KTM’s MotoGP engines believed to be “limited” after recent reliability problems
KTM is understood to have limited the performance of its MotoGP engines following a series of reliability issues.
KTM could be set for a difficult few races in MotoGP after recent reliability issues are thought to have made the Austrian company “limit” its engines.
Following a strong start to the 2026 season, Pedro Acosta’s slim title chances have taken a big hit in recent weeks, but not because of individual mistakes. Instead, the reliability of the RC16 has let him down on different occasions.
Acosta broke down in both the hour-long Practice session and on the final lap of the Czech Grand Prix at Brno, last weekend. Acosta also suffered a technical issue in Barcelona which caused Alex Marquez to hit the KTM star from behind, causing one of the worst MotoGP accidents in recent years.
The soon-to-be Ducati rider also blamed a ride-height device issue for his crash during the sprint race, again at Brno. Factory KTM team-mate Brad Binder has also suffered with reliability woes this season, including technical issues during practice at Mugello.
Speaking during FP1 for this weekend’s Dutch GP at Assen, MotoGP world feed pit lane reported, Jack Appleyard, said:
“We understand that they have limited the engines. That came after the pair of technical troubles that they had on Friday at Mugello for Brad Binder.
“That in part then resulted in the sort of famous images that we saw in Sunday’s grand prix when the Ducatis, of Marc Marquez in particular, were absolutely flying past Pedro Acosta who stood no chance, he looked like he was standing still on that long home straight at the Italian Grand Prix.
“Now, those same implications are still in place here, but the KTM team do feel that, with Assen and Sachsenring [being] two circuits that are not known for their top end speed. The start-finish straight [at Assen is] the shortest on the calendar, so they’re hoping that it won’t be too much of a handicap and as a result we won’t see any tech gremlins.”
Aki Ayo, team manager of the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing team, said that KTM has managed to understand the issues it's been having during FP1 at Assen.
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After graduating with a sports journalism degree, Robert joined Crash.net to lead the WorldSBK coverage in 2021, while also providing MotoGP coverage. Fulfilling that role for over three years, Robert was able to put his knowledge about all things racing to the test.
