Box Confidential: KTM broke its conductor

KTM broke its ‘conductor’.

“Fabian [Sterlachini] He is now our leader on the technical side of our MotoGP project, but our orchestra was already in place when he arrived. By winning five races we showed we could build a winning bike before it arrived. In the KTM racing department we have amazing people. Fabiano didn’t need to teach us how to work. But he is an engineer with proven career ability and a good coordinator of the works to be carried out at GGPP. On the other hand, we also have people who understand what drivers and teams need to get racing results. These words ‘yes, but it doesn’t matter’ came from Stefan Pierer, president of KTM, during the 2023 preseason training in Malaysia. Today, July 5, 2025, it was learned that Sterlacchini and KTM have split the pears. At the Dutch GP a week ago his employment relationship ended without a continuity agreement. “He is homesick,” was the first explanation from the ranks of KTM, who later added the history of the lack of results since the arrival of the Italian engineer. And Pierer, the president of KTM, is as direct about getting the services of the best, regardless of cost, as he is about getting rid of him without blinking. As the news went viral here at the Sachsenring, Sterlacchini was driving home. We will only know his version of what happened for four months, a period of mandatory silence… If at some point he wants to explain it.

The B part of aerodynamics.

Now here at the Sachsenring it has been seen that every technological advance means leaving something behind. The series of crashes that occurred in the afternoon session, seven if I’m not mistaken, were attributed by the pilots to too much wind, which suddenly activated the aerodynamics instead of for. Hence the series of beautiful falls on the change of direction between #10 and #11. Theoretically, the wings and other elements added to the fairings serve to increase the load, that is, stick the motorcycle as much as possible to the ground. But because at turn #11 the wind is blowing, both parts act to lighten the front axle once the motorcycle goes from leaning left to right. Alex Márquez confirmed that without all the aerodynamic paraphernalia today would be more comfortable, but immediately added…”But we would have been slower.” And that’s the crux of the matter: the drivers will never give up on going faster, even if that means what happened this afternoon at the Sachsenring. For them, the saying always applies: “The motorcycle that runs as fast as possible, we make it possible.”

In 1950, the Sachsenring gathered 480,000! spectators.

On May 26, 1927, the first race was held here in Hohenstein-Ernsthal, the town where the current Sachsenring is located, under the name ‘The Four Corners Race’, wanting to emphasize that it was held on a closed circuit . On the walls of the press room there is an exhibition showing the long history of a circuit as legendary as the one in Assen a week ago. A history marked by the Second World War, which left this region east of the Iron Curtain. Until 1961, the communist authorities of the DDR did not permit the holding of the World Cup race, a permit that was canceled when Dieter Braun won in 1972, forcing the organizer to play the West German anthem. With the fall of the authoritarian regimes, the situation returned to normal, allowing the huge motorcycle racing fans in this region of Germany to fill the Sachsenring every year and make the German GP one of the most charismatic on the calendar. One last anecdote: the Sachsenring spectator record is held by a single-seater race held in 1950… 480,000!