– Pedro Acosta and KTM are going separate ways after the season. For the Spaniard, this is not an easy farewell, as the Austrian manufacturer has practically accompanied him since the beginning of his world championship career.
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Acosta came into Moto3 in 2021, won the world championship title with KTM and Ajo, then followed up with the Moto2 title and made the step up to MotoGP. Nevertheless, the 22-year-old now believes that a change of scenery is necessary.
“KTM has given me everything it had at every stage of my career and at every stage of our relationship,” Acosta says in an exclusive interview with Autosport, a sister platform of Motorsport-Total.com in the Motorsport Network.
At the same time, he has reached a point “where I need a new challenge.” Since his MotoGP debut, Acosta has regularly been the highest-placed KTM rider and thus carried a significant part of the sporting responsibility for the manufacturer, but the decisive breakthrough has not come.
“Since I came into MotoGP, I have been the first KTM on the track,” he explains. “Maybe I need a new challenge or something that gives me a bit of that spark again,” he explains his reasons for switching.
Believed for three years and kept waiting
Acosta makes no secret of the fact that he has given KTM a long time to develop the project in the right direction. “I believed in this project for three years and gave it one chance after another,” he says.
At some point, however, he reached the point where he had to realize for himself: “I believe that I can move forward, and that’s why I decided to leave.”
Pedro Acosta on his move to Ducati as teammate of Marc Marquez
The decisive point for Acosta is the perspective. He has not fundamentally lost trust in KTM, but he does not see the path to a motorcycle with which he can fight for wins and titles quickly enough ahead of him. “If the prospect of building a competitive motorcycle had been closer, I might have stayed,” says the Spaniard. “Unfortunately, that is not the case.”
Acosta is therefore by no means talking about a break or disappointment with individual people. Rather, it is about the question of how much time a rider can invest with his ambitions before taking another path.
Acosta’s decision is therefore primarily a sporting one: He does not want to wait another two years for the KTM project to eventually develop to the top.
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Acosta: “I have probably become impatient”
When asked if he simply ran out of patience, Acosta answers remarkably directly: “Probably, yes.” That fits a rider who has so far pushed his own career forward at enormous speed. Moto3 world champion, Moto2 world champion, MotoGP promotion – all within a few years.
In the premier class, however, he had to realize that talent alone is not enough. Although Acosta was immediately Rookie of the Year in 2024. In 2025, he finished the world championship in fourth place and collected a total of 13 podiums in MotoGP.
Photo gallery: The career highlights of Pedro Acosta
The big step, his first Grand Prix win, however, did not come. Exactly this victory is still the goal that Acosta says he has pursued “his whole life.”
And that is why the move to Ducati is not an end in itself for him. He finally wants to know what is possible when he has a motorcycle available that can regularly fight for wins. Ducati has signed Acosta for 2027/28. He will compete for the factory team and on the current Desmosedici GP.
KTM remains an important part of his story
As critically as Acosta assesses the sporting perspective, he speaks positively about the people at KTM. What will he miss the most? “The human relationships that I have built up over all these years,” emphasizes the 22-year-old.
That is perhaps the most important nuance in his criticism. Acosta is not saying goodbye to KTM in a dispute. The brand made him great, and that is exactly why the separation is difficult for him. “In the lower classes, we were under the roof of Ajo Motorsport, but it was the KTM factory team,” he recalls.
He also associates his first three MotoGP years with important people at KTM. He highlights Dani Pedrosa: “The opportunity to talk to a legend like him helped me in certain areas, such as tire management.”
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Despite this connection, the decision has been made. Acosta does not want to hope for a future but to shape it himself. The move to Ducati is less a flight from KTM than an attempt to take his career to the next level.
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