It is with some expectations that Brad Binder heads to the Qatar GP this year at a very different time of the season. His first impressions regarding the new asphalt are positive, although the rider shows some concern about the challenges that, with new asphalt and at a different time of the year, it may bring to the riders.
‘I’m looking forward to starting. I did some laps on the bike and (the asphalt) seems insane, very good, let’s see how grippy it is, that’s always the question, but it seems much better than usual when we were here. Last year was very very good for us, right from FP1 we were fast and ended the weekend in second place so the podium was good’, Binder said to the press, before showing confidence:
– I believe that this year there are some small things we can do that will be much better, and of course our bike is much more competitive: I hope lap times will be much faster and I hope we can have a strong weekend.
And then he talked about the need for riders to have more time to adapt to the various (new) conditions: ‘The problem is that you have very little time, limited to work with this format and now when the morning and the afternoon, and the morning are immediately out because they are very different and at night it’s a different world. Basically you have one session where you can try to figure out what tires you need, what works and what doesn’t work. I don’t know if they extended [the program], they didn’t tell us anything. No, I was considering if longer sessions could help us understand a little better what we would need’.
