Brad Binder Admits Aggressive Style No Longer Works in MotoGP 2025

MotoGP – Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider Brad Binder has admitted that the aggressive riding style which defined much of his MotoGP career is no longer effective with KTM’s current RC16, following a difficult 2025 season that saw him fall to 11th in the world championship.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Crash.net, the South African explained that KTM’s latest technical direction has exposed the limitations of his natural “all-in” approach, particularly during qualifying and time-attack laps, where he suffered a string of costly front-end crashes.

“Whenever I put in big efforts, that’s when my problems really show up,” Binder said. “I need to find a way to be fast while riding in a ‘low G’ way. Normally I just try to rip it a new one and see what happens, but it doesn’t work like that anymore.”

After four consecutive seasons as KTM’s lead rider, Binder was outperformed by new team-mate Pedro Acosta, while the RC16 struggled to provide the front-end confidence required to support Binder’s aggressive braking and corner-entry style.

Binder revealed that KTM’s growing diversity of riding styles within the team has underlined how narrowly optimised the current bike has become.

“Maverick [Viñales] is super clean and neat. Enea [Bastianini] is really strong on braking and corner speed,” Binder explained. “So now we’ve got different extremes of riding style on the KTM, and you have to find the feeling that lets you really extract performance.”

Qualifying proved to be one of Binder’s biggest weaknesses in 2025, something he acknowledged had reached a new low.

“I’ve never been a great qualifier, but this year has been worse than ever,” he admitted. “Every time I try to do one really strong lap, the problems appear.”

Despite the setbacks, Binder believes he has already made significant changes to his riding approach and that progress is being made.

“I understand it much better now. My riding style has changed a lot. I’m much cleaner than I was, and even though there’s still work to do, I feel like we’re going in a good direction.”

Looking ahead to the 2026 KTM, Binder identified traction on corner exit as the single most important technical priority.

“If I could choose one thing, it would be that when I lift the bike, it doesn’t spin as much. If I could just drive out of corners every time, it would make a massive difference.”

Binder remains hopeful that his difficult 2025 campaign will ultimately be seen as a turning point rather than a decline.

“I’m hoping that when I look back, this season will just be a really tough year that we came through on the other side,” he concluded.