Exclusive: Brad Binder: Blessing to have a fast MotoGP team-mate - and Jack Miller’s Ducati knowhow

KTM’s MotoGP progress had flatlined since the breakthrough 2020 campaign where Binder took the factory’s first win, as a rookie, Miguel Oliveira added two more victories and Pol Espargaro claimed five podiums and a best yet fifth in the world championship.

Recent technical and management changes to try and make the long-awaited step to title contender have included the hiring of ex-Pramac team manager Francesco Guidotti for 2022, plus former Ducati technical co-ordinator Fabiano Sterlacchini.

KTM highlight that Sterlacchini actually left Ducati at the end of 2019 (and worked as engineering manager at Ricardo for a year) before joining KTM as MotoGP technical director in June 2021.

Nonetheless, the red-to-orange path continued when KTM snapped up not only Miller and his crew chief Cristhian Pupulin, but also ex Andrea Dovizioso/Enea Bastianini Ducati crew chief Alberto Giribuola (now working as a KTM track performance engineer).

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It wasn’t only Miller’s four wins that attracted KTM, but his knowledge from five years of helping develop the Ducati, now the class of the MotoGP field.

Signing the Australian and bringing back Pol Espargaro from Repsol Honda also represented a step change in KTM rider policy, which had been focussed around developing young riders after the half-season 2019 with Johann Zarco in 2019.

But by 2022, when all four KTM race riders were without any knowledge of the other bikes, Guidotti indicated it had gone too far.

“[The 2022] line-up with four riders that only had MotoGP experience with KTM is a sort of strange thing,” Guidotti told Crash.net at the end of last year.

“In a process of development, to have four riders who only have experience of this bike… We know we are going to lose good riders [Oliveira, Gardner and Fernandez], but sometimes you have to make a choice and be a little bit brave.”

Binder: ‘Blessing to have a fast team-mate’, Jack’s Ducati knowledge ‘massive help’

Eight races into the 2023 season and KTM has risen from fourth in last year’s constructors’ standings to second place behind only Ducati.

And while Brad Binder is again KTM’s leading rider (fourth overall), the South African is clear about the benefits Miller (seventh) has brought to the project.

“Definitely,” Binder told Crash.net, when asked if Miller’s arrival has been useful for him personally.

“For me, I've always looked at it as a blessing to have a fast team-mate because it really helps you bring the best out of yourself.

“And especially with Jack, he’s brought us all the knowhow of the most competitive bike, as the Ducati was last year.

“That [Ducati] is what he's been riding, it’s the feeling he knows and that's what his reference was. So he could give us a good direction of where our strong and weak points are.

“And clearly we have made a good step forward.”

Binder added: “I think the main thing is it's just things that we knew we weren't really doing great, he came in and confirmed. And more than anything, gave us a bit more of a direction.

“Like, ‘OK, this is what it's doing and this is probably where we need to go. Because that's what it was doing [at Ducati] last year’. I think that was a massive help for us.”

Binder: Sprint not a win? ‘I honestly don't care!’

Miller’s KTM move has also put him in competition with Maverick Vinales to become the first rider to win MotoGP races on three different brands of bike, a stat that has become more complicated this year due to the unofficial status of Sprint races.

While the new half-distance Saturday races count for grand prix points, they do not count as grand prix wins.

That also means, despite two Sprint victories - which certainly didn’t look any easier to achieve than a ‘normal’ win, not least starting from 15th in Argentina - Binder’s last official MotoGP victory remains Austria 2021.

It’s not something he’s losing any sleep over.

“Nothing, ay?” Binder replied, after checking if Sprint results at least counted towards official podiums.

“I honestly don't care! It doesn’t change my life at all. You get points for the Sprint, so we need to do well in it.

“I feel like I haven't had the best luck and things haven't worked in my favour in a few of the main races this year, but I know I can get them right too…”

KTM’s seventh and most recent official MotoGP victory was by former team-mate Miguel Oliveira in the wet 2022 Thai Grand Prix. The factory’s last dry win was by the Portuguese at Catalunya in 2021.