Brad Binder has won the 2016
Moto3 World Championship at the Aragon Grand Prix in Spain. The South African
is the first to win for his country since Jon Ekerold in 1980,
36 years ago.
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Brad Binder
proudly waving the South African flag on the podium (Picture: Getty Images)
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The 21-year-old qualified
fifth on the grid before the race, leading with a total of 229 points in the
championship, 111 points ahead of Jorge Navarro. Binder needed either a second
place finish or race win in order to become world champion.
Binder had a good start
which gained him a position up by the fifth corner of the track. Soon after, he
made his way up to third before the end of the opening lap, with Spaniard Jorge
Navarro leading the pack and Italian Enea Bastianini in second position.
Gabriel Rodrigo then started
chasing Binder down for third place, but Philipp Oettl was the one to make a
bold move and separate the two, overtaking Rodrigo and slipping in behind
Binder. It didn’t take Oettl long to then overtake Binder, forcing him to trail
behind in fourth place.
The battle then continued
between Binder and Oettl, with Binder relying on a slipstream in order to keep
up with Oettl’s pace. However, after Oettl and Bastianini ran slightly wide,
Binder was able to grab second position behind Navarro, but then passed him on
the main straight of the track at the end of lap 9, the halfway mark of the
race. Binder then led the race with a battle between Oettl, Bastianini and
Navarro taking place behind him. But just as Binder thought he was safe, Bastianini
overtook him on the corner while Ottel fell behind into tenth place. The two
championship contenders continued to battle it out until the penultimate lap,
when Navarro overtook them as they both ran wide.
It wasn’t until an extremely
tense and exciting last lap of the race that Binder’s championship win was
truly reliant on Binder’s skills as a rider. Binder, Navarra and Bastianini all
showed dedication towards their fight for the championship, almost head-to-head
on the final corner, but it was Navarro who took the win with a time of 39:56.973,
followed by Binder in second, behind by only 0.030 seconds. Bastianini finished
in third.
Brad Binder told The Times that he would have liked to win the championship with a race
victory, however, he had to settle for second place. Even so, Binder was
crowned the Moto3 champion of 2016. Still celebrating his victory with the rest
of South Africa cheering him on and his parents who had flown out to Spain to
watch the race, Binder says, “We lost the battle but won
the war.”
Dave Petersen, a former MotoGP racer, told Eyewitness News that Binder deserves every inch of success and that he worked his way up to international glory. Petersen says that “Brad started at the very bottom end of the ladder in terms of motorcycle racing and he’s been an incredible inspiration.”
Sports Minister, Fikile Mbalula, says that Binder has been
working towards this for years and that his victory is historic for South
Africa. He says, “We can only be proud as the nation salute to him, to his
family and to his friends. It’s a great weekend for South Africa, our flag is
flying very high.”
Brad
Binder will be racing in the Moto2 series in 2017, after it was announced that
he had signed a deal with Red Bull KTM Ajo Motorsport. The next Moto3 race will
be held at the Motul Grand Prix of Japan on Sunday, 16th of October.
The “South African Wins Moto3 Championship” article is based on a South African motor track racer who has won the county’s first Grand Prix since the 1980’s. This article is very insightful as it provides the reader with live coverage on the event that took place. The main ideas presented include the names of the opposing racers along with the track record and placement that each racer was at during the race. This article under review represents good journalism because it gives the reader an indication on what the story is about in the heading, and in the first few sentences. There is also an easy flow to the way the article was written, and all necessary information was included.
ReplyDeleteSpecific highlights relating to news values which are contained in the article include the structure of the race, and what took place throughout. The impact and timeliness are news values that were highlighted as the writer emphasized and addressed the article in a manner for it to be insightful for South African readers, and provided the article at the right time, when the news as still “new” and not old information at that given moment. Other values include proximity, as the article is based on a South African racer who won the country’s first race after 36 years, and human interest as it gives an indication of the expectations the racer had, and includes information on having support from not only his country, but his family who flew out to support him as well.
The article also includes news worthy tools for news stories, like the 5Ws and H. The reader indicated this when saying that Brad Binder is the first South African since the 1980s to have won the 2016 Moto3 World Championship at the Aragon Grand Prix in Spain. Although motor track racing is common and occurs on most Sundays, the writer brought the event back home and gave the readers insight as to why this specific race was important for our country.
As mentioned in numerous lectures and tutorials, it is always necessary for a writer to include new, newsworthy information that is related to a specific audience. The way information is provided needs to feed the reader with all the necessary details, so they can leave the piece without having to wonder or look for further information.
The writer has achieved their goal by ensuring all the details required are provided and the layout of the article is clear, precise, informative and understandable. It was very factual and there isn’t a use of many adjectives, the writer just got straight to the point.
Overall this article was very clear and represented a good newsworthy, journalism story. The writer provided a lot of insightful details regarding the race. There is a specific target audience that the article is for, and portrays great news values. In future the writer can look at providing more background details on the racer, just to give the reader a little more indication as to where he comes from and so forth.