of my career and in another way the weekend in which I had the best feeling,” he said. “That’s painful to say.

“We need to accept it. We are getting closer and even with the crashes there were many positive things from this weekend.

“I was closer to the Ducatis and more comfortable. We know we are not at Ducati’s level, but we’ve seen that it’s not impossible to arrive at their level. They are not untouchable.”

Acosta’s blips don’t matter – all that matters is that the overall trend is upward.

Of course he made big mistakes on Saturday and Sunday, but pro racers don’t mind crashing, because it’s part of the job. You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. All they care about is understanding why they crashed, because then they can right that wrong, and Acosta knows why he crashed at Motegi.

He was leading the sprint with three and a half laps to go when he lost a bit of stability coming off the kerb exiting Turn 5 (under the tunnel) and into Turn 6. That ran him ever so slightly wide, so he had to make a more acute attack into Turn 7. That’s why he lost the front.

On Sunday he crashed at Turn 14, while building an attack on race-leader Bagnaia six corners later. That’s modern MotoGP – you gain a few centimetres at several consecutive corners, which may just bring you within attack range at the next corner.

“It was my mistake,” he shrugged. “I was close to him, trying to prepare Turn 5 because that was the only point I could really see I was able to overtake him. Maybe I prepared too much! I was turning quite early [through 14] and touching the gas quite early. For this the forks went up and I lost the front.”

It might even have been two KTMs in the gravel at 14.

“The lap before he crashed I closed the front at the same corner,” said Binder. “After six laps it was more under control.”

In other words, Acosta’s downfall was the usual rear-pushing-the-front crash – the rear tyre has so much grip that the rider can open the throttle hard and early, which shifts load to the rear of the bike, unloading the front and reducing grip. And the problem reduces as the rear tyre gets worn, restoring a more useable traction balance.

So if Acosta had survived the first quarter of the race, maybe he would’ve been able to have a better go at Bagnaia later. A lesson learnt, perhaps.

Or maybe not. Although Binder had fewer front issues once the rear tyre dropped, he had huge rear grip issues in the closing stages.

“With six or seven laps to go the centre of the tyre was completely dead, so it was spinning all the way down the straight,” he added.

Miller had the same problem as he went from 14th on the grid to fifth and back to tenth, 31 seconds behind the winner.

“It was gnarly trying to get the thing off the corners at the end,” he said. “I was trying to use all the paint I could because it was the only place you seemed to find grip.” MotoGP kerbs can offer more traction than the asphalt because they are painted with super-grippy paint, so they’re safe in the rain.

Acosta’s step up from regaining confidence to the realisation that he can race with the fastest Ducatis is in part due to several upgrades from KTM, including a revised chassis and new aero that give him the grip he needs to challenge at the front. Most of the time.

If he hadn’t crashed, perhaps Sunday’s race would have been less than a grimly monotonous procession.

Perfect Pecco led from Turn 1 to the chequered flag, ticking off the laps like an atomic clock, his times from lap five to two laps from the flag never wavering by more than eight-tenths of a second.

Martin made a Márquez-style recovery from the fourth row – the legacy of a Q2 crash – to fight his way through to second and put Bagnaia under serious pressure. But whatever he put on Bagnaia, the world champion clicked up another gear, never letting his pursuer get within half a second.

Márquez fought back from the third row – he had ridden the fastest lap in Q2 but the lap was cancelled because he had strayed onto the green – and had his hands full keeping Enea Bastianini at bay. The previous day Bastianini beat Márquez into third, their brief duel for second the only real action of the weekend.

Why was the racing such a bore? Because Motegi and downforce aerodynamics are bad brothers.

Stop-and-go racetracks like Motegi are mostly about braking into and acceleration out of low-speed corners. Downforce aero creates a large partial vacuum behind each motorcycle. During braking this vacuum robs the chasing bike of so-called air-stop, the air pressure that helps decelerate the bike. During acceleration this vacuum robs the chasing bike of downforce on its wings, so the bike wheelies more, so the rider can’t open the throttle so aggressively. This is what happened to Martin chasing Bagnaia and Bastianini chasing Márquez.

On the plus side, Phillip Island next: the fast-and-flowing home of the mothers of all MotoGP battles.