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The 20-year-old exceptional Spanish talent Pedro Acosta finished the first two MotoGP tests of 2025 at Sepang and Buriram with 6th and 4th places as the best rider of the Red Bull KTM quartet, proving once again that he has not wrongly been called the "new Marc Márquez" for several years.
Acosta won the Rookie of the Year Award in 2024 on the KTM RC16 of Hervé Poncharal's GASGAS Tech3 team - and in inimitable style, as he conquered nine podium places as a newcomer to the class - five on Sunday, four on Saturday.
Now Acosta is working closely again with the Finn Aki Ajo, whose Red Bull KTM team helped him to win the Moto3 World Championship in 2021 and the Moto2 World Championship in 2023.
KTM Motorsport Director Pit Beirer wants one of his four factory riders to finish inside the top 3 of the World Championship in 2025. And of course besides Binder, Viñales and Bastianini the young Acosta can also be trusted to achieve such a brilliant performance - if he manages to significantly reduce the number of twelve zeros from the 2024 season.
The new team manager Aki Ajo, who took over from Francesco Guidotti after the World Championship finale in Catalunya, is expected to play a valuable role in this planned increase. "I am 100 percent convinced that Aki will have a positive influence on Pedro," Beirer explained in an exclusive interview with GPOne.com. "Aki is a prime example of how to lead riders without giving them too much freedom and simply seeing what results come out of it. He has the ideal mix of toughness and father figure. Aki not only became world champion with Pedro, but also with Brad Binder in Moto3 in 2016. So the riders and team managers don't have to get to know each other, and everyone around them knows each other too. We are convinced that Aki will do an excellent job as factory team manager."
World champion maker and talent scout Aki Ajo has already had some exceptional talents under his wing. For example, both riders who have already achieved MotoGP success for KTM - namely Oliveira (5 wins on KTM) and Binder (2).
Ajo won the 125cc World Championship in 2010 with Marc Márquez on Derbi, the Moto2 World Championship in 2015 and 2016 with Johann Zarco, then he secured the Moto3 World Championship in 2016 with Brad Binder, Miguel Oliveira was twice runner-up in Moto3 (2015 in Moto3 and 2018 in Moto2) with Oliveira. Most recently, in 2021, he achieved a double success in Moto2 with Remy Gardner and Raúl Fernandez, in 2022 the Ajo team triumphed in Moto2 with Augusto Fernández, plus the two world championship titles with Acosta.
Pedro Acosta has been predicted by many experts for years that he has all the skills a motorcycle superstar needs.
Already during the successful 2023 Moto2 season, Aki Ajo had to - somewhat reluctantly - draw comparisons to his former protégé Marc Márquez in response to inquiries from curious journalists.
Does the successful talent scout Aki Ajo, who has only been seriously challenged by team owner Jorge "Aspar" Martinez in the smaller classes over the past 20 years when it comes to the number of title wins, recognize certain similarities between Marc Márquez and Pedro Acosta? Or is it impossible to compare such super talents?
"For me, it is always difficult to compare riders. Every rider has his own personality, his own character," said the Finn in an interview with GPOne.com. "But what I see in the best or in many really strong riders who then have a successful career, I can also see in Pedro. He really has both feet on the ground. And I can always say that he understands life, how life plays out, despite his young age. He revealed these character traits already at the age of 18 or 19. Even as a teenager, he was thinking like a mature man with a lot of experience. And I remember making similar statements about Marc Márquez in the past."
Aki Ajo was amazed a few years ago by Pedro's pronounced curiosity and thirst for knowledge. "We talked a lot in the small classes, but many of our conversations were not about details of motorcycling or motorcycles. We talked more about life in general. And it is important for the young people who grew up in the paddock to understand life. Because we often expect them to be very smart and even behave better than us, who represent the older generation. But we are old adults - and the riders are really young teenagers."
"If a GP racer has an exceptional talent and also a certain human maturity plus a superior way of thinking like Pedro, if he has a mature mind, then this rider has a clear and positive advantage over his opponents," emphasizes Ajo, who in recent years has developed and trained some talents for the MotoGP class in the small GP classes for KTM and has now finally arrived in the "premier class" himself after a few failed attempts.
Ajo believes that some riders today move up to Moto2 and MotoGP too early, which is why he waited until the summer of 2021 before nominating the superior Moto3 World Championship leader Pedro Acosta alongside Augusto Fernández for the Moto2 World Championship in 2022. Even in August 2021, Aki Ajo was still pondering whether he should promote Acosta to the 675cc class at the age of 17.
But the closer the title win came, the more obvious the class change became for the high-flyer, who had collected a whopping 95 out of 100 possible points in the first four Grands Prix of 2021.
"For me, it was normal that, despite his first-class performances, the question arose in Pedro's head as to whether he should compete in another Moto3 season in 2022," Ajo recalls. "Because he still had little experience in this world championship class, but finally we decided to move up anyway."
It was not uncommon for opponents and TV viewers to be left open-mouthed in amazement in 2021 when they saw how cleverly and confidently the new world champion designed his racing strategy in the final laps. And the fact that he did not show a lot of respect for the MotoGP top riders right from the beginning in 2024 reminded us of Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Márquez in their Rookie seasons 2008 and 2013.
Another amazing detail: Acosta was already more than 50 points ahead of his pursuers in the 2021 Moto3 World Championship after the Jerez GP on May 2nd. In the end, he collected 83 points more than second-placed Tony Arbolino!
But Aki Ajo is careful not to praise his riders' performances to the skies. They should keep their feet on the ground, because not every Moto3 winner also prevails in the higher categories, just think of world champions like Danny Kent, Lorenzo Dalla Porta or Albert Arenas.
"We have had many riders in our team who have used excellent strategies," underlined Ajo. "But Pedro was always exceptional, that is undisputed. He always had something in reserve at the finish. This is primarily due to his riding style and the way he turns into the corners. He takes a fairly tight line and therefore has little trouble overtaking his opponents when braking on the approach to the corner. This knowledge that he is very strong in a duel contributes to Pedro usually remaining calm at the finish. And if you keep calm, you can work out the right strategy in your head."
Ajo Motorsport’s World Championship title wins
2008: 125 cc, Mike di Meglio (Derbi)
2010: 125 cc, Marc Márquez (Derbi)
2012: Moto3, Sandro Cortese (KTM)
2015: Moto2, Johann Zarco (Kalex)
2016: Moto2, Johann Zarco (Kalex)
2016: Moto3, Brad Binder (KTM)
2021: Moto3, Pedro Acosta (KTM)
2021: Moto2, Remy Gardner (Kalex)
2022: Moto2, Augusto Fernández (Kalex)
2023: Moto2, Pedro Acosta (Kalex)
