[roger albert]

EXACTLY. It's tires, and that means the cross-plane-I4 or a V, right now. Ten Kate generally has the best electronics of the rest, and sure enough, they're the only plain I-4 that factors.
Too bad for us as BMW fans. They seem to have fancy exhaust tech, and electronics, but they can't use them well quite yet, and it seems, increasingly, that an even-fire-I4 is obsolete. BMW started with a clean sheet of paper, but not a clean new design. The pendulum swings.

So, any bets on KTM next year?

They're making a bit of a push at the regional level at least. Our lead instructor (Ty, also a past MotoST champ from his Aprilia days) has received a bike and support for late season testing, and will be getting a new R version shortly, including Works WP kit. He did a pilot round in the big twins class that saw him win by a large margin, but still slower than his GXSR and ZX10 times by a few seconds.

Not that that's directly applicable to the world level, it's just indicative that they're not doing a complete withdraw.