Britain’s Bradley Smith has signed a two-year deal to race for the factory KTM team in MotoGP, starting in 2017.

Smith’s signature follows the official roll out of the project at Austria’s Red Bull Ring in Spielberg in October 2015. The first test was conducted four weeks later in Valencia, Spain. Since then, there have been two more rounds of successful tests, also in Spain and the company has appointed Mika Kallio, Alex Hofmann and Randy de Puniet as its official test riders so far.

“The MotoGP project is running exactly according to plan. Both the engineers at the factory and the test team are achieving highly professional work with two bikes and their test riders. By signing Bradley Smith as factory rider for two years we can now take the next step in the long journey to MotoGP,” said KTM boss Pit Beirer.

Who will occupy the second seat is anyone's guess but Dani Pedrosa has been strongly linked with the project.