Racing on a damp and tricky surface in the 125 cc race of the Grand Prix of China, Team Onde 2000 KTM rider Raffaele de Rosa established himself in the top five but crashed in the thirteenth lap. He then finished in ninth to be the top KTM rider. Repsol KTM riders Esteve Rabat and Marc Marquez fought hard against each other to finish in eleventh and twelfth position, ISPA KTM Aran rider Tomoyoshi Koyama was the fourth KTM 125 rider within the point rankings in thirteenth place.
KTM riders went into the first 125 cc GP of the 2008 racing season hopeful of good results but came away at the end of the first ever night race empty-handed.
KTM rider Raffaele de Rosa of Team Onde 2000 was fastest of the KTM's seven-rider line-up in 125 cc qualifying on the Losail Circuit, Qatar ahead of the first ever night race in the world championship series and the opening of the 2008 season.
KTM 250 riders wrapped up the official preseason testing session in Jerez on Thursday on the high note with Repsol-KTM rider Julian Simon in fifth, and the official factory riders Mika Kallio and Hiroshi Aoyama in a very close sixth and seventh position.All three riders were consistently among the top performers in the three days of testing on the Spanish circuit and all agreed they could have gone even faster. Regrettably the final decisive run for good lap times was cut short when the last session was red-flagged after a crash ten minutes from the end.
KTM will be omnipresent in the paddock and the track in the 125 cc and 250 cc classes of international road racing in the 2008 season; it has been announced by the company's headquarters in Mattighofen, Austria.