Pedro Acosta will move to the factory Ducati team for the 2027 MotoGP season, joining Marc Marquez as his team-mate. The switch follows Acosta’s decision to complete the final year of his KTM contract, despite having held talks about a possible move to VR46 for 2026. In the meantime, he scored the first MotoGP race win of his career in Austria earlier in the season.

Acosta does not believe he would have performed properly at Ducati a year earlier. He explained that the frustration carried over from his difficult period with KTM would have affected him if he had entered a new team then and faced Marquez on the same machinery. His situation changed after he began producing results, performing well and making a difference compared with KTM’s other riders.

Those steps convinced Acosta that he was ready for a challenge of Ducati’s scale. The move will involve more than learning a different motorcycle: it will also require him to understand a team structure and working method he does not yet know. His first priority will be to learn how Ducati operates, before trying to make the most of sharing the garage with Marquez.

An opportunity to learn from Marquez

Acosta views the next two years as a defining period in his career. He considers it one of the last opportunities a younger rider may have to learn directly from the seven-time world champion before Marquez retires. Acosta is expected to challenge for the 2027 world championship, but his immediate focus is adaptation: first understanding Ducati’s way of working, then gradually applying what he can learn from his new team-mate after six years inside the KTM environment.