Outgoing KTM rider Miguel Oliveira has a message for Jack Miller: be careful what you wish for.
Miller will replace Oliveira on the factory KTM bike from next season after the Australian opted against sticking with Ducati in a reduced role at Pramac or Gresini.
The Portuguese rider similarly baulked at the idea of being demoted to KTM’s junior team and will race for RNF Aprilia in 2023.
But five-time race winner Oliveira thinks he’ll have an easier time of the switch to the championship-contending 2022-spec Aprilia than Miller will have on Austria’s troubled machinery.
“For sure there will be a great effort on both my part and Jack to adapt to the new bikes,” he told Sky Sports at the previous round in Thailand. “I think it will be particularly difficult for him.”
Oliveira’s split with Miller’s future team is a curious one more about pride and status than an outright relationship breakdown.
KTM was eager to keep the rider who’s won five of the marque’s seven MotoGP victories but only in its satellite team — Tech3, to be rebranded Gas Gas next season — to make room for Miller’s high-profile arrival from the leading factory Ducati team.
Oliveira considered it beneath him given his record and has decided to make his place on the grid elsewhere — though what appeared to originally be an enormous choice of alternatives quickly whittled down to few, with the satellite RNF squad coming to his rescue and just about saving him some face.
Explaining his move, the 27-year-old said that the success of his and Miller’s team switches won’t come down simply to the perceived quality of their bikes but rather the overall team package, with each manufacturer now producing bikes with distinct requirements to be ridden quickly.
“MotoGP is a difficult category; you don’t jump on one bike and it’s better than the other.
“We always talk about it among ourselves — everyone thinks that the other bikes are better than their own.
“But in reality I believe that the important thing is to have a good team around you, which helps you interpret each bike. I think this is the key in today’s MotoGP.”
Earlier this season Pol Espargaró, formerly of KTM and returning to the fold next season with Gas Gas, said riders were increasingly wary of making big team switches given how different one bike to the next was to ride.
“The category has arrived at a moment where the bikes all have a super peculiar way of being ridden and the riders have a peculiar way of riding them, so they need to match each other,” he said, per The Race.
“That means it is difficult to change, because the level is so high that a change of bike, even if it seems better, can be risky. It can end your career.
“The level is so high that you really need to check deeply what you want to do and where you want to go.”
“From a growth perspective, this has been a somewhat particular year,” Guidotti, himself not quite a year into his tenure after running Ducati satellite team Pramac Racing, told Italian outlet GPOne.com.
“Having four riders who only had experience in MotoGP on our bike can be a limitation.
“We had to look around to put together a more varied line-up: Binder is the cornerstone of the team, for Miller KTM will be the third MotoGP bike he will ride, Pol will return with two years’ experience on another bike, while Augusto will be able to enjoy his debut season without pressure and we will try to make him grow without haste.”
According to Guidotti, KTM has suffered since 2020 because of the nature of the heavily COVID-disrupted season, and the fact its success then meant it lost the development concessions which it could exploit then.
“We have to realise that this is still a very young project compared to those of the competition,” he said.
Oliveira suggested that riding style was a key differentiator in his success relative to team leader Brad Binder and that he couldn’t get the team to develop the bike in his preferred direction.
“I think there are teams that do a good job to get the bike right for each rider, to exploit all the potential that each bike can give,” he said.
“I think sometimes I have managed to exploit the potential of the KTM well, Brad Binder several times has been better than me in this, also because he has a different riding style to me.
“I tried to bring the bike towards me, instead of adapting. But I’m happy to embrace another project and next year’s bike will be very competitive.”
