KTM chain fix: “I railed the kerb disgustingly - it stayed on!”

After suffering three chain issues during the San Marino MotoGP weekend, KTM debuted a revised chain guard at Monday’s Misano test.

Brad Binder lost chains twice in practice, while team-mate Pedro Acosta shed a chain during Sunday’s Grand Prix. All three failures occurred at Turn 6, where riders attack the kerbs at a high lean angle.

“We've never lost a chain, ever,” said Binder. “And coming out of Turn 6, there's those massive double kerbs that you run onto with a lot of lean angle.

“So I think more than anything, it's just maybe the timing of when we drop the ride-height device, shift gear, and those really thick fat kerbs, that's just vibrating and the chain is somehow coming off.

The new chain guide appeared on the back of the RC16s on Monday, when Binder deliberately hit the Turn 6 kerb as hard as he could.

“We put the chain guard on and I railed the kerb a few times out of Turn 6, like disgustingly, and it stayed on! So it clearly works,” he said.

Binder set the 14th fastest lap time, 0.9s from test leader Acosta.

While Acosta worked mainly on set-up, Binder tried some revised frames and swingarms.

“We definitely found some potential,” he said.

“We managed to make the bike quite a lot more stable, especially in the fast stuff, even though I'm still slow as hell in T3!

“But other than that, everything seems to be pretty good.”

The South African hopes some of the new parts can be used during next weekend’s Japanese MotoGP.

“I think the main items that we tried today was probably more considering 2026, but some stuff we could use from Japan, so let's see,” he said.

“We need to go through everything on the data and understand well, but I'm pretty sure we can take some of the good parts today and pack them in the flight crate.”