How budget and brains took KTM to Catalan GP top step
KTM use budget and brains to develop new frame to go from also-rans to race winners at Catalunya
It’s been quite some week for Miguel Oliveira and KTM’s factory MotoGP squad. Going into the MugelloCatalunya double header, Oliveira had been ruled out as a title contender after a dismal start to 2021. The 26-year-old failed to score a top 10 in the opening five rounds and pitched up in Mugello only 20th in the rankings.
So how could a rider who won a last corner thriller at Red Bull Ring and then dominated Portimao last season, suddenly struggle to break into the top 10?
Oliveira and KTM appeared the most high profile victims of Michelin’s decision to cut their hardest compound front tyre from the allocation in 2021. KTM’s RC16 has always been famed for its braking stability, but the softer compound fronts this year meant that advantage vanished. Oliveira’s teammate Brad Binder recently said that the hardest front tyre available this year felt like ‘bubblegum’ braking into turns. In other words, the softer fronts move too much and you can’t turn. KTM’s rapid reaction to solve their woes has been seriously impressive. The factory have the budget and brains to address issues quickly. And their use of a steel chassis means modifications can be made much faster than more time-consuming tweaks to the aluminium frames used by all their rivals.
Oliveira’s first race on a revised chassis in Mugello fired him from mid-pack mediocrity to the podium. KTM felt the step forward in Italy was worth as much as 0.3s a lap. In an era of MotoGP where thousandths-of-a-second can be the difference between a podium or not even being in the top 10, that’s a massive leap.
The new chassis created more natural turning and was less reliant on KTM’s stop-and-go hard-braking style. By taking weight off the front quicker, Oliveira and Binder were no longer overloading the front tyre, which was why KTM had so many frontend crashes in the opening races. Better on corner entry, it was also better on exit too. “When the bike turns more naturally you don’t need to lie on the edge of the tyre as long. So it’s better for race distance because you can get onto a bigger contact patch quicker and get through the exit better,” said Binder. Sounds simple, but the improvements were a huge contributing factor in Oliveira’s brilliant Barcelona win. Catalunya’s fast, flowing and technical nature makes it a gem. But it’s always been notorious for a lack of grip and chewing up tyres to the point where it’s not uncommon to see lap times deviate by over three seconds from start-to-finish.
On a track where tyre wear is off the scale, the new KTM chassis was always going to be a big help. The sooner you are off the edge of the tyre there’s less wheelspin while better stability means stronger acceleration.
With its riders now able to pick up the bike earlier in the acceleration phase, the KTM is no longer losing vital metres on corner exit, which in turn reduces time lost on straights.
Time will tell whether KTM reacted in time to get Oliveira back in the title hunt. But the signs are positive after he reeled off 19 laps in the 1.40 bracket on Sunday, which was three more than anybody else.
Maybe they’ve already lost too much ground to give Quartararo cold sweats, but as Oliveira says: “It’s early to talk about title hopes. We got a really bad start to the Championship and that put us right at the bottom of the standings. Now we are building up results. It’s quite tempting with back-to-back podiums and me moving up so quickly in the standings we can think about that. I just prefer to focus on bringing home the most points as possible and see where we end up.” Oliveira, though, is adamant that KTM now have a podium contender in every race: “We have a good package for different tracks. This was something we lacked in the past. We also have a bike which is not such a beast as it was in 2019, so I think it makes it more friendly to ride.”
After their troubled start to 2021, it seems the future’s bright, the future’s orange once again.
‘The bike isn’t such a beast this year’ MIGUEL OLIVEIRA