Schwantz calls Acosta and Marquez a “Spanish dream team” – Why Acosta would even pay to be Marc Marquez’s teammate
Behind the scenes, the big pieces of the puzzle for the 2027 MotoGP season have fallen into place. Subject to official confirmation from Ducati, Pedro Acosta will be Marc Marquez’s new team-mate next year. Acosta is thus saying goodbye to KTM.
It will be a generational duel. Marquez will be 34 years old at the start of the coming season. Acosta will not celebrate his 23rd birthday until after the first races of the season. When Marquez made his world championship debut, Acosta was just under three months away from his fourth birthday.
The sprint race in Thailand provided a foretaste of the stable duel. The two Spaniards showed a close wheel-to-wheel duel. Acosta emerged victorious from this duel after a late penalty against Marquez.
From the fans’ point of view, Ducati will be a “dream team” next year. Former world champion Kevin Schwantz said in an interview with AS: “Definitely a Spanish dream team for the Italian manufacturer.”
“It will be interesting to see how Marc recovers, because I don’t think he had the start to the season that he had imagined. I don’t know exactly, but I don’t think he’s at 100 percent.“
”Maybe physically he’s at 100 percent, but he’s not exactly where he needs to be,“ says the 1993 500cc World Champion. ”At least it’s not the Marc we know and have seen in the past.”
As the teams have not yet signed a commercial contract with MotoGP promoter MSEG, no rider commitments have been officially confirmed. Therefore, no rider is talking specifically about their future plans.
When Acosta was recently asked about the dream team statement in Austin, where he also met Schwantz, he had a clear answer ready: “Time will tell. I don’t know how he feels about it, but for me it definitely is.“
”It’s not everyday that you’re on the other side of the box next to a nine-time world champion, or how many titles he will have won by then. For me, that would definitely be a dream come true.“
Acosta goes on to emphasize how special that is: ”I think quite a few people in this paddock, except maybe his brother, would pay to spend a year or more with Marc as a teammate. Why wouldn’t I want that?”
The current KTM rider has made a strong start to the 2026 season and was the only rider able to consistently challenge the dominant Aprilias in the first overseas races.
Heading into the Jerez race at the end of April, he is in third place overall, behind the Aprilia duo of Marco Bezzecchi and Jorge Martin, but ahead of the Ducatis of Fabio di Giannantonio and Marquez.
Marquez had already praised Acosta as “special” at the beginning of March and described him as an outstanding talent among the new riders. “Acosta is the leader of the younger generation. He is something special,” said Marquez on Spanish radio station Onda Cero.
“But a real rivalry only develops when you are fighting for a title in the final races. I hope to be able to contest many more races with Pedro Acosta, because he is the benchmark of the younger generation and will be one of the riders who shape a MotoGP era,” the current MotoGP superstar is convinced.