KTM reportedly considering axing Maverick Vinales before British MotoGP

The 2026 MotoGP season is set to resume in just under a week on 7–9 August at Silverstone, but perhaps not for Maverick Vinales.

The Spanish rider is set to leave KTM at the end of the 2026 MotoGP season, with both factory seats full and the Red Bull KTM Tech3 seemingly set for an all-new roster for 2027, preferring to avoid any continuation with riders currently associated with the Mattighofen brand.

But Vinales’ KTM exit could be accelerated and come before the resumption of the season at Silverstone’s British Grand Prix next week according to Motorsport.com.

As Vinales’ prospects of maintaining a ride at KTM for next season have withered over the course of the first half of the 2026 season, his criticism of KTM’s management of his situation has grown increasingly vocal and severe.

Motorsport.com says that Vinales’ criticism of KTM, as well as tension with Tech3 CEO Guenther Steiner, has sped up the process of Vinales’ removal from KTM’s MotoGP project, although the shoulder injury he sustained in Germany last year, and which has not yet shown to be fully healed, is also a factor.

Vinales’ absence from Silverstone, and from the remainder of the 2026 MotoGP season, would mean Pol Espargaro stepping in to replace his compatriot, according to Motorsport.com.

Crash.net has asked KTM for comment on the rumour.

The KTM test rider was unable to replace Vinales earlier in the season when the Tech3 rider had surgery on his injured shoulder because of his own injuries. Instead, Jonas Folger stepped in in France, the final race Vinales missed after the surgery which took place after the US Grand Prix, in early April.

Vinales would not be the only full-time rider to be absent from the grid at Silverstone. Cal Crutchlow will continue to replace Johann Zarco at the British Grand Prix as the Frenchman continues to recover his knee after the Catalunya turn one crash; and Gresini announced this week that Fermin Aldeguer will be replaced by Iker Lecuona, Aldeguer still unfit after fracturing a vertebra at Assen.