Fabiano Sterlacchini is no longer with KTM. The former Vice President of Technology for Road Racing could not reach an agreement for renewal and is no longer in the Red Bull KTM garage at this weekend’s German GP.
Rumors started circulating in the press this morning, and after the first free practice session, they were confirmed by KTM Motorsport Director, Pit Beirer, to the MotoGP website: ‘This is true, and it was a kind of a stormy week for us. But Fabiano was at the end of the contrat at the end of the last month. So the last weeks we had some discussions, of course we tried to renew, we were working on a new three-year contract with him. But at the end of the day we just couldn’t agree on some things. For him, the distance to his home, which is also quite far from us, was one part. But I don’t want to use this now as our main excuse; we couldn’t agree on some things on how to continue, and that’s why we mutually agreed to split up’.
After almost two decades at Ducati, Sterlacchini joined KTM in June 2021, overseeing the manufacturer’s road racing activities. Upon his departure, Beirer emphasized his satisfaction with Sterlacchini’s contributions:
– Absolutely. He has created some areas in our project which we didn’t even covered, and he has built them up. We took a different direction, I feel the project is on a more stable base right now, and then we have more great people and we found them together with him in the last three years. So, yes, I’m happy with what he did, and it was just some things. We both agreed that we don’t want to go deep into that discussion on why we don’t go on together. But there is no broken contract, he was at the end of the contract time and we couldn’t find a proper agreement for the future. One more time, distance to his home also didn’t help. All in all, he is leaving KTM as a friend, it’s very important to me to give this message.