KTM brings ‘we asked for it last year’ upgrade to Malaysian MotoGP

A new KTM ride height device has been brought to the 2024 Malaysian MotoGP, over a year after it was requested.

Jack Miller was the only KTM rider to reach Q2 from practice on Friday afternoon and later revealed that KTM had brought an updated rear height device to Sepang this weekend based on feedback from the Australian Grand Prix from 2023.

“We had an update to the clicker and ride height this weekend, something we asked for in Phillip Island last year,” Miller said.

“So we have a two-race upgrade at the end, just to be able to play with the pace a little bit, to try to slow down the height device and that helped us not overload the tire on the way out and to be honest, it feels very good to get out in both straights – we don’t get a massive hit that turns into either pumping or spinning, so that was definitely a positive.”

Overall, Miller was pleased with his day on Friday – going straight into Q2 from practice, finishing ninth on Friday afternoon – but said tire allocation was a limitation this weekend.

“The bike is running relatively well, it felt good from the start this morning,” said Miller.

“It’s a difficult one because we only have one tire that works, the other option – the hard (compound) rear and the two harder (compound) fronts – are a bit out the window, let’s say.”

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

“This morning it was just kind of a wobble on the tougher options just as a matter of tire count,” Miller said.

“But this afternoon was good, I threw soft – when we say ‘soft’ it’s actually ‘hard’ which we have on most other tracks in terms of the face – and it worked well, quite happy with the pace , the tires don’t go down too bad.

“Obviously very happy to go straight into Q2, we’ve been so close in the last two weeks, but definitely a bit of a weight on our shoulders for tomorrow, that’s for sure.”

Miller said the reason for the harder casing rear tire was due to “blistering” that occurred during the February test and confirmed that the optional harder tires are unlikely to be used in either the Sprint or the Grand Prix this weekend.

“The bike doesn’t want to do that much with it and there’s a lot of float,” Miller said of the hard compound rear tire, which also uses a stiffer construction than the medium compound tire.

“The medium (compound) front maybe, but the hard (compound front tire) is a ‘Q’ (referring to the letters Michelin code their tires with, a code that is only made available to the teams), which is not ideal.

“But the back option, I mean it wasn’t terrible, but especially on the right side – it’s got the harder rubber all the way through, so it’s really difficult, honestly, to do the job.

Binder: Practice was ‘chaos’

Brad Binder’s day was complicated by an afternoon crash and a return to the RC16’s older specs – particularly in terms of aerodynamics, as Binder sometimes used an older, simpler version of the KTM’s rear wing both in FP1 as well as in training – to understand if the development direction they had moved in had been the right one.

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

“This afternoon was a bit of a mess for me. We tried a few different configurations of different balances and a lot of things to try to understand the future more, but I ended up crashing on the second or third flight lap: I locked the front and it just stayed hidden.