Krugersdorp and Red Bull KTM Factory Racing’s Brad Binder again demonstrated his excellent racing potential as he powered from 16th on the grid to seize fourth and equal his best classification of the season so far at the Styrian MotoGP™ in Austria.
KTM RC16s were dispersed through the second half of the start grid with Miguel Oliveira leading the five-rider group in 12th position. The 28-lap MotoGP race had to be red-flagged after an incident which saw Dani Pedrosa’s fallen motorcycle hit by Lorenzo Savadori and the collision ruptured the fuel tank, causing a small fire and a delay to clean the track.
The restart saw Binder as the front-running KTM. The South African managed his tyres and grip in a dry race and without any of the rainfall that had affected morning warm-up. Binder pushed and pushed and found himself up to sixth on the last lap. He attacked Johann Zarco and Taka Nakagami in two thrilling and well-judged overtaking moves to capture fourth with one corner remaining.
The result equals his fourth from the German Grand Prix and represents his fourth top-five ranking of the season.
Oliveira holds seventh place in the world championship standings while Binder is eighth.
The Bitci Motorrad Grand Prix von Österreich will constitute round 11 of the championship and will give KTM a second attempt at their home venue on August 15.
Today was a bit of chaos for the first race back! I almost crashed on the Sighting Lap of the first race. I don’t know why but it felt like the front tyre had no temperature, and for the first flying lap it was like it was wet. We need to look and see what happened. I went down to 25th at one point because I almost ran off the track. I passed four-five guys in the next laps until the red flag.
“The restart was much better and I had more confidence even if we really need a harder front tyre. It is way too weak for us. I was riding on the tyre limit the whole race but managed to make a couple of moves to take fourth, which I was really happy with.”
