Top six finish for Brad in the Emilia Romagna Sprint Race
Red Bull KTM secured more MotoGP world championship points thanks to Brad Binder’s 6th position in the Saturday Sprint at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and the second consecutive event at the sunny Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.
The penultimate European Grand Prix of 2024 took MotoGP back to San Marino as the Emilia Romagna round replaced the date initially penciled for Kazakhstan. Despite a damp start on Friday morning, Misano quickly dried and provided fast and high-grip conditions once more for Saturday’s agenda. Red Bull KTM and their rivals already had plenty of data and references for the 16-corner layout and both Brad and teammate Jack got immediately to work once the asphalt reached an optimum state.
The South African and the Australian went into Q1 but Brad rasped to 1st place and went straight into Q2. One second split the top 11 riders in Q2 and Brad’s best lap came in the final minute of Q2 and initially had him on the front row in 3rd. He was lowered to 4th by 0.072 of a second in the final moments of the 15-minute outing.
Attempting to make the most of his decent grid slot Brad made an excellent jump when the lights disappeared at the start of the Sprint but then weathered a difficult opening two laps to get his tire into working range and also pop up his start device! Once into a rhythm he was just outside the top five and a fairly static race ended with #33 collecting four points.
Brad Binder
4th in qualification, 6th in the Sprint“My speed was decent and to do a 30.6 in Q2 was my quickest lap around here. I messed up the Sprint because it took too long for the front tire to come up to performance and I almost crashed and went wide in Turn 11. I needed two laps to get my feeling and then I could ride OK. It still wasn’t fast enough but at least I could push and I’m happy enough with the result because I thought I had ruined the race by the time we go to Turn 6 for the first time. Tomorrow I definitely need to work on that tire situation, and we should be pretty good.”