Why KTM's latest young outcast is a cautionary tale for MotoGP

The world of motorsport is a brutal business. The line between success and failure is fine, and the smashed dreams of so many are piled high. Perhaps more cruelly is the fact that nowadays, it is the dreams of the young which often go unfulfilled.

Motorsport is ultimately a business, where teams exist to sell the products of their sponsors so they can keep racing. To do that, you need to produce results and human beings only have a relatively short shelf life before they’re past their best. Teams are always on the hunt for the next big thing, and they only seem to be getting younger.

In many ways, KTM has monopolised young talent coming into MotoGP. Providing bikes for junior series on the ladder, like the Northern Talent Cup and Red Bull Rookies Cup, KTM has a front row seat when it comes to talent spotting. From there a rider can come to Moto3 on a KTM – or one of its badged counterparts, like a Husqvarna or a GasGas – and end up with a contract to the marque that can take them to Moto2 with Aki Ajo and on to MotoGP.

Through this it has ended up with a premium selection of riders. It can count MotoGP race winners in Brad Binder and Miguel Oliveira on its books from this scheme; new Tech3 signings and the top two riders in 2021 in Moto2 Remy Gardner and Raul Fernandez; and perhaps the hottest property in grand prix racing right now, reigning Moto3 world champion Pedro Acosta, who has a contract to join KTM in MotoGP from 2024.

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KTM is ruthless in its protection of its young talents too. Neither Gardner or Fernandez wanted to take Tech3 seats in 2022, with the former hoping a half a million-euro buyout clause wouldn’t pose much hurdle in him joining Yamaha and the RNF Racing team. KTM twisted the screws, however, and the young Spaniard was forced to put pen to paper with KTM.

The Austrian marque’s approach to young talents isn’t dissimilar to Red Bull's young driver programme in Formula 1, which has produced superstars in the likes of Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen; but has also left countless names on the scrapheap. It’s an approach Iker Lecuona, formerly a twinkle in KTM’s eye, now exiled to World Superbikes on a two-year factory deal with Honda, believes is folly.

“If I’m honest, I think it’s not correct, because if you believe in one rider you believe in them for one, two, three, four years,” former Tech3 rider Lecuona told Autosport at the end of the 2021 season.

Lecuona was ditched after two years in MotoGP with Tech3 and now will try his luck in World Superbikes

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“You can believe in the rider, but you still need to give the rider this time, this window to adapt, to improve. With one year, if you say to the rider ‘you need to be there’ or you put pressure… everybody needs time to adapt. And I think in this case, they wanted to take a very young rider and wanted them to go fast with a very difficult bike.”

Lecuona went on to add that the KTM “is not a Ducati, it’s not a Yamaha bike” – meaning, it’s not conventional, and thus not one a young rider can jump on and instantly be quick on. That’s because it’s the only bike on the grid running a steel trellis frame and WP suspension – a design philosophy KTM steadfastly refuses to stray from, as it believes it must plough its own course to find success in MotoGP and not simply tread the same beaten path.

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KTM’s rapid rise to winning races in MotoGP was impressive. Making its debut in 2017 by starting over three seconds off the pace in qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix, it took to the top step of the podium with Brad Binder just three races into the 2020 campaign. Now, that Brno victory on paper contradicts Lecuona’s point.

"For me the problem in my case, I need to say, it’s also the COVID situation. For me it was not easy because we raced a lot of times two times in one track, so you cannot learn during the first year a lot of things" Iker Lecuona

But Binder himself admitted that his breakthrough win was the strangest part of a rookie campaign that was weird from start to finish, due to the disruption caused by the COVID pandemic. The likes of Yamaha and Ducati struggled badly on a Brno track surface that wasn’t fit for purpose, and which ultimately led to it being struck from the calendar in 2021 as the circuit wouldn’t pay for the needed improvements.

Examine KTM’s other wins in 2020, and you see a similar pattern. Miguel Oliveira’s win at the Styrian GP came in a race that was red-flagged, and so ran at a shorter length. And his Portugal domination was largely a circumstance of him having expert knowledge of the wild Algarve International Circuit.

When MotoGP returned in April of 2021, Oliveira – on a factory team KTM – qualified 10th and was 16th in the race after a crash. With its key advantage of free testing with race riders stripped in 2021, having lost its results-based concession benefits, KTM floundered – Oliveira taking its only dry race win in a brief mid-season surge at the Catalan Grand Prix following a chassis change.

