KTM RC16 MotoGP Début: Aiming for an Alien in 2019

A new name joins the MotoGP grid on 13 November 2016: Austrian brand KTM. Former Moto2 world championship runner-up Mika Kallio will give the factory’s RC16 its race début at the season-ending Valencia Grand Prix.

- Mat Oxley

AS A MATTER OF fact, this is not KTM’s very first dabble in the premier class. In 2005 the company supplied 990-cc V4 MotoGP engines to Team Roberts but quit after a few races, citing, among other things, the category’s imminent move to 800-cc engines.

This time KTM are serious. The project is all their own, funded by the factory and by Red Bull, another wellknown Austrian brand-name. KTM have a habit of getting it right. Although the company is best known in the offroad arena, winning dozens of world championships, they also know what they’re doing on asphalt. KTM have dominated the Moto3 class in recent years, despite huge effort by rivals Honda, and they won success in the now-defunct 125-cc and 250-cc championships.

KTM test rider Alex Hofmann, who raced a Ducati and a Kawasaki in MotoGP, is very upbeat about the project. “Technically, the bike is within one second of the top pace,” says Hofmann, who first rode the RC16 during its roll-out at the Red Bull Ring last October. “It’s not been long, so it’s very impressive.”

KTM have chosen the perfect moment to enter MotoGP, and not just by chance. The category switched to Michelin this year, after many years with Bridgestone, so while Aprilia, Ducati, Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha are adapting bikes that were originally built to work with Bridgestones, the RC16 was engineered from the outset to work with Michelins.