Pedro Acosta ‘barely makes it through’ to Q2 after “unexpected” crash in French GP practice

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Pedro Acosta admitted he ‘barely made it through’ to Q2 at the French Grand Prix after a late crash in Friday Practice left him in the danger zone.

The factory KTM MotoGP rider was on course to set the quickest lap of the session when he went down in the final sector with 11 minutes remaining.

With rapid improvements expected in the dying moments of practice, Acosta had to sprint back to the KTM pits, switch on his second bike and attempt another time attack to stay inside the top 10.

The Spaniard was ultimately successful in securing a direct passage into Q2 on his final flying lap, finishing 10th and just 0.078s clear of the 11th-placed Tech3 KTM of Enea Bastianini.

“I barely made it through,” he admitted. “It was quite unexpected because it was also the bike where I had the proper tyre for the second time attack.

“It was a shame, because the bike I crashed on had all the modifications that worked in Jerez [test].”

Acosta endured his worst weekend of the season so far in the preceding Spanish GP, where he was comfortably outperformed by Bastianini and could only manage 10th place.

However, the post-race Jerez test appeared to put him back on the right track, with Acosta carrying that renewed momentum into Le Mans as he ended Friday as KTM’s leading rider.

“With how tight everything is, we have the pace, so it wasn't a bad day,” he said. “I'm happy because I got rid of the bad feeling from Jerez [race], where I didn't understand anything.

“[Compared to the Jerez test], maybe a little bit worse in a scale of goodness because here we don’t have that many fast corners.

“But we have to be happy because the feelings are the same. This will help a lot in tracks where normally I suffer, like in Barcelona and also in Mugello.”

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