Bastianini furious, Vinales in crisis: the mood in the KTM Tech3 garage after the Brazilian GP

A weekend in Goiania to forget for the KTM Tech3 team: both riders are unhappy with how it went and hope to make amends in Austin.

A negative Brazilian Grand Prix for KTM, which couldn’t stay in the very front even with Pedro Acosta. But while the Spaniard at least managed ninth in the sprint and seventh in the race, the others did decidedly worse. There’s great frustration in the Tech3 garage: Enea Bastianini (seventeenth on Saturday, fifteenth on Sunday) and Maverick Vinales (retirement and last place respectively) are far from where they want to be.

Bastianini is very bitter about how his race in Goiania went and highlighted his main problems: "During the warm-up lap, I was hit by a lot of stones because the asphalt is new, and I thought: 'Wow, racing like this will be tough.' Honestly, I didn’t expect to finish, because it was really painful at the start. Also, the second and third sectors of the lap are a bit slow, but with a lot of acceleration, and that’s where we’re suffering. It’s clear we’re missing something: I need to reset every time and I don’t have the confidence to push. My race pace was quite close to Pedro’s, but starting from the back is very difficult and means not being able to fight for good positions."

The rider from Rimini needs to improve in qualifying; coming through the field in the race is complicated. He also has to work with the KTM Tech3 team to make progress in some specific areas, such as acceleration. But there’s another thing that upset the 2020 Moto2 champion, namely what happened before the race: "It was bullshit — reports crash.net — because in a world championship it’s a big mistake. The message to my team arrived at the last minute and we didn’t have time to change the tire. The best choice would have been to delay the start by five minutes to clarify the situation for everyone."

Bastianini is referring, of course, to the fact that the reduction in race laps (from 31 to 23) was communicated just a few minutes before the start. An unacceptable way of proceeding for a championship like MotoGP. Hopefully, we won’t see scenes like that again.

Vinales ran with a slightly different aerodynamic setup compared to the other KTM riders, and that solution didn’t pay off: "Obviously, the smartest thing to do is to follow the others — reports Speedweek — to gather more data and improve. But now we have to focus on ourselves and try to find a good rhythm again. I think the weekend was quite positive in certain respects. But there is still a lot of work to do, not only on the bike, but also on myself. It’s a combination of both."

Amid so many difficulties, the MotoGP weekend in Brazil was still useful for the KTM Tech3 rider: "We understood that, especially with the softer rear compound, the rear pushes the front tire a lot. This makes corner entry extremely difficult and also affects the feeling with the bike. Even if I brake late, I tend to run a bit wide. I have to fight the bike for every meter of track. We need to go to Austin with maximum motivation and try to get out of this situation".

Vinales knows what he needs; together with his team he will look for the solutions necessary to be more competitive as early as the next Grand Prix in the United States. Considering all the preparation done with Jorge Lorenzo and his very high motivation to be a protagonist in 2026, the Spaniard is very disappointed. It also went badly in Thailand. But he doesn’t want to give up too soon and is ready to work hard to get out of the negative tunnel he’s in at the start of this Championship.