KTM boss says Brad Binder ready to challenge for MotoGP crown

South Africa’s circle of world champions can get even bigger this year. KTM believes Brad Binder is ready to join the likes of the Springboks and UFC star Dricus du Plessis as the world’s best when he starts his campaign for the MotoGP world championship crown in March.

It will be the 28-year-old Binder’s fifth season in the premier class. After winning the Moto3 crown in 2016, he came within a hair’s breath of winning the Moto2 title in 2019. Since moving up to MotoGP in 2020, he has finished 11th, sixth, sixth and fourth in the title race.

Despite standing on the podium eight times in the last two seasons, Binder’s last win in a main race was in Australia in 2021.

Brad Binder ‘had the chance to learn’

But Binder is set to break his duck this year, believes Red Bull KTM Factory Racing team manager Francesco Guidotti. That is if the Austrian outfit can build on their much-improved RC16 from 2023.

“He had the chance to learn last year staying in the leading group,” Guidotti told the motogp.com website.

“He’s a racer. He’s a proper racer and he showed in Moto3 and Moto2 he won the title and several races. In MotoGP until the last period, he wasn’t in the lead group constantly.

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“I think now he got used to staying there and also learnt more about the behaviour of riders in the lead group. So let’s try to start again from there and build up the victory during the season.”

Consistency key

The KTM boss added that consistency will also be vitally important in Binder’s title bid. He said the South African actually earned more points (188) from Sunday races in 2022 than he did in 2023 (184). Last year, he benefited from an additional 109 points from sprint races, of which he won two, for a total of 293 points.

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“Last year, he paid some, let’s say … he wasn’t third at the end of the season because of some crashes in the race. In 2022 he crashed just once and if we see the points of just Sunday races, he had more points in 2022 than in 2023,” says Guidotti.

“You don’t need to be the fastest every race, you need to be the fastest sometimes and be the best at the end of the season. The win is important because we’re there to win, but in the end, the consistency of the results pays off at the end of the season.”

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Devil in the details

Guidotti says that they need to focus on small details to close the gap on Ducati, who was the standout machine in 2023. Binder was the only rider in the top five of the title race riding a Ducati.

“The room for improvement isn’t like in the past, there is a small step to do but it’s the most difficult. We think we’re ready to make this last improvement but we have to get back on track and see what happens.”

KTM is gearing up for official testing in Sepang and Qatar next month before the season kicks off in Qatar on the second weekend of March.