Seventh in today’s Sprint race for the Austrian GP, Brad Binder was pleased to see some of the bike’s problems resolved, as he had been struggling with the front locking up. A change of front forks was crucial for this after improving his performance, although he regretted taking so long to understand his RC16’s response
The South African summarized his performance today as follows, without forgetting the problems he had been feeling since the day before: ‘We took a good step from qualifying to the race. This morning I had a lot of difficulty stopping, even before that on Friday afternoon as well, but I managed to do a good lap to put me directly into Q2 but I had the feeling that the front tire was too hot and this morning it was exactly the same and I had a lot of difficulty reaching my marks because it was locking up and going straight. We changed the forks on the bike for the race and suddenly that lock became manageable, it was much better. It’s a shame it took a few laps to try to understand the differences and how to use them to my advantage’.
And he continued: ‘Then I tried to catch the guys in front of me, I tried to shorten the gap but it was a bit late. We took a step forward and I know exactly where I need to improve for the long race and I just hope to have more laps’.
One of the highlights of this weekend has been the performances of Pol Espargaró, with Binder explaining that he is paying close attention to the data, not only of the manufacturer’s rider but of all the others:
– We’ve been looking at everything else what everyone else is doing, looking at everyone and seeing what they do best. It’s a bit difficult to look at his data because he has a different package than ours, so we have to focus on our settings and bike. But yes, we certainly look at every corner and what everyone does best.