“Feet on the ground.” A phrase repeatedly uttered by Aki Ajo, team boss and owner of Ajo Motorsport, during our interview with him in his office at the British Grand Prix. Ajo, a Finnish former racer, has run an ultra-successful outfit in the lightweight and intermediate class championships in the MotoGP paddock, overseeing the development of some of the series’ biggest names.
In typically Finnish fashion, Ajo shoots from the hip. There’s no hyperbole, no understating. His observations are straightforward and honest.
That’s the kind of voice you need when the subject is a potential generational talent. In a year that the NHL will welcome one of its most exciting young prospects for years in Connor Bedard, #1 overall pick in the recent selection draft by the Chicago Blackhawks, MotoGP is set to get its own in 2024.
Ironically, if NHL draft rules applied in MotoGP, it would be Honda or Yamaha that Pedro Acosta would likely end up at as the lowest placed manufacturers currently in a dismal year for the Japanese outfits. For KTM, it will be the next step in its continued development of Acosta which began in what is now known as the FIM Junior World Championship and in the Red Bull Rookies Cup – a series he won in 2020 by a whopping 64 points from David Munoz.
Acosta was due to join the Prustel GP KTM-backed squad in the Moto3 world championship for 2021. When that deal fell through, KTM and Ajo Motorsport stepped in and Acosta made his debut with the team in that year’s Qatar GP. Finishing on the podium in his first race, he won at the following week’s Doha GP having been forced to start from pitlane.
Thus started the then-17-year-old's march to the world title, which he secured in dramatic fashion at the penultimate Algarve GP when Darryn Binder clattered into Acosta’s championship rival Dennis Foggia and took the Italian out.
Source: Autosport