The Grand Prix of Spain was followed by a busy, sunny day of testing at the Circuit de Jerez-Angel Nieto and Pedro Acosta stood out as the fastest rider on a Red Bull KTM RC16 with the 5th quickest lap-time from the eight-hour session.
Red Bull KTM Factory Racing and Red Bull KTM Tech3 were joined by test rider Dani Pedrosa for the first official IRTA one-day program of the 2026 season. Enea Bastianini, Acosta and Brad Binder had all recorded results in the top eleven during the 25-lap Grand Prix the previous day and the three racers, as well as Pedrosa, clocked in excess of 250 laps to work on a host of items.
The job list varied for each rider’s needs but included fresh aerodynamic solutions, general race set-up optimization (using Jerez’s 13-corner combination of fast and tight turns and heavy braking zones) and suspension as priorities. Time attacks were relatively low on the agenda…but Acosta managed a lap just 0.3 from the top of the screens and therefore ranked P5 for the day. He was followed by Bastianini in P12 and then Binder with P16 as 14 riders were split by one second.
MotoGP gets fast again with the visit to Le Mans for the Grand Prix of France on May 8-10.
Pedro Acosta, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, 5th: “Maybe a day late but we arrived where we wanted! I’m happy with the new things the factory managed to bring and hopefully we’ll already be able to use them in Le Mans. We found a bit more traction and the new fairing looks like it works. We’ll see. We need to understand what worked today.”
Enea Bastianini, Red Bull KTM Tech3, 12th: “Today we did good work. We tried different things, nothing big but the step was not too bad. A good direction because my pace was better than yesterday. From the aero side there were some positives and negatives but probably 70% was positive. We’re confident now for Le Mans.”
Brad Binder, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing, 16th: “Today we tested some different fairings and it helped a bit with turning in the faster corners, which was nice. Other than that, we tested a different rear shock which seemed to calm things down and hook-up out of the corners better. Corner entry was a bit more settled as well. Two small changes but in areas where we needed it. Pretty good, and now the guys can go through what we tested and put it together further down the line.”
Aki Ajo, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing Team Manager: “Monday tests are always full of work and material and it’s never easy to find the correct information when the track conditions are so good but there are always positives. We had our new aero package and it met our hopes and expectations. We have to make an analysis but I think we’ll use it quite soon. The work is never-ending but we also looked at different parts and suspension. A good test.”
Sebastian Risse, KTM Technical Director MotoGP: “After the first four rounds we had quite a clear idea of what we still wanted to improve for this season. We’d had two weekends of very good results and two with very common points to work on. This was the focus for today as well as the second aero homologation. We went through all the items we had with the riders quite successfully. There was a common opinion and some positives to be taken for the next race as well as for the rest of this season. We have another test coming up in Barcelona and through today and that session we want to take our technical steps for the year. We are going with the plan. We learned a lot here. We had a difficult Spanish GP and today we were able to show we just missed a bit of track time because the potential was there.”
Jerez official test final times
1. Ai Ogura (JPN) Aprilia 1:35.944
2. Raul Fernandez (ESP) Aprilia +0.005
3. Marco Bezzecchi (ITA) Aprilia +0.328
5. Pedro Acosta (ESP) Red Bull KTM Factory Racing +0.355
12. Enea Bastianini (ITA) Red Bull KTM Tech3 +0.743
16. Brad Binder (RSA) Red Bull KTM Factory Racing +1.036
20. Dani Pedrosa (ESP) Red Bull KTM +1.539
3. Marco Bezzecchi (ITA) Aprilia +0.328
5. Pedro Acosta (ESP) Red Bull KTM Factory Racing +0.355
12. Enea Bastianini (ITA) Red Bull KTM Tech3 +0.743
16. Brad Binder (RSA) Red Bull KTM Factory Racing +1.036
20. Dani Pedrosa (ESP) Red Bull KTM +1.539
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