KTM RC250R MOTO3 RACER
RACER TEST
P120
a KTM customer bike, ahead of
Alex Rins on a similar machine,
with Luis Salom third in the final
points table on the factory Red
Bull KTM Team Ajo bike. Honda's
best rider, meanwhile, was Aus-
sie Jack Miller, who will replace
Arthur Sissis on the KTM Red
Bull team this coming season.
Miller was seventh.
Salom led the championship
all season long, winning more
races than anyone else (seven
out of 17 rounds, with 12 podiums
and never out of the top five), be-
fore unaccountably succumbing
to pressure and crashing in each
of the final two rounds and hand-
ing the title on a plate to Viñales –
his teammate this year in Moto2
with team Pons.
It was only in November of
2010 that KTM management
made the decision to join the new
class as part of a fresh long-term
road racing strategy that will also
involve Superbike racing and
began developing its RC250R
contender, whose engine ran on
a dyno for the first time on Au-
gust 26, 2011. The complete new
KTM RC250R didn't see a race-
track until November that year,
but by the first ever Moto3 race
at Qatar in April of 2012 it was al-
ready quick enough to take pole
position; Cortese won KTM's first
Moto3 GP in the third race at Es-
toril, en route to the title.
Though honors were even be-
tween Honda and KTM in that
debut season in terms of GP
victories, for 2013 the Austrians
stepped up a level - winning all
17 rounds to post a record run of
21 successive Moto3 race wins,
smashing Honda's previous re-
cord of 19 125cc GP victories in
a row in 1990-91.
Austria 2, Japan 0, and the un-
derdog had triumphed.
In view of this, the chance
to ride Salom's 2013 factory
RC250R at Almeria during Red
Bull Team Ajo's final tests just be-
fore the start of GP racing's six-
week shutdown presented a win-
dow on the forthcoming season,
especially after losing my Moto3
virginity by riding its increasingly
competitive Mahindra rival a cou-
ple of months earlier.
But the KTM immediately pre-
sented itself as a more complete,
more rounded package than the
Indian bike made in Switzerland
