The GP in Le Mans last year was overall good for Brad Binder with a podium in the Sprint race and a great recovery race on Sunday, and the KTM rider hopes to have another good round, saying he expects to have a ‘good weekend’. He also revealed that he will be trying out some new things that were tested in the last test and hopes not to have any issues like the rear vibrations of the RC16 that he experienced in the last race.
The South African started by talking about the weather conditions that, ‘so far’, are good, while recalling his performance last year: ‘So far so good and I hope it stays that way. I hope we don’t have a flag-to-flag race on Sunday, it would be good to have a completely dry weekend here and we would be very lucky to achieve that. I am excited to be in Le Mans, and last year was very good: second in the Sprint race and in the main race I started from twentieth on the grid until I had a slight contact, jumped the chicane, lost a second and then had a Long Lap penalty and still finished in sixth. The pace was there. I think we are going to have a good weekend, to be honest, and I am excited to get back on the bike. I regained my feelings in Jerez, the races didn’t go as planned, but I think we are in a much better position than we have been’.
Binder also talked about some issues with the vibrations in the rear of his bike, which he explained a bit more: ‘This year we have been lucky. We hear everyone talking about it and we never had it, so it’s not something that bothers us. In Jerez, in the Sunday race, it was huge. It appeared right away and I lost a lot of time because it was impossible to gain speed in the corners. The guys came here with many different things to try to stop it, but the thing appeared right away. I hope that if we have it here, it appears in FP1, so we have time to try to work on it a little better’.
Asked if he will use something he tested in the last tests, right after the Spanish GP, the rider revealed: ‘We tested a slightly different rear shock absorber that had some positive points, like the stability being a bit better, other points made the bike heavier. We will start with it and see again what is better: the standard shock absorber or the different shock absorber. Besides that, nothing serious’.
