Pedro Acosta's Thai Grand Prix ended in disaster, but it also showed KTM's tyre wear issues.
This weekend's Thai Grand Prix has revealed a 'dramatic situation' the KTM has when it comes to tyre degradation.
Pedro Acosta's promising weekend failed to result in points on Sunday after he crashed on lap four of the Grand Prix. However, he decided to remount and finished the race in 19th and stated that the crash was caused by the rear of the bike unloading.
“Well, we need to understand because it looks like this year it’s much easier to unload the rear,” he said.
“And I unloaded the rear behind [Marco] Bezzecchi, I was a little bit wide, sliding too much and then I lost the front. Quite a normal crash but we need to understand why it unloaded like this.
“We need to understand many things of how our bike is working because it’s something we are missing.”
When asked if this wasn’t simply the grippier rear pushing the front tyre, he added: “They are both things together because when you unload the rear, suddenly you slide, and when it comes back it pushes the front.
“It’s a combination of things, but I mean we need to understand because there’s many things around that we are missing to understand.
“And why one thing is working, why the other thing is not, and then we can start to be competitive. But we need to understand many things.”
After rejoining, he used the remainder of the 26 lap race as an extended test session for the KTM RC16. It was during this that he discovered the tyre degradation issues that KTM are dealing with.
“For this reason I stayed in the race,” he said.
“The pace was not bad at all, at the end I lost 40 seconds when I crashed and then they put me in seventh. It was more or less to be in the top five, so for this it’s tough to say. But at the end, it is what it is.
“I hope that they can check something interesting in the data. It’s important to finish and see how the tyres were. We were in a dramatic situation, we need to understand why we have this degradation because it’s not normal.”
