Red Bull KTM Tech3 team boss Herve Poncharal has set riders Miguel Oliveira and Hafizh Syahrin modest targets for the opening MotoGP round of the season.

The paddock veteran wants his two men - one of whom is a rookie - just to narrow the gap to the works riders over the course of the weekend in what will be his team's first race under a new manufacturer and title sponsor.

"A new season beginning is always something very exciting, but clearly for the Red Bull KTM Tech3 team this year is even more thrilling than the previous because we are opening a new chapter, we will commence a new adventure, we have a new motorcycle manufacturer working with us with KTM, a new title sponsor with Red Bull and a new oil partner with Elf, so it seems we are almost starting from scratch," said Poncharal.

"Of course, we were working really hard during off-season in Spain, Malaysia and Qatar, but we are also very eager and impatient to see what is going happen in first race. Clearly, we are not in a position at moment where we can challenge the top, but the mission this season is to reduce the gap to the fastest riders.

"I believe with Miguel Oliveira, we have an incredible rider with a huge potential and the strong desire to be part of this project and making it moving forward. Hafizh is in same spirit, he still has to forget a little bit about what he was doing on last year's machine.

"I think they get on very well together and they understand the importance of MotoGP for KTM, plus they can witness the level of commitment from the engineers in Austria, they can feel they are factory riders with a racing department behind them with evolution coming almost every test and this is what makes this new season very entertaining.

"Our target is to be as close as possible to the full factory KTM MotoGP riders and of course all together to race the level of performance of our KTM RC16 machine and the whole team is 100% dedicated to this mission."