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.
 |
Brad Binder
proudly waving the South African flag on the podium (Picture: Getty Images)
|
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.
