The man from Mazarrón says that Paco Mármol deliberately sabotaged his engine so that he is prepared for any situation during the race
Pedro Acosta (Puerto de Mazarrón, 18 years old) faces the GP of Thailand today, a country he had never visited. He has never raced on the Chang International Circuit, located in the Buriram region, about 400 kilometers northeast of Bangkok. It is the third time that the World Motorcycling Championship is holding a race in this Asian country, which has not visited it since 2019 due to the pandemic. The heat in this part of the planet is noticeable as soon as you set foot on the track, unless the rain helps to lower the temperatures. And this weekend it is predicted to fall in abundance.
Nobody likes the water. All drivers prefer to ride on dry asphalt because of a basic safety issue, but it also equalizes the mechanics and sows the track with uncertainty. In the case of Acosta, who can no longer fight for the title in Moto2 and wants to end the year fighting for third place overall in the intermediate category, the rain is not a big problem, especially as he is a rider to whom he sticks. adjusts. everything and on a daily basis he worries about working in all possible scenarios that can arise during a race weekend.
Together with their trainer, Paco Mármol of Murcia, the duo are working on what Acosta calls “shock therapy,” a workout on a bike that Mármol intentionally sabotages in order to be prepared for anything on race day. «From a skewed handlebar to the release of the handlebar, going with no slip, no rear brake, no clutch, with flat tires, with four kilos of pressure… Ultimately this makes you a rider, it makes you find your way and put you body in a different way », says the ‘Shark of Mazarrón’ in an interview on the website of Red Bull, the main sponsor of his team.
“Whatever the condition of the bike, I ride it. I don’t even ask, I just get in, shut up and just drive. Ultimately, I think you don’t need a perfect bike to ride. On the contrary,” he says.
Always willing to step out of his comfort zone, Acosta finds his strength in “doing things when I don’t want to do them”. He explains: «If it’s raining, if it’s windy, if I don’t feel like riding a motorcycle, I get on it. Or crazy, like a cold shower in winter. All these things make you stronger in the end, because your body and mind don’t want to, but you have to. For your own good. I do that a lot and it’s not bad for me,” he says.
Acosta also confesses that he has been going to the gym a lot in recent months and lifting a lot of weights. The new bike weighs 70kg more than last year in Moto3 and its power has doubled, so the Mazarrón man crushes himself every day to gain the extra weight needed to handle his Kalex. Before he broke his femur, he also cycled a lot. “I like calling people and training here and there, but always with those who are better than me. When I go cycling, I go with people who are better than me, even if I lose, because they put me to the test,” he says in the aforementioned interview.
Acosta eventually makes a small balance of his first year in Moto2. “It’s a tough category, you have to be at the same level every lap and you can’t fail. These are mainly new situations. I’m trying to go from races with 20 drivers behind you to races where there are only one or two drivers. There there are fewer drivers in the group and there is more distance between them in races, that’s the mental adjustment,” says the man from Mazarrón.
Source: La Verdad
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