Brad Binder achieved his best result since the Portuguese GP in the MotoGP Austrian GP. The Red Bull KTM rider finished in fifth place, which is only his third top-five finish of the season in main races, but he was 18.620s behind the winner, Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati).
The South African rider was aware of the challenges related to tire wear, which required careful management from both him and the team: ‘I knew after Saturday that was going to be a really tricky race to make sure you make to the end. It was still a bit of tyre life, especially in the center of the tyre. So I tried my best to manage that, my team did a great job to cut power and make everything work where we needed, so we didn’t cook everything’.
Although Binder would have liked more than fifth place, he believes there’s no reason to complain: ‘In general I can’t complain. I would love to get more, but we haven’t the pace of the front three or four. I did my best. It is what it is, let’s try again next week’.
However, the #33 rider admitted that the gap to the front was too much: ‘The position sounds better than the gap to the front. Honestly normally we would be like a couple of seconds, maybe three or four seconds; 18 is massive. So we clearly have some work to do if we want to try and get involved’.