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Pol Espargaro says that while KTM has made rapid improvement with its 2020 MotoGP bike, the team won’t get a proper understanding of its progress until reigning world champion Marc Marquez returns from injury.
Since Marquez broke his arm at the opening round of the season and was forced to miss the next four races of the abridged championship, KTM has made a significant leap forward, with rookie sensation Brad Binder winning the Austrian manufacturer’s first race at the Czech Grand Prix.
Espargaro looked set to repeat the feat last weekend in the Austrian Grand Prix too, until a red flag and no remaining tyres in his allocation cost him any hope of matching his team-mate’s feat.
But, while Espargaro might be ready to win again at this weekend’s Styrian Grand Prix – once again at KTM’s home track the Red Bull Ring – he remains skeptical about just how much they’ve improved given they can’t measure themselves against the best in the world.
“I still can’t believe we’re so fast. I don’t want to be negative because I always try to be positive, but the best guy on the grid isn’t here; Marc isn’t here,” said Espargaro.
“I would like to compare against the best, and I don’t know what he would do if he was here. Nakagami has been fast and normally Marc is faster than him.
“We are very fast, but are we as good as it seems?
“I don’t know, and I want to go in more races to find out and to see how we are in other places. We weren’t as good in Jerez as in Brno or here so I want to stay calm for now.”
Espargaro does know where one of the improvements on the bike has come from though, even if he doesn’t understand how they’ve managed to get to that place.
Now that KTM is able to use Michelin’s hardest-compound front tyres, Espargaro says it has been one of the puzzle pieces that has unlocked its newfound success.
“The step didn’t come when we first got on the [2020] bike, because we didn’t make a new bike,” said Espargaro.
“First there was a chassis, and then engines and some electronics, and for sure the new tyres have helped.
“It was hard for some factories but it was good for us. It came in small pieces, and I didn’t feel like we changed so many things to be as good as we are.
“We asked Michelin: why are we using the hard front so well and Honda can’t? But this year it’s changed completely because we can’t have a tyre that’s hard enough.
“I used the medium front [on Friday] morning and struggled, so we had to use the hard for the evening and boom – straight away. But Honda still can’t use it.”
One rider who is already well aware of the level of the RC16 is Andrea Dovizioso as he was able to see it up close in last week’s race when he and Espargaro diced for the lead in the early stages – and the veteran Ducati rider admitted that he can’t quite get a handle on the KTM’s strengths.
“They made a really important improvement. It’s not easy in MotoGP to make that kind of step. But from outside it’s a bit of a strange bike. Because they have a very different characteristic,” said Dovizioso.
“They can accelerate very well the first part of acceleration, I don’t know why it’s very strange and different from all the other bikes.
“But it’s also difficult to understand that bike because Binder is riding like Moto2 at this moment, and he’s so fast, and it’s very strange. Pol is riding so aggressively and sometimes he’s so fast, sometimes like in the race he was losing speed lap by lap.
“Oliveira most of the time is really fast and riding in a different way. It’s a bit difficult from the outside to understand exactly the good and the bad points of the bike, but for sure they did a big step.”
