From a press release issued by KTM:

The KTM Road Racing Season 2004

KTM enters its second season in Road Race Grand Prix armed with the knowledge and experience of last year! The amazing progress made during 2003 should allow the team to be ready to challenge for the podium from the first race in South Africa.

The Grand Prix 125cc team structure will be similar to 2003. Led by Harald Bartol the bikes will be based in Italy and the continuing development will be done at the KTM factory in Austria. The two young riders (Mika Kallio and Casey Stoner) have taken advantage of the Red Bull Training Centre in Salzburg for winter condition testing and the engines have run for many hours on the KTM dynojet.

The Grand Prix team will be backed in 2004 by the formation of the Red Bull KTM Junior Team, which will compete in the German Championship and some races of the European Championship. The aim of the junior team is to help with GP bike development and especially bring on young talented riders to be KTM‘s future Road Racing stars!

Interview with Harald Bartol

How did it feel for the team to achieve a podium finish at the Malaysian GP in 2003 with a bike that was less than 8 months old?

It was a nice feeling for everybody after 4 months very hard work to get the bike ready and competitive.


The riders in 2003 were experienced ex-Champions, but for 2004 you have chosen two of the fastest young riders. Why the change in policy?

We thought that the developments of the motorbike with our former riders weren’t going in the right direction and we therefore preferred to do it in a different way: to have young riders to develop the motorbike like the factory wants.


As the bike is still so new I guess that some changes have been made to the bike for 2004?

The motorbike of 2004 is the result of all the versions from engine and chassis side we tried in 2003.