Last year was without doubt the greatest season in the history of French MotoGP team Tech3.
Twenty years in the premier class without a victory, it took not one but two incredible wins – first in front of factory partner KTM’s senior management in Austria and then on home soil for its Portuguese racer Miguel Oliveira.
The victories completely vindicated team boss Herve Poncharal’s decisions to walk away from Yamaha after nearly two decades.
He instead signed up with KTM’s fledgling MotoGP project in return for a promise of full-factory equipment, being a stepping stone for young talent on the way to the factory team, and a key role within KTM’s R&D plans.
But the 2020/21 off-season brought a change at the team, as Oliveira departed for the factory squad to replace Pol Espargaro and Danilo Petrucci was instead drafted in as something of an experienced set of hands to take on the racing/tester role he previously enjoyed for Ducati while at Pramac Racing.
He joined youngster Iker Lecuona, starting out his second season with the team but, after being struck particularly hard by COVID-19 in 2020, still a relative rookie with only 12 MotoGP starts (and a mere seven finishes) to show at the start of his 2021 campaign.
And, since the season got underway with preseason testing in Qatar, it’s fair to call Tech3’s year so far nothing short of an unmitigated disaster.
Three races into the season, it’s scored a grand total of four points, after Petrucci and Lecuona came home in 13th and 15th respectively at Portimao – where Tech3 had been so dominant with Oliveira in 2020.
So where’s the source of the problem, and it is something that the team can fix sooner rather than later?
“It is already the fourth round and everybody needs to wake up and push” :: Herve Poncharal
Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news for Tech3 when it comes to its chances of returning to last year’s lofty heights this season.
Firstly, the good news – some of its problems are very easily attributed to one specific factor: Michelin’s 2021 tyre allocation.
So far consistently softer on the front than the KTM needs to properly attack corners, it’s meant that not just Petrucci and Lecuona but also factory riders Oliveira and Brad Binder have been left struggling.
Binder has had a reasonable start to the year, finding some Sunday magic to put on impressive performances late in the race – but after three rounds, he’s already a whopping 40 points adrift of title leader Fabio Quartararo.
And while Oliveira has struggled even more, crashing out of the top 15 at Portimao only five months after he dominated it on a Tech3 machine, he too has been denied the chance to show his true form on occasion.
Niggling woes like an electronic failure in Qatar, for example, halted a charge that could have been better, and while KTM might not have the tyres it needs, its teams will eventually find a way around it.
That’s a process it just needs to get on with. Because one thing is for certain: with the Michelin allocation set well in advance for the whole season, complaining about the rubber KTM’s lost isn’t going to bring it back again.
Against this backdrop of even the factory riders being unable to find a base setting that works with their bike and tyre combo we find Petrucci struggling to make sense out of a steel trellis-framed KTM that’s radically different from the Ducati he’s enjoyed most of his career success on so far.
Being the tallest and heaviest rider to sit on a KTM RC16 by a long way is another factor adding to the confusion he’s facing, and despite KTM HQ commissioning chassis modifications especially to help him cope (a unique benefit of the tubular steel frame), he’s still not comfortable on it.
“We are still not in our best form, and we need to improve our set-up,” he admitted.
“I am gaining a lot of experience, though. At least, we got some points [at Portimao] and this is important for the mood.
“For me it’s still a new experience, but I know we have the potential to be closer to the front, but for this we have to work a lot. We have some ideas for Jerez and I’m looking forward to racing there.”
Poncharal is never shy about his words and is the first to criticise his riders publicly if he thinks they deserve it.
But he too stressed that Petrucci needs more than three races to adapt completely, especially as KTM faces a challenging time.
“It is still a learning process,” said the veteran team principal. “We need to understand more and more how we can help him to be feeling more comfortable and to be giving him better sensations to push more.”
That said, Poncharal also noted Binder’s strong performance in the Portuguese Grand Prix and that with the South African showing what the KTM is capable of, there’s less excuses for everyone else.
“We saw KTM is competitive,” he said. “Brad Binder ended up fifth, I think 1.8 seconds to P2, which is another strong performance after Qatar. So clearly, the bike is there.
“We don’t want to talk too much about technical things. We need to give our riders a better feeling, we need to make them a bit hungrier and let’s hope that will happen in Jerez, which is the fourth round of the championship.
“It is already the fourth round and everybody needs to wake up and push.”
And while Petrucci might be allowed time to adapt himself from Ducati to KTM, there was a less forgiving mood towards the other side of the garage from Poncharal.
“I’m lost for words and I think he is lost for everything. There is nothing that works, there is no sparkle” :: Herve Poncharal
Lecuona enjoyed strong momentum at the end of 2020, building up well and looking poised for strong results at his home track at Valencia – only to be denied the chance to ride in the final three races after contracting coronavirus.
And, with Lecuona’s momentum now well and truly stalled, Poncharal blasted the 21-year-old’s run to the final point at Portimao.
“The only positive is that we got one point, but honestly, I don’t know what to say at the moment,” said Poncharal of Lecuona.
“I’m lost for words and I think he is lost for everything.
“When I remember Iker at the very beginning last year, he was full of energy, sometimes making mistakes, but pushing.
“This year for some reason there is nothing that works, there is no sparkle.
“So, yes, we got a point, but very, very far down.”
Poncharal’s comments on Lecuona come as a distinct threat to MotoGP’s least experienced rider too, as his place in the premier class looks increasingly tenuous.
He’s signed for only the current season, and there remains talk of KTM-backed Moto2 racer Remy Gardner (pictured above) having a performance clause that could bring him into MotoGP for 2022 if his results are good enough. Right now, he’s the Moto2 championship leader…
Perhaps even more worrying for Lecuona, though, is the rapid pace of Moto2 rookie Raul Fernandez.
Twice a podium finisher and once a race winner from his first three races in the intermediate class and a key part of KTM’s future strategy, both he and Gardner will be putting pressure on Lecuona to step up in the coming races if he wants to keep his spot.
