Much of MotoGP's winter break has been dominated by headlines about KTM's woeful financial situation, with debts of nearly €3billion, and what it means for not just whether it can continue in MotoGP but what shape its 2025 programme and development will be in.
But listening to KTM factory duo Brad Binder and Pedro Acosta ahead of pre-season testing on Tuesday, they're convinced the team starts 2025 in as good a position as ever. And they've actually been shown evidence of it.
Throughout the crisis, KTM's racing management has insisted it would not affect the MotoGP programme in the short term at least, something that both Binder and 2024 rookie sensation Acosta say was impressed upon both of them when they visited KTM headquarters in Mattighofen in Austria.
"Honestly, I was super impressed when I got to the factory in the middle of January," Binder said.
"When I showed up there, we saw everything that they were bringing for us, and it was really cool to see how much stuff they had prepped for us. It looks like we've got a very busy test schedule.
"I had reassurances from the bosses early on not to stress about it. I'm sorry to say it, but I've got a lot more faith in what comes from them than in what I read online!
"I was really chilled, to be honest. Of course, when you read the stuff for the first time you're like, 'Oh jeez, what's going on here?'
"But honestly, everything has been exactly like they said it would be, and I'm still super chilled."
Acosta - at least through the conduit of comments made by his manager Albert Valera - has been more vocal in his concerns about the KTM situation. But he too seemed to have been calmed by a visit to the factory.
"I went there before Christmas," Acosta explained, "December 20 or something like that, and in the end it's much easier to go there, lose one day, and see how the situation is than just read what the media were making.
"After seeing how the situation was there and after reading everything in the media, [the difference] it was like the day and the night. It was not true many of the things I was reading in the media.
"I'm super happy for this, to race these colours, and I think the situation is something that will only make us stronger."
In fact, Acosta's real fear right now isn't that there's been a lack of work from the factory over the course of the winter break but quite the opposite.
In the past, KTM has been often accused of throwing too many new parts from the engineering department at problems, to the detriment of actually fixing issues when it perhaps should have developed what it had or got riders more acclimatised to an existing package.
With Acosta clearly benefitting from excellent feeling from the bike and an ability to ride around at least some issues, he was adamant that KTM needs to concentrate on the best of what it's got right now rather than throwing everything (and a load of new ideas) at trying to close the gap to Ducati.
"I see that the test team made a good step," he said of Pol Espargaro and Dani Pedrosa's three-day outing at the Sepang shakedown test, "and it's true that they tried many, many things since the last test that they made in Jerez in December.
"We have a lot of things to try, but we also cannot get crazy trying things.
"We need to make a list of priorities and pick the things that we think will make us faster.
"There are many things to try, but we have to not get a little bit crazy. We have to keep our feet on the ground, to understand when to say no and when to say yes.
"Last year, we were trying many things, even during the race weekends. Maybe we lost our way a bit.
"If you remember when KTM was in Moto2, the minute they stopped the development was the minute Brad and [Jorge] Martin made a step."
