Acosta: “I have a lot of things to learn to be competitive”

Like his team-mate Augusto Fernandez last season, Acosta is the only MotoGP rookie in 2024 and will have very high expectations placed upon him due to his obvious talent and success since joining the grand prix paddock in 2021.

A Moto3 champion as a rookie, before winning the intermediate title in just his second season, Acosta will be under the spotlight in 2024 as expectation for a rookie have perhaps not been as high as this since Marc Marquez joined Repsol Honda in 2013.

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But speaking to MotoGP.com, Acosta is keen to not put any added pressure on himself: “There’s no expectation. In the end, if you arrive with expectation then you have pressure and can make mistakes easily. 

“If you don’t learn you don’t improve and if you don’t improve then you go home. It’s true that this change is a young kid growing up to be a man. I have a lot of things to learn to be competitive.”

Acosta, who is still a teenager, has had the type of success a lot of riders much older than him are still without.

Speaking about his rise to MotoGP, Acosta feels he has become more calm as his experience has grown.

Acosta said: “It was a feeling that was quite familiar to me because it’s something that doesn’t happen everyday but it’s something that happened to me twice in three years. 

“I was much more calm fighting for the championship than in 2021 when I was a kid. I didn’t really realise what was happening and I enjoyed it more than in 2021.”