Going into the opening race of the 2021 MotoGP season, things couldn’t look much worse for KTM – the breakthrough star team of last year’s championship.
It won three races in 2020, yet the top RC16 in pre-season testing was Miguel Oliveira in 16th place.
KTM wasn’t just the only one of MotoGP’s six manufacturers that didn’t break into the 1m53s on pace, it was a whopping three quarters of a second from that mark.
But while things might look pretty grim right now for the KTM riders, especially with not one but two races scheduled for Qatar’s Losail International Circuit later this month to kick off the season, the mood inside the team is actually more upbeat than might first be expected.
Ironically that’s in part due to KTM’s past form in Qatar being so bad.
The team has never performed particularly well there since its MotoGP debut in 2016.
This year’s compressed and rearranged testing programme has both hindered and hidden KTM’s true potential.
Losing out on the chance to test at other tracks thanks to the cancellation of the traditional European post-season tests last year and then seeing the Sepang test cut as Malaysia re-entered a state of emergency thanks to the COVID pandemic, KTM’s performance is being measured at just one track.
“We lost a lot of track time due to me falling off all the time” :: Brad Binder
You’d imagine that the loss of the planned fifth day of testing due to high winds and subsequent sandstorms would be a particular headache for the team that appears to have most work to do.
But Brad Binder says KTM’s actually taking this well-earned break ahead of the opening races in a mood of quiet optimism rather than full of doom and gloom.
“It was unfortunate to lose the final day because we had quite a few things we wanted to get through,” he admitted.
“But at the end of the day, it’s not the end of the world, and I believe things look a lot worse on paper than they do in reality, than they’ll be on a race weekend.
“It’s been a little challenging for us KTMs here, but we know that it’s a little bit because this layout doesn’t suit us too well.
“But nevertheless we’ve got good ideas and I’m sure we’re going to get much closer to the front than we are at the moment.
“Other than that we lost not just the last day, but we lost a lot of track time due to me falling off all the time.
“I’m a little disappointed with that, but at the end of the day that’s life and what can you do? For the life of me I couldn’t stay on in the first three days.”
Part of Binder’s optimism comes from the hard work performed at Losail by KTM test rider Dani Pedrosa.
“We had about three items we wanted to try, but we’re very fortunate that our test team has already tried them and they’re all items that were very positive,” Binder added.
“I think we’re quite safe to say that we should be able to try them over the race weekend and they should just work.”
That’s an optimism shared on the other side of the garage, too, with team-mate Olivera admitting that KTM could have done with that last day in Qatar – but that the final details it needs to find are something that can be addressed come free practice for the opening race.
“Approaching the last day of testing, we’re always trying to find small things on the bike, and to do that you need good conditions because you have to be close to the limit,” he admitted. “With the wind and dust that really wasn’t possible to do.
“I don’t know exactly what’s possible at the moment; we’ll have to see that throughout the GP weekend, but for sure it’s much better than what we have at the moment.
“We need to look on the bright side of it – we had four very good days beforehand and we got a lot of work out of the way, so it was productive even if the time wasn’t enough to work on the performance side of things. We got a lot done.”
And despite being well off the pace – Binder finished the test in 17th, 1.5s from fastest man Jack Miller – even if things don’t go according to plan in Qatar, the South African is well aware that there will be a marked improvement when the series returns to Europe and to tracks where the riders know the KTM is a better performer.
“Compared to last year, my mind is a lot more at ease,” he said.
“I know now what I’m capable of and I know I can fight among the top five.
“This time last year, I had a strong day of testing at the very end, the last day in Qatar was good for a one-off lap, but there wasn’t much there.
“I was still quite worried because I was quite slow at all the tests, and as soon as we got to Jerez things got better.
“This year I’m definitely going into Qatar feeling a lot better, I understand the class a lot better, and I understand the bike much better. All in all, it’s just a more relaxed feeling.
“I just want to take the positives from the test, the good feeling, and just go into the first two races carrying on the way I have so far.
“I always find race days so different – it’s very different when you’ve only got 45 minutes to go out and do all the work, so your whole approach is different and I definitely prefer it.
“It’s safe to say that we have a bit of work to do but I’m sure that we’ll get it done.”
