The meteoric rise of Pedro Acosta caused problems for KTM in MotoGP, which found itself obliged to release Pol Espargaró at the end of 2023 to place the Moto2 world champion in the Red Bull GasGas Tech3 this year. There were five riders under contract when there were only four spots available, and KTM’s sports director, Pit Beirer, hopes to avoid a similar scenario in the future.
The Austrian said the goal is to keep the same riders and does not expect a rider to progress faster than planned as the new rookie: ‘Hopefully our guys stay healthy and perform as we all wish, and then maybe it won’t be so stressful because we’ll have the four guys we have now. And I don’t feel that at this moment we are under the same pressure we had with Pedro – a guy who was jumping through the disciplines like crazy and knocking on the door one or two years earlier than we expected some time ago. So, I feel that at the moment we have a great set of four riders and we can now carefully see what is happening in the market.’
After what happened with Acosta, Beirer assured that he will not hire a new rider unless there is confirmed space, admitting that he does not want to repeat the situation: ‘I can promise that I will not hire rider number 5 unless we have a third team or one of the guys wants to leave. So, of course, we put ourselves in this uncomfortable situation. But all of you followed very closely why and what happened and everything that was said around this subject. But of course, it gave us a huge headache and I don’t want to go through this scenario very often. I feel that at this moment we are not at the forefront of making big changes because we believe in the riders we have.’
