Red Bull KTM Factory rider Brad Binder secured fifth position in the 2024 MotoGP Championship ahead of future teammate Pedro Acosta in Barcelona.
KTM also secured second position in the constructors championship with 327 points, 395 behind Ducati, who have now secured their fifth straight championship, and sixth overall.
The South African rider would have hoped for a different turnout at the beginning of the season, but things didn’t work out as planned, and he had to graft hard to keep his RC16 bike consistently around the top six positions.
Binder (217) outscored outgoing teammate Jack Miller (87) by a massive 130 points in the final championship standings, but he needed the last lap of the season to close the door on future teammate Acosta (215), edging the 20-year-old Spanish rookie by a slender two points.
The KTM factory team rider has maintained a top-six finish in the championship standings for the past four seasons, including the current one. His fifth-place finish follows the fourth place secured last season and a couple of sixth-place finishes in the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
The 29-year-old was happy about his efforts in Barcelona and the rest of the season.
“I was happy with today’s race,” Binder commented after the race.
“I knew it was really important to get the tire until the end, so I tried not to get too carried away at the beginning. I was quite pleased; I would have liked to have been a bit further forward, but coming from 18th, it is hard to ask for much more.
“Thank you to my team. It’s been challenging this year, but we always tried to make the best of every situation, and to finish fifth in the championship is cool,” he said.
Outgoing team manager Francesco Guidotti was delighted about the end results despite the challenges the team ran into during the season. Guidotti is set to be replaced by Aki Ajo in the upcoming 2025 season.
“A strong way to finish the season: sixth place in the race and fifth in the championship. Our initial target was different, but we have to be happy,” Guidotti told the KTM website.
Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia’s (498) win in Barcelona was not enough to defend his title, with Prima Pramac’s Jorge Martin becoming the first independent champion in the MotoGP era. “The Martinator” (508) had a 10-point gap to Bagnaia, with Marc Marquez closing off the top three positions on 392 points.
Enea Bastianini completed a Ducati-dominated top four on 386 points, a massive 169 points to fifth-placed Binder, who with his KTM team will need to come up with the answers of how they will close the massive gap to Ducati with the first test of the 2025 season set to take place today in Barcelona.