Could Vinales be KTM’s new talisman?

These are tough times for KTM in MotoGP. The RC16 has chronic vibration niggles. The latest version of the bike appears to be slower than last year’s. The broader KTM company has been placed into administration. Star factory rider Pedro Acosta is being linked with any number of moves to escape the marque that nurtured him.

The list goes on. Brad Binder, the man who scored the breakthrough wins for the team in an increasingly distant past, has rarely been so anonymous aboard a factory KTM. And new Tech3 recruit Enea Bastianini has made less of an impression than any new recruit on the 2025 grid, including Aprilia’s Jorge Martin – who has spent almost the entire season on the sidelines with injury.  

But if there is one thing the KTM crew can always count on when the flag drops, it is the youthful genius and enthusiasm of its riding talisman Acosta. Right?

Not so fast. Because on the evidence of the last three race weekends, it might be time to think about swapping out Acosta’s name for that of Tech3’s other new arrival. A man 10 years Acosta’s senior. Maverick Vinales.

When Vinales made Q2 and then lined up an encouraging 10th for the Americas GP last month following a dispiriting first two rounds with his new team and bike, paddock sages pointed to the Spaniard’s affinity for the circuit. After all, Vinales had swept the weekend in Texas a year earlier, scoring an outlier result aboard the Aprilia. His Sunday win in 2024 remains the most recent grand prix win for a non-Ducati.

This step forward was just the COTA effect, many suggested. And in any case, Vinales was still way off Acosta’s one-lap level: he had qualified fourth. The youngster could still wring a lap out of the bike if nothing else.

Even after retiring from the sprint with the dreaded vibration, Vinales declared that the potential had been there to score a top six. He couldn’t prove that the next day, when he found himself as the comic hero in the ultimate farce when a technical problem saw him running around an already chaotic startline without a bike. Acosta didn’t show a lot better after lights-out, though, dropping to seventh in the sprint and retiring from the grand prix.

If the qualifying step in Texas was simply a soft spot for the track, how could Vinales lining up sixth – fully six spots ahead of Acosta – at the next race in Qatar be explained? Or what about his sensational run to second place on the road in the Qatar GP, during which he lead a portion of the race?

Few reached for the fact that he had won twice previously in Doha. This time, popular opinion was that this was just Maverick’s annual out-of-nowhere otherworldly performance on display. That’s really what Texas 2024 had been about.

And so to Jerez, a track everyone knows well in temperate, dry conditions. A level playing field.

Those waiting to say ‘told-you-so’ got their chance when Vinales failed to earn a direct ticket to Q2 on Friday. Acosta had his usual automatic spot in Q2. Things were back to normal at KTM, right?

But those who looked more closely at his performance – or listened to the man – knew it wasn’t a representative showing. Among other things, he’d had a technical breakdown. He said Saturday would be better – and it was.

Vinales dominated Q1 like a boy who’d mistakenly been kept back a year at school. He then promptly saw off Acosta – who had destroyed his main bike with a fall in FP2 – in Q2. It was the same deal as in Qatar: Vinales sixth, Acosta 12th.

In Saturday’s sprint race, where almost nobody could make much of a move from their grid position, Vinales kept the RC16 on course and duly scooped up the best scraps behind the Ducati sextet, with Acosta 10th.

You now have to go back to the sprint in Texas to find the last time Pedro finished a race ahead of Maverick. This was unthinkable when MotoGP packed up to leave Argentina for Texas.

Maverick Vinales, Red Bull KTM Tech 3

Photo by: Tech3 Racing

Three races since he started making a move towards the front, could it be time to give Maverick some credit? His crew chief Manuel Cazeaux certainly thinks the answer is ‘yes’.

“Maverick has learned a lot from the mistakes of the past,” says Cazeaux, who came over to Tech3 from Aprilia with Vinales. “He has analysed his career and said: ‘OK, I have made mistakes’ and he has learned from them. Now he has a lot of confidence.

“He knows that to be fast on this bike is just a matter of time. And that makes the process easier. Because even if it takes time, he is sure that it will come.

“And one very important thing: throughout his career – sometimes with me and sometimes without me, also on the Yamaha – he has been able to be fast. Fast in terms of pace and fast in terms of lap times – on all the bikes. The KTM will be no exception. We will find a way to make him consistently fast.”

What about the Vinales who would always get shuffled down when it came to a fight in the pack? There was no sign of him in Qatar – and Cazeaux suggests we ought to get used to that: “The big difference is that, for the first time in his career, he has an engine that allows him to attack on a long straight and overtake in a group. That was very clear in Qatar. For Maverick that will make a big difference.”

Granted, these are still early days in the season and he probably isn’t going to muscle past many bikes at Jerez on Sunday, because nobody can do so in the tight confines of the venerable old circuit. But the 2025 edition of Vinales is nonetheless beginning to convince.

It may be too soon to declare that Acosta has lost his aura inside KTM, but Vinales has certainly been chipping away at it in recent weeks. And his recent performances in relation to Acosta will only add to speculation that the younger Spaniard’s mind may be on his longer-term future.

Maverick Vinales, Red Bull KTM Tech 3

Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images

If Vinales is truly stepping up to be the man who keeps the KTM crew getting out of bed in the morning, then it’s particularly valuable in the light of the latest news to emerge from the company’s headquarters back in Austria.

Starting next week, production at KTM’s Mattighofen factory – where the MotoGP team is also based – will once again be halted for three months due to a shortage of supplies.

Meanwhile, parent company Pierer Mobility has resolved to pledge shares to raise external capital ahead of a critical deadline for the company’s future: 23 May. By this date, around €600million euros must be deposited into a trust account managed by the insolvency administrator. KTM’s partner Bajaj has already contributed €150m.

While motorsport director Pit Beirer insists the financial issues at the factory have not affected the race team, he cannot speak for the motivation of individual crew members. And whatever they’re feeling, seeing Acosta flirting with life outside the top 10 cannot do much for their spirits. That makes it a big deal for the team as a whole that Vinales keeps up this form – and keeps giving all those orange-clad folk hope.

Additional reporting by Oriol Puigdemont