KTM understood to have “limited” 2026 MotoGP engines amid reliability woes

Amid its current reliability struggles in MotoGP, KTM is understood to have “limited” the performance of its RC16’s engine.

KTM has suffered a barrage of reliability issues this season, most recently at Brno where Pedro Acosta broke down in Practice on Friday and on the final lap of the grand prix on Sunday. The Spaniard also attributed his Sprint crash to a loss of concentration caused by a ride height device problem.

The Brno issues came two rounds after action was taken to try to improve the reliability of KTM’s MotoGP engines for this year, though, with measures implemented by the Austrian brand back at the Italian Grand Prix at the end of May after Brad Binder suffered technical failures there.

“We understand that they have limited the engines,” said MotoGP world feed pit lane reporter Jack Appleyard during FP1.

“That came after the pair of technical troubles that they had on Friday at Mugello for Brad Binder. 

“That in part then resulted in the sort of famous images that we saw in Sunday’s grand prix when the Ducatis, of Marc Marquez in particular, were absolutely flying past Pedro Acosta who stood no chance, he looked like he was standing still on that long home straight at the Italian Grand Prix. 

“Now, those same implications are still in place here, but the KTM team do feel that, with Assen and Sachsenring [being] two circuits that are not known for their top end speed– [...] the start-finish straight [at Assen is] the shortest on the calendar, so they’re hoping that it won’t be too much of a handicap and as a result we won’t see any tech gremlins.”

Red Bull KTM Factory Racing team manager Aki Ajo was also asked during FP1 about the work being done at KTM in order to fix the issues.

“My feeling is that we understand [what the problem is],” Ajo said.

“Challenges are coming all the time and our job is understand them quite quick and solve them also. 

“I believe that we already understand the problem quite well, so we’re not too worried.

“I feel that we are on the way to solve whatever happened.”