MotoGP has changed a lot in the last decade and this change has been more pronounced since the teams had the same tire supplier, the same ECU and the same technical set at the beginning of each season in the specific case of satellite teams. Although there are still riders who race bikes from the previous year, the general quality of the MotoGP machines has gone up a notch and it is now possible to win and lead a championship with a bike from the previous year.
In the opinion of Francesco Guidotti – KTM Team Manager – the championship is not the same when compared to 2012 and previous years, as the satellite teams were quite close, in technical terms, to the factory teams.
‘A lot of pressure, massively more. More than ten years ago, if you were a factory rider and you had a bad race, you could finish around the top five because the technical gap between the factory and the Independent teams with the bikes and the tyres was much bigger. At the moment, most of the satellite teams are near the same technical level as the factories. It is much more difficult, it is much closer’, the official told at KTM blog.
Guidotti gave an example of how close the two types of teams are and ensured that the rider is the element of a team that has the most pressure on him:
– Last year I made a statistic for five races in a row and the gap between each rider – from 1st to the 12th in Q2 – was 33 milliseconds. So, for us and for the riders it is so difficult to say, “you made a mistake here” or “the bike is not performing here”. The scenario has changed so much in the last five years and everybody has more pressure but the rider the most because they are risking so much.
