Listen, I know I've been lucky in my time. I mean, I've had the amazing opportunity to ride shotgun with pro racers like Sara Price and Scott Speed. But at the same time, I also know that I'm not (and have never been) a racer; neither a pro, nor an amateur. And that's not changing any time soon.
But if you're a rookie racer and you're out there proving yourself to try to get to the top, is it more or less pressure to have the opportunity to race one of MotoGP's current best and brightest, in the form of the one and only Pedro Acosta? I mean, having some amount of racecraft under your belt is definitely preferable to having none, right? Right.
Red Bull, in all its Red Bullishness, set up a super interesting opportunity recently. It gathered together five members of the 2025 Red Bull Rookies Cup paddock, including recently-crowned champion Brian Uriarte, for a unique series of challenges. The five rookies would submit to a series of elimination tests, with the one racer left standing to be the one who would challenge Pedro Acosta out on track.
Honestly, the fact that Acosta is out there announcing each challenge and then offering his personal critiques after each challenge is completed would be nerve-wracking enough.
The tests are pretty entertaining. The first challenge pits the racers against each other to see who can do the longest wheelie. The racer who does the shortest wheelie, quite naturally, is eliminated. While I won't spoil the results for you, I will take this moment to foreshadow that this won't be the only time you see wheelies from any racers in this video.
The next test is a braking test, to see who takes the longest to stop from a speed of 100 km/h; the racer who stops the worst is out. After that, there's a test to see who's fastest through a speed trap, with the slowest racer getting eliminated here.
The final test to determine who will take on Pedro Acosta on a matching pair of Red Bull Rookies Cup motorcycles might be the most challenging of all, and it's down to just two Rookies Cup racers. What do they have to do? It's a classic slow race, but the twist is that it's to be done on Rookies Cup race bikes. Oof.
Those, in case you haven't already noticed, are not made to go slow. They're much, much better at going fast. This will totally be a challenge for the two riders who make it this far. The loser is the one who either puts their foot down or else reaches the finish line first, because remember, it's all about keeping balance and going as slow as possible to weave through the cones.
At last, there's a winner! I won't tell you who it is, because you have to watch, and you also have to see how the race between that Rookie and Pedro goes at the end. While Acosta was himself a Red Bull Rookies Cup Champion once upon a time, it's been a minute since he was on one of these bikes. He's clearly very good at racing, but will the fact that the Rookie has been riding these exact machines more regularly make a difference?
You'll have to watch and find out, and also marvel at how cool it is that Acosta's out here doing this. Yes, I know, he has a Red Bull sponsorship, but even that fact probably can't dim how awesome it must be for those up-and-coming racers to get the chance to do something like this.
