Bold opening: The championship gap is widening fast, and KTM’s riders look trapped on different planets. And this is the part most people miss...
There was a sharp split within KTM during the 2026 Thai MotoGP season opener, as Pedro Acosta stood far apart from the rest of the RC16 squad.
Acosta celebrated his first Sprint victory on Saturday — KTM’s first win since 2023 — and then secured a strong second place in the grand prix behind Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi.
Yet the rest of KTM’s lineup struggled to keep pace. Factory teammate Brad Binder finished as the best of the others, taking sixth in the Sprint and seventh in the grand prix, a clear 11.820 seconds behind Acosta on Sunday.
Tech3’s Enea Bastianini also gritted out points, placing 17th in the Sprint and 12th in the grand prix.
At the back of the KTM group was Maverick Viñales, Bastianini’s teammate, who finished 19th in the Sprint (+21.445s) and 16th in the grand prix (+36.545s). Viñales attributed his struggles to a chronic lack of front grip.
“We tried many different things, but the bottom line is the same: we’re missing front grip, so I can’t turn into the corners. The front end just goes wide, and I’m very slow in the mid-corner,” explained the former race winner with stints at Suzuki, Yamaha, and Aprilia.
Viñales described the erratic on-track behavior in detail: two late-braking attempts at Turn 2, and two at the final corner, all with identical braking references. It felt surreal: braking points didn’t change, but the result did. He added that the core issue was front-end grip, especially when tipping the bike on the edge.
“Worse and worse,” he admitted.
During testing, Viñales sensed a marginal improvement, but race weekend sessions only deteriorated. He speculated the problem could be related to track grip evolution and how the rear tire’s push affected the front.
Disconcertingly for KTM, Viñales acknowledged Acosta’s advantage in the exact area where Viñales is struggling: front-end grip. “I can clearly see that Acosta is generating far more grip up front,” he noted. “I don’t know if it’s his position on the bike or something else, but he’s managing to get more front grip with the tire, and that seems to be his strength right now.”
Viñales left the opening round without a single point, marking the first time in his world championship career that he failed to score since he started in 125cc in 2011.
Contextual note: The scene in the paddock has long centered around Peter, a veteran of two decades who has witnessed Valentino Rossi’s era come and go. He’s been closely connected to the Suzuki exit story and Marc Márquez’s ongoing injury saga, offering a lens on the wider MotoGP landscape beyond KTM’s performance this weekend.
