MotoGP, Enea Bastianini's frustration: his KTM is still detuned

Outside the top 10 after a complicated Friday at MotorLand, the Rimini rider says his RC16 is still “detuned”: a frustrating situation for him.

His future is set: in 2027–2028 he will race with Aprilia’s SuperFile Trackhouse team, but Enea Bastianini wants to close out his complicated stint with the KTM Tech3 team on a positive note. Unfortunately, in Friday practice at Aragon he didn’t manage to secure direct access to today’s MotoGP Q2: he went no further than a disappointing seventeenth place overall. There are over eight tenths between him and the best KTM rider, Pedro Acosta, eighth in the Pre-Qualifying standings. There’s a lot of work to do to try to improve and achieve respectable results this weekend at MotorLand, where the RC16 doesn’t seem to be shining particularly bright.

The Rimini rider is disappointed with how his Friday at Aragon went; he expected to be considerably more competitive: “I didn’t expect to start so far back. We improved a bit in the afternoon,” reports Motosan, “but obviously not enough. The main issue is that I can’t get the bike to turn with the rear and I only feel a push from the rear wheel. So even in the fast corners, and the slower ones too, I’m taking them too round, I have to make them too wide. I can’t cover a shorter distance.”

Bastianini and the Tech3 team know where they need to intervene, but it’s not certain they’ll be able to raise the level enough to aim for positive results over the weekend: “We’ll have to work to do better, but honestly, I almost consider it a feat to get into the top 10 this weekend. I’ll give it my all to try, because this has always been a favorable track for me. T3 has always been one of my strengths, and seeing myself 17th or 18th there means we need to focus on that.”

In the 2026 MotoGP season KTM had reliability problems involving the engine, and to avoid issues they had to put bikes on track that couldn’t deliver full power. The Mattighofen factory asked for and obtained permission to intervene on their power units to resolve the situation, but at Aragon it seems the Tech3 team is still running detuned engines.

Bastianini explained how things stand, though he couldn’t provide a detailed reason: “Mine hasn’t undergone this intervention; they haven’t touched it: it’s remained as it was. That’s what I understood. The engine still doesn’t reach maximum revs, while the factory team seems to have it; we don’t. Having a lower rev limit is definitely a disadvantage. And, frankly, we haven’t had new developments for a while. We’re paying the price for that.”

The situation is not ideal for Enea, who expected to have an engine in the same condition as those of Acosta and Binder, as well as to receive some updates capable of improving the RC16. He has to try to do his best with the technical package he has; there’s no other way.