‘Impossible to continue’: Inside MotoGP’s odd one out as star ultimatum lights fuse
Seven rounds into the 2025 MotoGP season, it’s been a podium party for four of the sport’s five manufacturers.
The odd one out? KTM, which was Ducati’s closest challenger – in relative terms – as recently as last season, but now finds itself on the outside looking in.
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Marco Bezzecchi’s win for Aprilia in last weekend’s British Grand Prix made it victories for three of the sport’s five marques so far this season, and Grand Prix podium finishes for four after Fabio Quartararo was second in Spain three rounds previously for Yamaha.
It’s success on a scale that KTM’s quartet of riders can only envy.
After seven rounds of 2025, Pedro Acosta, Brad Binder, Maverick Vinales and Enea Bastianini – the former the sport’s foremost ascendant young star, the latter three all Grand Prix winners – don’t have a single rostrum visit between them.
And that might not be the worst of it.
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Acosta is getting more restless and publicly critical by the week, while Bastianini called himself the “worst rider on the track” after a disastrous Silverstone outing where he finished in 17th place, a year after he’d won both the sprint and Grand Prix for Ducati at the same circuit.
With the wider KTM business finally having a more secure footing following recent investment from Indian motorcycle behemoth Bajaj after months of financial turmoil, what’s the future for KTM’s motorsport program, and will it involve Acosta and Bastianini, or one, or neither?
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Rewind to last November, and KTM was – relative to the other four manufacturers being beaten into submission by Ducati – in a good place.
Ducati won 19 of the 20 Grands Prix and 17 of 20 sprints in 2024, but KTM finished second in the constructors’ championship, while Binder and Acosta – separated by two points – were fifth and sixth in the riders’ standings, the veteran South African and rookie Spaniard sharing 10 podiums across both race formats between them.
With its rider line-up bolstered for 2025 by the signings of ex-Aprilia rider Vinales – who prevented Ducati from sweeping all 20 Grands Prix a year ago – and seven-time Grand Prix winner Bastianini in place of underperforming Australian Jack Miller and former Moto2 champion Augusto Fernandez across its factory and satellite Tech3 line-ups, KTM’s future was looking bright.
PIT TALK PODCAST: In the latest episode of Pit Talk, hosts Renita Vermeulen and Matt Clayton review Marco Bezzecchi’s win for Aprilia at an action-packed British Grand Prix, discuss Fabio Quartararo’s heartache for Yamaha, look at Jack Miller’s role in Yamaha’s resurgence, and celebrate the first world championship victory for Aussie Moto2 young gun, Senna Agius.
That optimism was teetering as early as round one in Thailand when Acosta crashed and remounted to finish last in Buriram, and has only intermittently returned.
Binder, a top-six finisher in the championship standings for the past four years, has one top-six race finish all season. New factory teammate Acosta is the only KTM rider in the top 10 of the standings (ninth) after seven rounds. Bastianini has qualified no better than 17th. Vinales – who provided KTM’s one moment of joy this season when he stormed to second place in Qatar only to be penalised for a tyre pressure regulation breach and dropped to 14th – has shown flashes, but no more.
The nadir came at last weekend’s British Grand Prix, where not a single KTM rider managed to advance to Q2 – the final part of qualifying for the top 12 on the grid – for the first time all season.
While Ducati has continued to have a stranglehold over the series – the Italian brand has won all seven sprints, five of seven Grands Prix and has five of the top six riders in the standings – the other manufacturers have shown signs of life.
Honda, cast into the wilderness after Marc Marquez left at the end of 2023, won the French Grand Prix with Johann Zarco, who backed that up with second at Silverstone.
Yamaha, with Quartararo, has a podium and pole positions in the past three rounds in Spain, France and Great Britain.
Bezzecchi’s win for Aprilia at Silverstone came against the backdrop of his teammate, reigning world champion Jorge Martin, trying to wriggle his way out of a two-year contract not even one completed race into his tenure, the Spaniard missing almost all of this season with myriad injuries.
While it’s been a struggle on track for KTM, the bigger battles have been played out behind the scenes.
Late last year, KTM’s parent company, Pierer Mobility AG, went into self-administration and began a restructure after finding itself in a financial crisis through over-expansion and declining bike sales, seeking 100 million Euros ($175M AUD) to continue operating, and ceasing production of motorcycles while laying off hundreds of staff from its Mattighofen base in Austria.
Early in 2025, KTM’s creditors approved a restructuring plan put forward by management that was dependant upon a cash quota of the company’s debts to be paid by the end of May.
Last week, Indian motorcycle manufacturer Bajaj Auto was officially named as KTM’s main investor, Bajaj loaning 450 million Euros ($790M AUD) to the wider KTM AG group and a further 150 million Euros ($263M AUD) to Pierer Mobility Group AG to save the company.
The announcement detailing Bajaj’s investment didn’t mention KTM’s motorsport activities generally or its MotoGP project specifically, which was notable with the new regulations for MotoGP – including 850cc engines and a significant reduction of the importance of aerodynamics and electronics – set for the 2027 season.
The long-term ramifications of and direction taken subsequent to the financial life raft provided by Bajaj is significant for the longer-term. But it’s a more immediate timeframe that’s making its crack rider corps restless.
‘I’M THE WORST RIDER ON THE TRACK’: BASTIANINI’S LAMENT
Bastianini arrived in Silverstone as the reigning British GP winner, a high point of a 2024 campaign where he took two victories and nine podiums for Ducati to finish fourth in the world championship.
While the 27-year-old was squeezed out of Ducati’s factory team to make way for six-time MotoGP champion Marquez, KTM offered a fresh start and a next chapter for a rider who shot to prominence in 2022 with Ducati’s Gresini squad, where he won four Grands Prix and unleashed almost supernatural late-race speed as his calling card, his ability to preserve tyre life to deploy when his rivals had chewed theirs the key to his repeated success.
