Brno (Czech Republic) (AFP)
South African Brad Binder scored his first MotoGP success, the first for his KTM team as well, ahead of Frenchman Johann Zarco (Ducati-Avintia), 3rd, in the Czech Republic Grand Prix, 3rd round of the season, Sunday .
The Italian Franco Morbidelli (Yamaha-SRT) is 2nd, for his first podium in the premier class, and the French Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha-SRT), winner of the first two rounds of the season and leader of the world championship, 7th.
Quartararo nonetheless increased his lead in the drivers' standings to 17 points behind his Spanish runner-up Maverick Vinales (Yamaha), only 14th in the GP.
These results are a surprise on several levels.
This seventh podium in MotoGP, which follows the pole position won on Saturday, comes after a complicated 2019 for Zarco, who separated from KTM in the middle of the season for lack of results.
The 30-year-old rider regained a starting place in 2020 with the modest Ducati-Avintia team, which had never before known the honors of the pole and the podium, with the objective of conquering a better bike next year. at the Italian brand.
Arriving in MotoGP in 2017, KTM had never won. Novice in the category, Binder, Moto3 champion in 2016 and Moto2 runner-up in 2019, offers him this success after only three races!
Note also the 5th place of the Italian Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) and the 11th of his compatriot Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati).
The reigning champion, the Spaniard Marc Marquez (Honda), was forfeited after being operated on Monday for a fractured right humerus, like the Italian Francesco Bagnaia (Ducati-Pramac), who fell Friday in free practice and operated a fracture of the right tibia.
The drivers immediately follow two rounds in Austria, on the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, on August 16 and 23, again without Marquez and Bagnaia.
© 2020 AFP