It shouldn’t come with much surprise to hear that the Tech3 squad will be making a change of machinery not only for the MotoGP class next season, but also in the Moto2 Championship as well, with the French team agreeing to ride exclusively on Austrian bikes in 2019.
Set to be a KTM satellite team in the MotoGP Championship next year, with the KTM RC16 MotoGP race bike, Tech3 will also use KTM’s Moto2 race platform in the intermediate class next season.
“The Moto2 is a class that I particularly like and where we’ve been involved since the very beginning,” said Tech3 Boss Hervé Poncharal.
“So far, we’ve been building our own machine, but having signed a three years partnership with KTM in the MotoGP class, it makes sense for Tech3 to have also the Moto2 team racing with KTM machinery. We are of course very happy and proud to have the whole Tech3 racing activities linked to the KTM Factory.”
Since the inception of the class, Tech3 has been the oddity in the Moto2 Championship, choosing to use its own chassis design for the racing series, called the Mistral 610, rather relying on the offerings from Suter, Kalex, Speedup and the like.
This has proven to be a singular challenge for Tech3, with its machines not always being the most competitive on the grid, but then again the Tech3 squad has always had a slightly different goal in Moto2 compared to the other teams – primarily using the series to groom Tech3’s future MotoGP riders.
Now in the KTM family, Tech3 doesn’t need to devote the time and resources to creating its own Moto2 bike, especially when KTM has a rather robust operation in place for the Moto2 Championship.
While the Austrian factory hasn’t supplanted Kalex in its paddock dominance, the resources and money that the Austrians are throwing at the program certainly bode well for some good success — at least enough for Poncharal to rest his fate on their progress.
It will be interesting to see how a simple change in machinery affects Tech3’s Moto2 results, and also how having a progression of KTM racing machines helps groom Tech3’s riders for the big show.
Source: Tech3
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