Brad Binder finished the main race of the Qatar GP in MotoGP in second place – just like in the Sprint race in Losail. It was, therefore, a double podium start to the season for the Red Bull KTM rider, who was the main pursuer of Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati) during yesterday’s race. However, he also had to fend off Jorge Martín (Prima Pramac/Ducati).
The South African said in the press conference that the result was more satisfying than Saturday’s: ‘We can’t complain. Two second places to start the season is fantastic. I’m much more happy with the second place in the main race than I was with the second place in the Sprint race. In the Sprint race I felt like we were missing something, but in the main race it was much better. The team did a great job, solving some of our issues from Saturday’.
According to Binder, the race wasn’t easy, having to resist the temptation to attack Bagnaia’s lead: ‘I knew was going to be a super difficult race for us because we are super hard on the rear tyre sometimes and I needed to get it to the end, so I was as clean as I could be. It was hard to stay composed because I could see Pecco was just there – it’s like a carrot dangling and you want to go for it. But I knew that if I attempted to push I might catch up a bit, but probably I would lose a couple of seconds in the last few laps. So I had to try to be really clever. It was awesome battling with Jorge and I had a lot of fun. Let’s see if we can improve a bit because it would be awesome to give these boys a good fight next time around’.