It's clear Pedro Acosta is KTM's best MotoGP rider this year - but there is a serious question mark about the second-best, and, remarkably, a rider who's only done three rounds deserves to be in that conversation.
Test rider Pol Espargaro, who exited full-time MotoGP competition in 2023 after his campaign had been derailed by a horror accident in the Portimao opener, has had no wildcard opportunities this year - KTM is allowed six under its current concession rank, but hasn't used a single one, with its catastrophic financial situation before it was rescued by Bajaj Auto investment the only logical explanation.
But Espargaro has now had three rounds as Maverick Vinales' injury stand-in, and has thrived in all three at a level highly unusual for injury stand-ins in modern MotoGP.
Three rounds - Brno, Balaton Park, Phillip Island - are a terrible sample size when you compare it to what other riders have done across 19, but the results have been eyebrow-raising nonetheless.
KTM riders by average points per round
Pedro Acosta - 12.3
Pol Espargaro - 7.7
Brad Binder - 6.6
Maverick Vinales - 5.5
Enea Bastianini - 5.1
Espargaro outqualified one KTM at Brno, one at Balaton Park, two at Phillip Island. He was into Q2 directly from Friday in the two latter rounds. If this strikes you as unremarkable, you are wrong - sure, Enea Bastianini and Brad Binder are nobody's idea of qualifying specialists, but a test rider giving full-timers this much trouble is just not normal under the current calendar, with how important rhythm is, with how reduced practice time is under the sprint format.
Like fellow KTM tester Dani Pedrosa, who dazzled - a bit more than Espargaro, but his pedigree is also much greater - in wildcard outings in recent years, Espargaro still clearly has the speed.
"I feel like when I push, it comes," he said after getting into the top 10 on Friday at Phillip Island.
"Like, I feel, what I'm doing on the bike, it really is paying off. I feel that in the past, when I was here after the injury, I was not myself. And this is the first year after the injury that I feel overall I'm enjoying, I feel like I'm riding the bike, I do what I want, I apply my riding style as aggressively as in the past. And I don't make major mistakes.
"Everything comes pretty quick. I wouldn't say 'easy' because these laptimes never come easy. But being two months off [riding] and coming here and doing this, it means there is certain margin and the bike is working well."
He said it was "amazing" to be mixing it with MotoGP regulars for actual points - even if a lot of it means learning on the fly, getting used to the "turbulences" and "slipstreams", which he admitted on Saturday led to him racing Honda's Joan Mir "a bit too hard".
"During my normal life, my other life, as a TV commentator [for DAZN], I interview them [other riders] quite a lot of times. To be one of them for one weekend, it's super nice. Also to fight with them, to fight with the best riders in the world, in the fastest championship of road racing motorcycles in the world, it's just insane."
In the races during these stand-in weekends, Espargaro has admittedly looked fourth of four among KTMs when it comes to race pace. But race rustiness and knowledge of the tyres over a race stint can account for the gap (and it's not exactly a massive gap) easily. He cooked his tyres worse than his KTM peers at Phillip Island, but that's hardly surprising. And he was still able to fight Bastianini and Binder - and score at the same rate - at Phillip Island because of that innate qualifying advantage.
He was struggling and ultimately deemed expendable - as a race rider - after his terrible injuries in 2023. But he's strong now - and, logically, a full-season schedule would make him stronger. So while it's a big claim that, say, Espargaro is one of the four best KTM riders under contract and on pure performance probably should be in the line-up, it's a claim that's easier to defend than to fight.
That doesn't mean he's a better rider than, say, Binder and Bastianini, but he may well be a better RC16 rider. He was relatively unspectacular on the Yamaha early in his career, and really disappointing on the Honda during that brief detour, but there has always seemed to be some unique affinity between Espargaro and KTM's lineage of MotoGP bikes. And the fact he was there at the outset as the lead rider when the programme was kicking off is probably no coincidence.
Pedrosa would've probably done very well in a full season on the KTM a handful of years back, but had no interest in this. How Espargaro would react to an offer is unclear - but he, too, has seen the benefits of life away from the full MotoGP schedule.
On Friday, his media session was held up very briefly as he ended a phonecall with his kids going off to school. A lot of riders on the grid are married men or even fathers, but most of them had not raced for as long, and crucially had not had the kind of accident Espargaro had at Portimao.
"There are faster guys on the grid, and younger than me, to be full-time in MotoGP," he said.
"I had my time, unfortunately I had a crash, I had a big injury, and I needed to step off from this championship. I'm fast, I have good speed, but my time is over. You feel and you need to accept these kinds of things.
"Now I just enjoy these times, when I come here, I can race, I enjoy a lot to be competitive enough to face the best riders in the world - and this makes me feel so proud."
He does want actual wildcards - Espargaro believes those would be "super important" in 2026, also for the morale and mindset of the test team, to feel that in-weekend competition and to feel closer to the end results of their work.
For now, though, he'll do Sepang as Vinales' absence continues. And he may well surprise again.
Frustrations mount at KTM
Espargaro's performance was a silver lining - but if you asked every manufacturer to choose between 'the test rider stars' and 'the bike is performing', they would all choose the latter.
Phillip Island isn't a natural fit for the KTM but, in addition to not having great peak speed, the RC16 just wasn't keeping the rear tyre intact.
It meant Acosta couldn't pull off his Mandalika trick of artificially slowing up the pace, then pushing at the end to preserve the podium. And while he had been well-aware KTM wouldn't have a great chance at Phillip Island, he let his annoyance be known after the race - perhaps not coincidentally after he'd seen maiden wins for compatriots Fermin Aldeguer and Raul Fernandez, while Acosta is still waiting for his.
"It’s tough when you are managing all the race and you arrive to the same point that you would if you didn't manage the tyres for the whole race. It's quite difficult to understand why the KTMs lose that much grip," said Acosta, who lamented that he rode around at "70% performance" on his way to fifth.
"I arrived to the same moment that I arrived at for the last three weekends in a row. KTM have to make a step now. I'm pushing everything I can.
"We have to think that it was my worst track in the calendar, it was the worst track for KTM in the calendar. But this, every week I have to handle these things. They make me tired."
Bastianini - who had been in a major form funk but believes he is now escaping it after changes to the engine braking and power delivery - and Binder both chewed up the rubber, too.
"It's weird - because the way I was riding, I don't feel like I should have used the rubber," said Binder.
"But we did. It's clear to me why - because we're missing a lot of edge grip on the rear. So you start spinning off the edge and you carry it the whole way through the drive. It just uses too much rubber."
The tyre issue had been foreshadowed in the pre-season - but KTM looked to have managed it reasonably well through much of the campaign, until now.
"Seems that in Europe, we started to control the situation - in the circuits in Europe that we have more data [for] and the bike behaviour is, let's say, more natural, more controllable," Espargaro said.
"But when we go out of Europe, where we don't have enough data, things escape from our control, things happen that we don't prevent. We cannot really understand why they are happening, and then we are a little bit blocked."
The positivity of KTM's run through July and August has frittered away once more.
