MRW Issue 1

small, incremental improvements
with each new version of the RC-16.
However, it seems that they have now
made a huge step forward in the performance
and rideability of their bike.
Pit replied by saying that over the last
few years they have been criticized
for building a bike that only Pol Espargaro
could ride,
with critics saying
that Espargaro was
risking his life for the
Austrian factory. He
acknowledged that
this is partially true,
which is why he
has a lot of respect
for Pol Espargaro.
He said, “the Target
from the beginning was to build a
bike which is ridable not for one rider
but for more riders”.
Beirer goes on to say that he has
never been disappointed with the
performance of their bike, because
at every stage of its development
they were as fast as they could have
been. At the end of 2018, KTM made
the decision to stop the process of
bringing small upgrades that make
small differences to almost every race
weekend. Rather, KTM began the development
of the 2020 bike as early
“The target from the
beginning was to build a bike
which is ridable not for one
rider but for more riders”.
as possible in 2019 so that their 2020
bike would be a much bigger step up.
Pit Beirer said that after a lot of testing
with the test riders Dani Pedrosa
and Mika Kallio, they could see that
the 2020 bike was better.
Then the Coronavirus hit the world.
Beirer said that he constantly had to
convince the board of directors, the
team and the riders that the new bike
was better and that they would see
this as soon as racing got under way.
After the performances, we’ve seen
so far out of KTM at Jerez, Brno and
Red Bull Ring, I think it’s fair to say
that he was right.
The next journalist, like all the others
before, congratulated Pit on
KTM’s first win. They went on to ask
how big of a role Dorna (the owners
of MotoGP) had played in KTM’s journey,
apart from all the hard work that
KTM put into the project. Pit responded
with a small chuckle and said that
a few years ago you could have been
two seconds off the pace and still
pick up a point. Now however, things
have become a lot more competitive,
and one second can cover 20 riders.
It is thanks to the rules that Dorna
have implemented over the years that
this has happened. Beirer goes on to
say that Dorna have set up the rules
in such a way to allow each manufacturer
to build a unique bike. A bike
that captures the essence of the project
and allows for some individuality
but, at the same time have kept the
rules strict enough so that no one
team can massively outperform another.
He also mentions that Dorna
gave them a very warm welcome into
the MotoGP.
It is done that way so that the racing
is more about the rider than the
bike. That being said though there are
definitely some bikes that are superior
to others. Take Honda and Aprilia
for example.
The next Question raised is, in my
opinion, a rather interesting one. The
journalist asks Beirer how many testing
days they had planned for the
season and asked whether or not the
Coronavirus outbreak had affected
their plans. He replied by saying that