• Brad Binder is back in South Africa after a tough MotoGP season.
• Binder highlights his challenges for 2021 and what he and his team will look like to improve the bike for the next year.
• Binder’s brother Darryn will join him in MotoGP in 2022.
• For more auto stories, visit Wheels24
South African Red Bull KTM rider Brad Binder had a great year in the MotoGP championship with sixth place and a spectacular win in the rain in Austria.
The future is exciting for Binder, who has extended his partnership with the Red Bull KTM team until 2024. Next year, Brad Binder will be on the MotoGP grid with brother Darryn, which should add an extra dose of excitement to South African motorcycle racing fans Race day come.
Wheels24 sat down with the Red Bull KTM rider during his December break in South Africa.
Wheels24: How do you rate your performance in the 2021 season?
Brad Binder: My highlight of the year was definitely my victory in Austria. It was fantastic to win the KTM and Red Bull home races. Finishing sixth in the championship at the end of the season was great; it’s my best MotoGP season result so far. Of course I want more for myself and the team, but we’ve improved really well. I was really consistent and finished all but one of the races.
Brad Binder
W24: Valentino Rossi retired at the end of 2021. Will he be missing in the paddock?
BB: Rossi is a legend of the sport and it’s sad to see him go. It’s been an honor to face Valentino over the past few years. We’ve had some good fights on the track and not many people can say they raced against Rossi.
W24: What are you and your team looking forward to improving in the off-season?
BB: There are two main areas in which we can find time. We really have problems with the rear wheel grip out of the corners and in the wheelie zones we roll a little too much and don’t bring as much power to the ground as we need.
In the middle of the year we took big steps to get the bike to turn, mostly thanks to the new frame. We were very excited as we headed into the second half of the year, but three or four tracks hid our grip issues very well due to their open and flowing nature and lack of slow areas followed by large acceleration zones. So it wasn’t until later that year that we realized we had a problem with the rear wheel grip. We could work around it and make things better, but we haven’t completely resolved our problems.
The race in MotoGP is so close at the moment; If we can find a few tenths per lap, we’ll fight for the podium every weekend.
If we take everything we’ve learned this year and maybe combine it with a new piece or two on the first test, hopefully it will work.
Brad Binder
W24: You are a really strong contender on race day, but you always seem to struggle in qualifying, which often puts you behind. Do you have a plan to improve your skills performance?
BB: Yes, it’s a complete mess starting further back because you can’t push and do clean laps and you lose a lot of time that is almost impossible to catch up.
I worked a lot to improve my qualifying and to be able to drive a strong lap in every session. You need to understand these bikes really well and how far to push the tires before you can actually get the last two or three tenths that it takes to bring the order up. We still have a long way to go. As soon as we can make better use of the new tire, it will also be very helpful, but there is still a lot to be done from my driver side.
On the other hand, I drive exactly as I qualify. A lot of guys are much slower in the race than they are in qualifying, but I can keep the same pace or almost the same pace as my qualifying pace, which was good for me on race day.
W24: In 2022 your brother Darryn will move up to the MotoGP class. Are you looking forward to some sibling rivalry?
BB: It will be really great to have Darryn in the class with me, but he has a big job ahead of him. The jump from Moto3 to MotoGP is not easy, but it did very well in the first test. I’m looking forward to having him on the grid with me in 2022. For us as a family it is really amazing that we will both be competing in the MotoGP class because we have all been working towards that.
Darryn Binder with Lin Jarvis, Managing Director of Yamaha Factory Racing
W24: You and Darryn spend a lot of time with downhill mountain bike legend Greg Minnaar between races. What did you learn from him?
BB: I believe that you have to have a balance in order to really perform at your best throughout the season. Greg is a good friend of ours; we live close to each other in Andorra when we are in Europe.
Greg is a really talented guy. It doesn’t matter if you put it on a bike, trial bike, or motorcycle; it’s amazingly good and super fast, and we had a lot of fun this year. I think it’s important to train hard and have fun at the same time, and likewise Greg is a guy who works incredibly hard but also knows how to have a good time.
W24: You finished sixth in the championship this year. What is your goal for 2022?
BB: I hope to be way better than sixth. That year, I finished sixth in the middle of the season and thought this was my chance to end the year solidly and try to hack my way up the overall standings. Unfortunately, I was always between 5th and 8th place in the races, and that’s not enough to improve your championship standings. But I’m happy with the way I approached each weekend and finished most of the races. I am confident that with a small improvement to our package, we can achieve a lot.
Brad Binder