In Valencia Lorenzo made his farewell party at Yamaha, Iannone said goodbye to Ducati and Viñales thanked Suzuki. End of series ? Nay, at Tech3, we spent his last moments with Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaró. The duo will reform from this Tuesday under the colors of KTM. A bet that gives pause to Aleix's younger brother who greeted Suzuki one last time to move to Aprilia.
La KTM RC16 made his first appearance in an official MotoGP race during the last Grand Prix of the 2016 season in Valencia. A track that the Austrian motorcycle will return to for its off-season tests with a view to a 2017 campaign which will be carried out in its entirety. With Pol Espargaro et Bradley Smith.
The first mentioned spent three years within the Tech3 team working alongside a proven and efficient Yamaha M1 which guaranteed him at least a top 10 at each meeting. With the brand new RC16, it will be a different story, but it is also the guarantee of an interesting margin of progression towards the summits. To be honest, given the performance of Mika Kallio last weekend, it was a leap into the unknown that the former Moto2 World Champion took: “ my feelings are mixed at the moment. I'm sad to leave Tech3 with whom I lived three seasons but I'm also impatient to discover the KTM. I'm a little anxious ».
An anxiety described thus on crash.net : " I made my choice, we can't go back, so we'll see. The good thing was that with the Yamaha we always had a good base for all the meetings. But at the same time, we couldn't evolve too much. The top 10 was guaranteed, but rarely the top 5. With the KTM, the pitfall will be that we will not be in the top 10 straight away but the good thing is that by working, we may be able to to one day enter the top 5 ».
« Nobody knows what will happen. Sometimes you have to make choices and gambles. I bet, so we'll see. We're going to start our testing and there are a lot of things to test. I need to understand everything and assess what needs to be improved. But with his 1'32 during qualifying in Valencia, Kallio has already impressed me favorably on the bike. It's already a good base ».
