“I already said last year and I reconfirmed after Qatar, [that] he will be one of the guys for the future of MotoGP and at the present.”

“Because as he showed in Qatar, he has enough talent and before the race, I already said that when you are super talented then you will be fast with any type of bike.”

“He has a really good riding style, and when they (the new riders) jump from Moto2, they have a super good corner speed, and when I followed Pedro in those laps of the race, he was super fast on the fast corners and was making the difference.”

However, despite having great steam at the early part of the race, Pedro Acosta ran into tire troubles later on in the race, thus dropping down the field to finish in ninth place.

Marquez feels that despite having great corner speed, Acosta will need to look after the tires better, and with more experience, the ‘shark’ will be much better in the upcoming races.

“I’m sure he will learn to manage the tires, and he will be much better in the next races.”

Speaking on the extreme riding styles that the new generation of riders are able to achieve:

“The young generations are coming to MotoGP and are riding even differently. I was using the elbow, now they are using the shoulder like Martin.
“Pedro and a lot of riders are playing a lot with the body, it’s one of the points that you need to understand for your riding style.”

“You can also see for example, Aleix Espargaro is also super fast with a completely old school riding style. So in the end you need to adapt with with the performance of your bike.”

“When you jump from Moto2 to MotoGP as we saw in the past many riders in the beginning are able to be super fast because you have a lot of corner speed then after some races you will have lesser corner speed and maybe you will manage better the tires this way.”

“That is part of the process. I mean when I arrived at 20 years old, I learnt a lot from Valentino, Lorenzo and Pedrosa. Now I need to learn from these younger guys that are coming with a new spirit.”

Pedro Acosta was also quick to point out his main issues from his race, feeling that he was using his tires a lot in the fast turn 10, where normally in Moto 2, such type of tire management isn’t much of an issue:

“If you see in lap 14, I was smoking the tyre in turn 10, I mean it was more than clear that I was going to suffer a lot in the last part of the race.”

“When I was riding in Moto2 with the Dunlops we made 24 laps wide open and din’t think much about the tires like this, but anyway at the end it’s what it is, we need to make this mistake to learn in the future.”

The Algarve International CIrcuit of Portugal has been one of Pedro Acosta’s favorite hunting grounds in the past, with the Spaniard winning two times in his last three attempts of racing at the venue. When quizzed if it is one of his favorite grand prix, Acosta replied:

“It’s like Australia for me, it’s going to be fun!” 

“It is going to be difficult because it’s also the first track that we come with a MotoGP bike without any testing. So this is going to be quite tricky.”

“But anyways, we have all the support from the factory team and the engineers behind, for this [layout]. Let’s try to make a consistent weekend because that’s going to be the key to start learning.”