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In a championship four races longer than in 2020, KTM scored just five more points in 2021 on its way to fourth in the standings, Binder taking its only other win by gambling on staying out in increasingly wet conditions at the Red Bull Ring. That wasn’t helped by the RC16 not radically changing for 2021, but enough that it required a rethink in how it was operated by a rider.

KTM wasn't the regular front-running prospect it was in 2020 last season, hindering Lecuona's prospects

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“It’s a big difference,” Lecuona said of the 2021 KTM. “I remember in the first time when I tried the bike, I said to everybody the lap time is similar but the style that you need to ride the bike or something like that, you need to understand a lot of things. It’s really different the bike, so it’s not easy to adapt in the first races to the new bike. When we understand more and find the base on the bike, we started to go fast.”

Lecuona scored 39 points across a difficult 2021 in which a sixth in the chaotic Austrian GP was his best result. Though technical support from KTM was good, he insisted, new items wouldn’t always come hot off the press. This was a point of frustration in what has been an exceptionally gruelling stint in MotoGP for Lecuona.

After a surprise call-up in 2020 for Tech3, his early races highlighted just how ill-prepared he was – especially with his fitness. Results did start to come, but a three-race lay-off at the end of the campaign due to COVID derailed his progress. And from early in 2021, his days were always numbered as the exceptional form of Fernandez and Gardner in Moto2 set them on a direct path to MotoGP.

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For now, Lecuona’s MotoGP career has lasted just 30 races. A rookie in COVID times, he’s the only one of that crop who is now exiting the grid. The need for teams to keep finding new talent, and the sheer volume of stunning riders coming up through the classes, leaves little margin for a probation period. The fact 2020 was run over 14 rounds at just nine tracks meant little growth was actually done by Lecuona.

“For me the problem in my case, I need to say, it’s also the COVID situation,” Lecuona says when Autosport asks if he feels he was given a fair shot in MotoGP. “With the COVID situation, for me it was not easy because we raced a lot of times two times in one track, so you cannot learn during the first year a lot of things.

“In MotoGP you need to learn a lot, you need to study, to try. But when you have two races in one track, you improved one week to another week but you don’t try nothing. You cannot learn more because it’s the same track in another weekend. And also it’s less races like a normal season, so everything together I cannot improve.”

When you consider the struggles Alex Marquez faced on the difficult Honda in 2021 – taking a solitary fourth as his best result - and Binder’s tough campaign, there’s an argument to be made that Lecuona really wasn’t given a fair shot in the premier class. Being bereft of knowledge and competing with the sword of Damocles hanging over you is hardly going to produce a fertile atmosphere for a rider’s growth. Add to that the brutally competitive nature of MotoGP now, modern rookies face a much harder task than the newbies of old.

Strong form of Gardner and Fernandez in Moto2 meant Lecuona's place was under threat for much of 2021

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

“Now the level in MotoGP is very high,” he adds. “In a lot of tracks, we go very fast and many times I’m in P15 and I’m seven tenths [off the pace] in a MotoGP with six factories [competing]. With completely different bikes we are in the same second, so it’s not because you go slow that you are 15th. You are seven tenths from the first one. I think never we’ve had this in MotoGP. If you check, I don’t know, five years before, if you finished one second [back] you finished on the podium. Right now, if you stay one second [off the pace] you stay the last one on the grid.”

Despite being just 21 years old, Lecuona has matured into a very grounded and pragmatic young man. He doesn’t feel scorned by his time in MotoGP, though has every right to be, and goes forth to WSBK with Honda firmly looking at it as the next chapter in his career – not simply a stopgap until he can find a way back into MotoGP.

With one more year Lecuona really could have made a big step forward in MotoGP. Regardless, his story should act as a cautionary tale for KTM, for young riders and MotoGP in general.

"With completely different bikes we are in the same second, so it’s not because you go slow that you are 15th. You are seven tenths from the first one. I think never we’ve had this in MotoGP" Iker Lecuona

The desire to bag the next big young thing must not come at the expense of the need to actually give that rider time to grow. If a rider is talented in Moto3 and Moto2, they’ll be capable of that in MotoGP – but it’s not fair to expect every rookie to be like Fabio Quartararo or Jorge Martin.

Lecuona had very little actual road racing experience when he made his full-time MotoGP debut in 2020, having only just started circuit racing on production-based bikes in 2015. He has no regrets about grabbing the opportunity when it came, as he reasons it may never have come again.

But when you’re barely into your early twenties, should a ride in MotoGP really be a once-in-a-lifetime chance?

Lecuona faces a tough ask to find his way back to MotoGP due to the hot prospects on his coat tails

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images