​Pedro Acosta believes his performance in the first half of the 2026 MotoGP season deserves a 7 out of 10. Despite Aprilia’s notable rise and Ducati’s recent resurgence, Acosta has held his own aboard the KTM, securing one sprint win and three Sunday podiums across the opening 11 rounds. This stretch has propelled him to seventh place in the standings as the summer break approaches, just 60 points behind Jorge Martin, the championship leader and factory rider for Aprilia.
While acknowledging that three retirements caused by technical problems and fitness issues affected his overall verdict, Acosta said he is pleased with how he has fared on the bike so far this year. “It’s the first time I would give a high number,” he said when asked to summarize the season’s first half. “I would say seven for my performance.”
Looking at the broader picture of the opening laps across races, Acosta admitted there were multiple races where things could have gone differently. “If you take a general picture of what happened during all the first laps of each race, I would say a four. We were having many technical issues. I lost points in Barcelona, I lost points in Brno, I lost points in Assen.” He added that, given those issues, they perhaps should have been further forward, but the reality remains: “Other than that, five-six for the overall results. Yeah, five.”
Acosta, who emerged as a mature competitor in 2025, has continued to develop both on and off the track this season. Even though Tech3’s Enea Bastianini has occasionally pushed him within KTM’s ranks, Acosta remains the benchmark for the Mattighofen outfit, amassing nearly as many points as Bastianini, Brad Binder, and Maverick Viñales combined.
When asked about the potential for a title challenge in the second half of the year, Acosta was circumspect. “I wasn’t making many mistakes this first part of the season if you compare it to last year,” he said. “Let’s see if during this summer break we can understand why we were having these technical issues and figure out what we have to solve.”
The 2026 season marks Acosta’s final year with KTM, as he has agreed to move to Ducati next year to join Marc Marquez, with the aim of securing a more competitive bike and mounting a stronger title challenge. As the summer break looms, the focus behind the scenes at KTM will be on diagnosing the technical problems that hampered peaks in the early part of the season and laying the groundwork for a more consistent second half.
For fans and followers of MotoGP, Acosta’s progress remains a focal point of the 2026 season. He has demonstrated resilience and a capacity to deliver when the machinery aligns, and the upcoming period will be crucial in determining whether KTM can convert mid-season gains into a sustained championship push. As the series heads toward the second half, all eyes will be on how the team addresses the technical setbacks and how Acosta translates a solid first half into a championship-contending run, especially as he prepares to transition to Ducati in 2027 with renewed expectations and ambitions.