One of the most surprising stats of the MotoGP season gone by - if not the most surprising - is 22-0. That's how KTM factory riders Pedro Acosta and Brad Binder stacked up in qualifying this season, with Acosta yet to be outqualified by his designated team-mate 42 rounds into his MotoGP career.
Nobody else completed the full-season single-lap 'whitewash'. Fabio Quartararo slipped up against Alex Rins once, to the tune of four tenths; Marco Bezzecchi spent most of the season matched up against a test rider but did get outqualified once by said test rider; Somkiat Chantra, of course, got nowhere near Johann Zarco at LCR but missed a bunch of rounds, and Zarco was the sole LCR rider in some of them.
That last one is a bit of a technicality, I admit, but if you'd told me before the start of the season a qualifying 22-0 is coming, Acosta versus Binder would not have been my guess.
"Why not?" you may ask. Well, yes, this is a faster, younger rider doing a number on someone who has never been a qualifying specialist - but Binder hasn't been a qualifying disaster either. Until 2025.
Binder was a better qualifier than it seems
Binder, who does have six poles from his Moto3 days and one more in Moto2, has spent his entire premier-class career in the factory KTM team, his previous full-season team-mates being Pol Espargaro, Miguel Oliveira and Jack Miller.
You can make the argument that all of these are lesser riders than Acosta already is, and you're probably right, but none of them could be accused of historically prioritising race performance over the single lap. In fact, at various times, you could probably say the opposite was true for all three, Miller in particular.
But Binder stood firm against all three in qualifying. He was, at least, good enough in that area to stay above water - and it's an underrated part of why he'd managed to finish top six in four consecutive seasons, from 2021 to 2024.
His combined qualifying record versus team-mates pre-2025 is 45-47. It's not amazing or anything, but it's basically good enough, especially as this was never Binder's strength - and because he could be routinely relied upon to make up positions off the line and on the opening lap.
The average gap, if you take each weekend's last representative practice/Q1/Q2 laptime for sessions both riders contested? 0.018s, in Binder's favour!
Binder vs KTM team-mates in qualifying
2020 (Pol Espargaro)
0.332s slower
1-13 in Espargaro's favour
2021 (Miguel Oliveira)
0.070s slower
7-11 in Oliveira's favour
2022 (Miguel Oliveira)
0.123s faster
12-8 in Binder's favour
2023 (Jack Miller)
0.004s faster
11-9 in Binder's favour
2024 (Jack Miller)
0.250s faster
14-6 in Binder's favour
2025 (Pedro Acosta)
0.542s slower
22-0 in Acosta's favour
This past season is a monumental outlier. It's also not necessarily an obvious continuation of where Binder and Acosta stood in qualifying last year.
Binder vs Acosta in qualifying
2024
0.125s slower
11-9 in Acosta's favour
2025
0.542s slower
22-0 in Acosta's favour
So how does a rider who has managed to hold his own since his rookie season get torched this badly?
What happened?
Binder was 0.013s away from at least getting one on the board in Aragon qualifying, and overall the numbers suggest he didn't get beaten as hard as, say, Rins against Quartararo.
But the numbers are what they are. Acosta - who didn't even come into MotoGP with some reputation for amazing single-lap speed - absolutely dominated him. For Binder, the source is a fundamental mismatch between this past year's KTM RC16 and what he wants to do with it, particularly over one lap.
"I rely a lot on the rear wheel," he explained during the final weekend of the season.
"Braking, entering, also on throttle. And I don't feel the hook-up that I normally need. That's what I really struggle with.
"But the reality is, Pedro can do it, so when you look at the data you see how he's doing it. I need to try to ride his style a little bit.
"Just a little bit more soft on the brake, more rolling, a bit later on the gas. There's a way to do it, I just need to try to figure it out."
For Binder, so much of the season has been about figuring out how to balance this latest iteration of the KTM. He's spoken repeatedly of his desire to load the front more than the bike naturally seems inclined to do - but that comes with trade-offs.
"I pull a lot more pressure on the front brake," he continued. "He [Acosta] pulls a lot less pressure but he keeps the bike completely square. It's completely two wheels, he can stop on two, I just rely on the one wheel. I need to get better at keeping the rear contact.
"You can set it up to be good in that area but the issue is, when we kind of go in the direction to set the bike up that I can stop and brake like I did in the past, I keep losing the front. We don't load the front tyre then. It's not really an option anymore unfortunately.
"So I need to figure this out and fine-tune this area, especially in time attack, it's where it's really hurting me."
Acosta, for his part, doesn't even believe that qualifying is a particular strength of his - he certainly didn't sound that way when asked about it by The Race at Portimao.
"I mean, to be 20-0 with your team-mate doesn't mean you're making good qualifyings!" he insisted, perhaps unintentionally condemning Binder as a benchmark.
"They are two different things. It's true that from the summer break I'm more in this second row, still missing because you know that it's not my strong point, but also if one day I want to fight for a championship, I need extra from this.
"It's a thing that now I'm thinking about, somehow, to improve with the set-up, with my mind, or training in other ways. But I need to make a step in qualifying."
It's an alarming answer for Binder because you do feel there's a kernel of truth to Acosta's suggestion he hasn't always maximised grid position.
That, then, is a brutal indictment of Binder's performances in this area.
But his theory for why the laptime isn't coming also rings true. He surely can't be this far back on pure skill alone, on the evidence of everything we've seen from his career prior.
Any chance of usurping Acosta back as KTM's leading light in 2026 is, being honest here, probably gone. But just unlocking something in qualifying will go a long way to rebuilding Binder's value - which took a hit in 2024 but got absolutely demolished this past season.
