Down in pitlane: a brand-new KTM for Valencia Test?

Simo Crafar, motogp.com pitlane reporter, was busy getting the latest scoops from the MotoGP™ teams on Friday at the GP Octo di San Marino e della Riviera di Rimini. Below is the pick of the bunch, including KTM’s Pit Bierer indicating we will probably see an all-new Red Bull KTM Factory Racing bike at the Valencia Test.

Pit Bierer (KTM Motorsport Director) on KTM new parts, and how we can expect to see a brand-new package at the Valencia Test:

“It’s not great news that we are still working on everything. It’s nonstop work on our engine, chassis, electronics, suspension. But step by step we feel more comfortable. A really interesting moment of the project, the test rider, Dani, he really knows what we need but also what he delivers helps the riders and they also believe and understand, so that’s a really nice moment of the project, which started before Spielberg or Brno, where he brought a full package to the race track for the race guys. Johann maybe didn’t believe that it was important but he put exactly that bike on the front row on the qualifying.

“It helped Miguel incredibly, also Pol, so he made some good steps and we’ve just picked up all these results, we’ve tried to do that step now with Dani and help the riders even more. So, at the moment we are really on that road, that we understand what the riders need and Dani’s pushing that in the quiet moments on the test track. And lately what we bring to the race track makes the riders a bit more happy, so we just keep pushing for that. Then in the last here in Misano we were already looking a lot to the future, so we didn’t really test anything on the race bike for this weekend, we had to take some important decisions for next year, in which direction we’re going to go, especially with the chassis.

“Now we are finally coming into a process where we can work in parallel on a bike for next season and still bring some new parts for the race guys and not just put everything on the races anymore, and be actually with the latest bike in Valencia and having nothing new for the Tuesday after Valencia, so we could speed the development up in the meantime and that’s good for the future.”

Massimo Meregalli (Monster Energy Yamaha Team Director) on Yamaha new parts:

 “Those parts have been tested two weeks ago here. We had quite good information from each of them and basically how we finished the test, is how we started in FP1. The results have been good on all of the items, the exhaust gives some good smoothness and speed at the top. The carbon swingarm looks like it’s better at picking up areas on traction which is always important. It had been a really good test. Now we have to be focused on tyre life because that is the only field where we couldn’t work at the test because we didn’t have time.”

Davide Brivio (Team Suzuki Ecstar Team Manager) on Suzuki’s test:

“Yeah I think not bad. In general our package is reasonably ok everywhere more or less. Then others are some tracks where it’s been better, here we had a good race last year and the test went well. We didn’t test anything, let’s say revolutionary, but we checked again some parts we tested in Catalonia and Brno and tried to keep the good balance of the bike and keep together a good bike. But it should be a good track, we will try to have a good race.”