It had been a complicated start at KTM for ‘The Beast’ before the British GP, but Silverstone brought on a new level of pain.
From 17th on the grid, he made it as far as 15th in Saturday’s sprint before Sunday’s Grand Prix, which he disconsolately called the worst race of his five-year premier-class career.
Bastianini carried a long-lap penalty into Silverstone for skittling former Ducati teammate Francesco Bagnaia on the first lap of the previous race at Le Mans, and then copped a 16-second time penalty for breaching the same tyre pressure regulations that punished Tech3 teammate Vinales at Lusail three rounds earlier.
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Even without that penalty, Bastianini – who also battled with an intermittently-failing rear ride-height device – was 22 seconds behind the next-worst KTM of Binder, and finished 54 seconds behind race-winner Bezzecchi in 19 laps, finishing 17th while fighting with regular riders returning from injury layoffs (Miguel Oliveira at Yamaha and Honda’s Somkiat Chantra), or test rider Lorenzo Savadori, deputing for the absent Martin at Aprilia.
“Very frustrating, probably the worst race of my career,” he said.
“I think many times to go into the box [pits, to retire] during the race, but in the end I finished the race for everybody, for me, for the team. But to be honest, I’m not happy about anything.
“It’s impossible for me to push. The race has been complicated on the straight because it was too difficult for me to keep the throttle open because the front felt light and was closing many times on the straight.
“At the moment, I’m the worst rider on the track. Last year here I won two times, and it’s impossible for me to be [close to] last this year.”
He hinted that KTM’s unstable financial situation, and the funding and attention needed to develop the RC16 machine, may have played its part, too.
“I think KTM need to do something for me for my future, because like this, it’s impossible to continue,” Bastianini, who has been linked to Yamaha by Sky Sports in Italy even with a KTM contract that runs out at the conclusion of 2026, said.
“I hope something will come along that can help me. First in terms of ergonomics, because I’m not comfortable [on the bike]. I always have pain in one leg when I get off the bike.
“It sounds strange that it’s still not right, but that’s normal given the situation we’ve been in, the demands are different rider to rider and some parts have been slow to arrive.”
‘I DON’T HAVE PATIENCE’: ACOSTA’S FRUSTRATIONS MOUNT
For all of his misery, Bastianini was fairly calm when he faced the press after his chastening Sunday at Silverstone.
Stablemate Acosta, on the other hand, turned on his typical no-filter meter and barely paused as the words tumbled out in a torrent of rapid-fire frustration.
Acosta, compared to his fellow KTM riders, had reasons to be positive after a Grand Prix where he elected to use the same soft-compound Michelin front tyre that Miller prompted the other Yamahas to use, and was raced by victor Bezzecchi and second-placed Zarco, to rise from 14th on the grid to sixth.
Coming after a ride through the rain in France to fourth a fortnight earlier, it’s a pair of results that indicated KTM was improving, but Acosta was in no mood to discuss that as he sees his bike stagnating while others, notably Honda and Yamaha, make big strides from the foot of the field.
“It was a race of hopelessness,” he said after finishing seven seconds behind Bezzecchi on his 21st birthday.
“It’s quite sad to see that you try to be perfect in acceleration and picking up [the bike] and [lean] angles and try to be close [to others] and then lose everything in acceleration for the clear thing … we don’t have this amount of grip that the other bikes have.
“I don’t want to come here with KTM and just burn fuel, I want to compete. Today I was able to compete more or less, until when I was in the group of Marc [Marquez], Franco [Morbidelli], Jack [Miller] and Alex [Marquez] and I was not able to fight. This is the thing that is burning my blood, to be so close and don’t catch it and not be able to do it.”
When it was suggested to Acosta that he may need to accept KTM’s predicament for now and play the patient game, he responded emphatically.
“I don’t accept this situation and I don’t have patience,” he said.
“Opportunities only come once, and I won’t wait forever to become world champion. I need help from the factory. You’re only young until you’re not.
“At the end, it’s not that it’s only myself. You see the four KTMs out of Q2 this week and struggling a lot this weekend. We need help from the factory. I’m talking about the four riders, not only me. KTM is working everywhere at the top, it’s absolutely a winning brand, but in MotoGP it’s missing something.
“The other manufacturers like Yamaha and Honda have improved a lot. Maybe that’s why we don’t look as good as we used to.
“Yamaha brought a new chassis, took pole and Quartararo was leading for a long time … compared to last year, they’ve made great progress. I always want to put the example of Fabio [Quartararo], you remember how difficult it was for him last year? This guy didn’t forget to ride a bike last year, he didn’t make two steps [in his own riding for 2025]. It’s just that Yamaha improved, he is pushing, and this can happen.”
With rumours continuing to connect Acosta, on a two-year deal with KTM, with the VR46 Ducati set-up where incumbent Morbidelli is off-contract at the end of 2025, the Spaniard’s commitment was clearly conditional.
“I’ve got another year on my deal, but this week I’ve made it clear I need help,” he said.
“I still believe in this project … I’m not talking about winning the championship this year or next, but at least feeling like I’m fighting for something.
“I signed this deal to fight for a title, even if I end up losing.”
With some off-track stability – the impact of which will take time to reach the race track – at least KTM has a more solid, wider, financial footing to begin to appease a rider who it sees as its long-term future force, and to get a trio of experienced stablemates back towards the sharp end.
Translating that into on-track results against an ever-moving target and a group of rivals who are making significant strides weekend by weekend is achievable. But, from such a low base, there’s likely to be some more pain to endure yet.