KTM went their own way during an impressive debut MotoGP season, initially enteri🧸ng the RC16 with a unique frame, suspension and engine firing-order compared to the other factories.

But while the Austrian team soon switched from a screamer to big-bang firing order, technical director Sebastian Risse is adaman🃏t they do not need to follow the pack in terms of an aluminium twin-spar chassis (or Ohlins rather than WP suspension).

Risse explained that it's not a question of whether a steel trellis frame is capable of providing the rigidity🍨 needed for MotoGP, but working out what chassis performance figures need to be built into the design.

"We have a lot of experience in other classes where this basic question is the 🥃same," Risse said.

"At the moment the main point we are missing, and working on, is the knowhow - what exactly is the target [for the chassis properti𒊎es].

"To achieve the target in terms of any particular design property is not a problem in steel, for us. We ha🦂ve a lot of knowhow in the manufacturing and the design process to do this with 🐼steel.

"But we need to know what these tyres want, what this class wants, because it's a⛎ very powerful bike compared to the🐈 other classes where we have experience.

"This is mainly the process we are in now, but we believe we can do ♌it in steel, clearly."

KTM Motorsports also uses the steel trellis in all other class♚es of competition, including Moto3 and Moto2.

Reflectin🅰g on their first MotoGP season - which saw Pol Espargaro and Bradley Smith take a best race finish of ninth and tenth respectively, while KTM beat Aprilia in the constructors' championship - KTM Motorsport Director Pit Beirer declared:

"We had huge respect before we stepped in and prepared as well as we could, but you cannot prepare [fully] for your fi🍸rst MotoGP season. So we had to learn every day, every hour in this paddock. But things went better than we expected.

"W♊e started on the very last row of the grid in Qatar. It was dark, a little bit rainy and we could almost not see the starting light!

"Then we made it up to the second row just a few weeks ago [Espargaro qualified sixth in Australia]. So, it was💫 definitely an amazing development. Our team did a fantastic job. I have to tha🍰nk all the riders and the team for this effort.

"We are happy and really proud to be part of this first-cl𓃲ass motorcycle show."

Espargaro and Smith will continue as KTM's full time riders in 2018, with Mika Kallio (who finished t✱enth in Austria) again carrying out testing and wild﷽-card duties.

Ducati raced a steel trellis frame from 2003-2008, albeit with the engine increasingly used as 🏅part of the main load-bearing structure (stressed). In other words, without the engine there was no physical link between the front and back wheels.

That concept pꦦrompted the l🍬eap to carbon fibre in 2009 but, after Valentino Rossi's struggles, Ducati have joined the Japanese in running an aluminium twin-spar frame from 2012, but still with a carbon fibre swingarm.