Six manufacturers are represented on the 2021 MotoGP grid. In the four days of pre-season testing in Qatar so far, all but one has dipped below the 1m54s barrier.
The other one has only managed a lap of 1m54.526s, over half a second away from the promised land.
Normally, that statement would elicit the reaction of “oh, yeah, it’s Aprilia, right?”. But it’s not Aprilia. Aprilia, with its revised RS-GP, has been excellent in Qatar so far.
KTM – despite having a fleet of four riders and not deviating too far from the 2020 RC16 that proved to be last season’s revelation – has not.
So what’s going on? New recruit Danilo Petrucci, who has spent most of his MotoGP career on the Ducati Desmosedicis that traditionally went so well around the Losail International Circuit, offered the following description.
“In the last years I’ve always been quite competitive here, it’s a track that I like,” he said. “For sure we are struggling in KTM.
“It’s not an excuse but we arrive at the limit and we are staying there, going around.”
“It seems like we’ve hit a wall, it doesn’t really matter what we do to the bike” :: Miguel Oliveira
Petrucci is new to the RC16, but his description tallied with that of Miguel Oliveira, now the marque’s longest-serving MotoGP rider after Pol Espargaro’s Honda switch – which incidentally has looked like a masterstroke at Losail.
“No, it’s true,” said Oliveira of Petrucci’s statement. “This is the general feeling, it seems like we’ve hit a wall, it doesn’t really matter what we do to the bike – we can make it slightly better but not quite there.
“So it’s kind of hard to win with every change we make everywhere. It seems a bit hard at the moment but we don’t give up.
“It’s true that we also tried a couple of [different] parts and when you focus only on set-up with the bike you have it’s always easier, but it’s actually a mixed job here, and we need to basically do the best we can.”
It’s of course important to tone down the doom and gloom, which is hardly emanating at all from the KTM camp – mostly because each of its riders is realistic enough to know that the RC16 has never been great, or even good, at Losail.
“I just believe this track is not making our strong points come out,” Oliveira said, with the rest of the KTM MotoGP quartet concurring. “And for other bikes it’s much easier to do that.
“So it’s something we need to accept as a fact, and just be calm. It’s not the end of the world.”
KTM’s best MotoGP finish at Losail is 12th place. Of the tracks on the 2021 calendar, it’s only got a worse best finish in Thailand – and that’s clearly influenced by the fact that the last time MotoGP went to Buriram, both of KTM’s lead riders were nursing injuries.
“The style here is more like really light on the brakes, let go of it, keep speed and flow. There’s not really many opportunities to use our best advantage here” :: Brad Binder
Admittedly, Qatar’s absence from the 2020 campaign in which the RC16 broke out also contributes to the stat, but the acceptance of it being a bogey track – older Ducati-style, before the Desmosedici became a lot more of an all-rounder – is there.
“I don’t know the bike really well but for sure from what I understand you can really open the throttle inside the corner and make the acceleration very, very good,” said Petrucci of the RC16 when asked to explain KTM’s Losail travails.
“[Here] we cannot really enjoy our positive points, and it’s not a track where you brake so hard, there are maybe two or three hard braking areas.
“But we are very good on braking, we are very good on acceleration, because we have a lot of traction, but here we cannot really use the positive points that I understood on the bike.
“For sure we have a really, really good delivery of the power, but here it’s not such a positive point because it’s better to have maximum power [here], and we are missing a bit.”
Brad Binder’s explanation for why the RC16 doesn’t gel with Qatar is slightly different:
“The style here is more like really light on the brakes, let go of it, keep speed and flow, and the one thing our KTM is very good at is turning with the front brake in the hand – whereas there’s not really many opportunities to use our best advantage here.”
But it’s also true that the four riders’ problems aren’t uniform.
Oliveira correctly points out “the first part of the track, which is corners that are more tight, and [where] we need to force the bike to turn and have grip at the same time” as a particularly costly section for himself and KTM, but he’s alone among the quartet in being particularly competitive in the final sector.
And their top speeds vary – Oliveira feels KTM can be “competitive in the straight” but for the heavier Petrucci it’s been a consistent complaint as he is “one of the slowest, or the slowest” in a straight line.
And, of course, the four riders have had varying degrees of success in getting through their programmes. Binder was particularly forlorn after fitting in three crashes in two consecutive days of running, but he at least feels he’s got to the bottom of it (attributing his falls to some slightly suboptimal late braking), whereas fellow sophomore Iker Lecuona remains largely perplexed.
“I crashed three times, maybe one time I know why but the other two I didn’t do nothing different,” Lecuona explained. “Nothing. You see the data and it’s completely the same like before.”
On Thursday, the four KTM race riders fitted in neatly within half a second, with Lecuona – the slowest of the four – saying his attempt at a fast lap was compromised by an Alex Marquez-induced red flag.
In some sense, this small spread is good news, because it shows new signing Petrucci is getting on top of the package. But that of course is only a silver lining, as Petrucci himself explained: “I started one second and a half [off the top KTM], [then] one second, half a second, and now nearly two tenths.
“So, I’m getting used to the bike, but for sure one second and a half gap from the leader is too much.
“Because we saw in MotoGP that sometimes we’re all in a second, the first 10 riders are in half a second.”
Can KTM rectify this situation and not be the slowest bike come the Qatar season opener? It seems a long shot but there’s still plenty of optimism within the ranks.
“Hopefully in a race weekend we can put it all together and make a great pace, because at the moment it’s our best weapon, the [long-run] pace,” said Oliveira.
“I believe we can make the bike better,” said Binder. “We’ve had a little bit of this problem at other circuits and we’ve always seemed to solve it. We have some good ideas.”
“I know at this track KTM has struggled a lot,” said Lecuona, “but I think we can improve a lot and to fight for the top 10.”
Lecuona’s sentiment sounds particularly optimistic, as does his assertion that Qatar holding the first two races of the campaign, for the first time ever, is actually a good thing. “I think if we struggle in the first one, we can improve in the second one,” he said.
Truthfully, that sounds like a long shot. Every manufacturer has had their days in the sun in pre-season testing so far except KTM, so the two races at Losail might offer slim pickings.
But business is bound to pick up after that. There were more tracks in 2020 on which the RC16 was good than bad, and by most accounts the 2021 version is not a dramatic departure. So better days will come.
And if somebody from the KTM camp actually does find the key to the Losail International Circuit, that could set the tone for one special season.
