​Tech3 chief Guenther Steiner says he is happily staying out of the ongoing contract dispute between Maverick Vinales and KTM, insisting the matter does not involve him or his team. The rider created a stir on Thursday ahead of the German Grand Prix by claiming KTM had offered him a new deal for 2027, a contract he initially signed but which was then deemed invalid weeks later. This came after Vinales previously criticized how the Austrian manufacturer had handled his contract situation and the level of confidence shown in his recovery from injuries.
Although Vinales races for Tech3, both he and teammate Enea Bastianini are directly contracted by the factory, with deals signed long before Steiner’s consortium took charge of the French squad. The former Haas Formula 1 team principal has never been pleased about Vinales publicly blaming KTM for leaving him without a seat next year, and he reiterated that the dispute is strictly a rider-versus-manufacturer issue. “I’m not involved with his contract. It’s a KTM contract,” Steiner emphasized. “I’ve got opinions, but I cannot have an opinion. I normally don’t read a lot of the articles, because then you get influenced about your thinking, but I saw the headlines and I said, ‘I hope I’m not in the middle of this, because it has nothing to do with me personally or with Tech3.’”
“It has nothing to do with it, because it’s a contract between Maverick and KTM, and I don’t know what was done. If people tell me what they did, then I would need to check if it is true or not, but that’s not my position. I’m happily keeping out of that. I’ve got enough on my plate, to be honest. So I let them sort that one out because honestly, I do not know his contract. I’ve never seen it, you know, and by the way, I don’t want to see it, because then again, it’s like, either you’re part of it or not, and I’m not.”
Vinales had initially been offered a move to KTM’s factory squad for 2027, but his poor early-season form, compounded by the lingering effects of an earlier injury, led KTM to reassess its plans. The Mattighofen-based manufacturer recently announced new signings, bringing Alex Marquez and Fabio di Giannantonio from Ducati, while Tech3 is now pursuing a package pairing Honda’s Luca Marini with a Moto2 graduate for the dawn of MotoGP’s 850cc rules era. Vinales had already conceded that his chances of remaining in MotoGP next year were slim, citing KTM’s decision to exclude him from the first official 850cc test at Brno last month. Steiner also suggested the relationship between Vinales and KTM may now be beyond repair. “Somehow, with the situation what we just discussed, it’s very difficult to fix that situation because it is not a good situation,” he added. “If you go in the press against us for better SEO.”