KTM offers MotoGP update in Malaysia ‘we asked for last year’

KTM’s new ride height device has been unveiled at the 2024 Malaysian MotoGP, more than a year after it was requested.

Jack Miller was the only KTM rider to make it into Q2 after practice on Friday afternoon and subsequently revealed that KTM had brought an updated rear ride height unit to Sepang this weekend based on feedback from the 2023 Australian Grand Prix.

“We had the click and ride height updated this weekend, something we kind of asked for at Phillip Island last year,” Miller said.

“So we have an update with two races to go, just to be able to play with the pace a little bit, try to slow down the ride height device and it helped us not overload the tire on the exit and to be honest, I’m really pleased to go out on both straights “We’re not getting a big hit that turns into pump or spin, so that’s definitely a positive.”

Overall, Miller was pleased with his Friday – he was straight into Q2 after practice and finished ninth on Friday in ninth place – but said tire allocation was a limitation this weekend.

“The bike is running relatively well, felt good early in the morning,” Miller said.

“It’s a tough question because we only have one tire that works and the other option is a hard (compound) at the rear and two harder (compound) at the front – let’s just say it’s a little outside the realm of possibility.”

The relative irrelevance of the harder tires meant that Friday morning was spent by most riders simply managing their allocation and using tires they didn’t want to save for later in the weekend.

“This morning we were just vacillating between the more difficult options just because of the number of tires,” Miller said.

“But today was a good day, added some softs – when we say soft it’s actually the hard ones that we have on most other tracks in terms of the front end – and everything worked well, very happy with the pace. the tires don’t sink too much.

“Obviously we’re really excited to go straight into the second quarter, we’ve been so close the last couple of weeks, but definitely a little bit of weight off our shoulders for tomorrow, that’s for sure.”

Miller said the reason for using the stiffer carcass rear tire was due to “blisters” that developed during testing in February, and confirmed that the stiffer carcass tires were unlikely to be used in either the sprint or grand prix this weekend.

“The bike doesn’t want to do too much with it, and it floats a lot,” Miller said of the solid compound rear tire, which also uses a stiffer design than a mid-compound tire.

“A medium (compound) front can be, but a hard (compound front tyre) is a “Q” (referring to the Michelin letters that code their tires, a code that is only available to teams), which is not ideal.

“But the rear, I mean, it wasn’t terrible, but especially on the right side, it’s got harder rubber all the way through, so it’s really hard to get this thing to work, to be honest.”

Binder: Practice was ‘chaos’

Brad Binder’s day was complicated by a crash in the afternoon, as well as a return to the old RC16 specifications – particularly in regards to aerodynamics, with Binder occasionally running an older, simpler version of the KTM rear wing in both FP1 and practice – to understand whether the direction of development they chose was correct.

“This morning wasn’t too bad, we had to use other tires that we knew weren’t the preferred option just to save numbers,” he said.

“Today has been a bit of a chaos for me. We tried a few different configurations, different balances and more to try to get more insight for the future, but I ended up crashing on the second or third lap of the flight: I locked the front end straight and it just stayed pinned.