After the bombshell announcement last Thursday that Tech3 would be parting ways with Yamaha after 20 years of cooperation, confirmation comes today that the French team will be collaborating with KTM from the 2019 season onwards. As of next year, Tech3 will race KTM RC16s in MotoGP.
Tech3's choice of KTM had been widely expected, for a lot of the reasons given in our article on the team's split with Yamaha (link is external). KTM have the budget to provide extended support for satellite bikes which Aprilia, and to a lesser extent Suzuki lack. KTM are also more open to closer collaboration with a satellite team than Yamaha were.
This appears to have been a decisive factor for the Tech3 team. Team boss Hervé Poncharal has long wanted access to newer machinery than Yamaha were willing to offer. Tech3 woud always be left with the previous year's machinery: on the evening after the final race of each season at Valencia, the factory bikes would be wheeled out of the factory Yamaha garage and into Tech3. Updates during the season were rare, though not entirely unknown.
This approach is different to both Honda and Ducati. Ducati have long given full-factory support to at least one rider in the Pramac team, while Honda also has a long history of providing factory support to at least one of its satellite riders. In 2018, Cal Crutchlow will be riding the latest spec of Honda RC213V inside the LCR Honda team, though he will probably lag a few races behind before getting parts.
Though details are unknown at the time of writing, it looks certain that Tech3 will become a junior factory team, along the lines of Pramac Ducati. This means much closer ties to the Austrian factory, much faster factory updates, and a role in helping to develop the KTM RC16. That may mean that Hervé Poncharal loses some say over the riders in his team, though that was also the case with Yamaha. Their contract with the team meant thatYamaha Motor Racing had the right to nominate one rider for placement in Tech3, though they did not always make use of that right.
The press release from KTM only mentions MotoGP. However, given that Tech3 also has a Moto2 team, it seems likely that the French squad will also switch to using the KTM chassis in the intermediate class. There, too, Tech3 could act as a junior team to the factory squad.
The switch to KTM will also necessitate a change of sponsorship. KTM is intimately tied in to Austrian energy drinks juggernaut Red Bull. Tech3's current partnership with Monster is likely to come to an end at the end of this year - also not entirely surprising, as the relationship has not always been smooth sailing. Whether Red Bull steps in to take the place of Monster is unclear, though it would certainly make sense, opening up an additional path for the young talent KTM and Red Bull have nurtured all the way from the Red Bull Rookies Cup.