Red Bull KTM Factory Racing left the confines of the scenic and speedy Mugello circuit with both riders making substantial recoveries from their grid positions.
It was Krugersdorp’s Brad Binder who shone especially at a cloudy Gran Premio d’Italia Oakley for the eighth outing in MotoGP™ this year as the South African pulled from 16th up to 7th.
The 36th Italian Grand Prix at Mugello finally settled on a cool and partially cloudy climate. The teams and riders had circulated the 5,2km venue during high heat and sunshine on Friday and Saturday morning before thunderstorms created a chaotic qualification period on Saturday afternoon. Miguel Oliveira and Brad started the 23-lap race from the fifth and sixth rows of the grid with the Tech3 KTM Factory Racing duo a little further behind.
The change in the meteorological conditions helped the crews manage tyre choice and pressure for the high-paced chase, and the threat of more showers did not arrive. It was Brad who made the better start at 14:00 on Sunday. The #33 bike ploughed through the group and into the top ten. Brad then charged hard to latch onto the bunch fighting for the last podium spot and reached the back of Luca Marini. He was less than two tenths of a second from the top six at the finish line and only four seconds from the victor Francesco Bagnaia.
Miguel also rode brightly and with similar pace to his teammate. His 9th position was a mere 11 seconds from P1 and represented his first top-ten classification since his 5th place in Portugal and his third of 2022. Tech3 KTM Factory Racing’s Remy Gardner completed the distance in 19th while Raul Fernandez was 21st after experiencing some rear-tyre issues. The diverse collection of curves and challenges contained by the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya will be the stage for the Gran Premi Monster Energy de Catalunya this weekend, followed by a one-day IRTA test.
According to Brad it was a weekend full of ups and downs.
It was a challenge to find something that I could understand and getting comfortable on the track wasn’t easy. After warm-up this morning however I had a clear idea of what I needed to do to make a step and have a good race. The team did a great job to give me that possibility. I felt strong, especially in the last ten laps. We still need to work on our speed and pace with new tyres.
“I lost time at the beginning but could pull it back by the end. I’m also a bit frustrated today because I know we could have done a bit better than what we did. We just didn’t have the speed at the start but we do have a lot of data now from the changes we made this weekend. I hope that will help us for this weekend (June 5) in Barcelona.”
After eight races in the 2022 season, Brad moved up one spot from eighth to seventh on the MotoGP™ Championship table with 65 points.
