The Catalunya MotoGP race seemed promising for Brad Binder, but the rider ended up retiring from the Sprint race, before finishing only eighth in yesterday’s main race in Barcelona – unable to fight for top positions until the end.
The Red Bull KTM man explained that he tried to manage the rear tire well, but it was actually the front tire that caused problems from very early on, affecting his entire race:
– I knew it would be a race of management, so I started the race and just tried to take care of the rear tire. Something very strange happened: by the sixth lap, my front tire was already dead and I couldn’t carry any entry speed, I couldn’t brake late at all. And, of course, when you enter so slowly and also have to manage the rear tire to finish, the pace was simply too slow, I was unable to attack at all. Every time I tried a bit, I had big moments with the front, simply locking up. It was basically trying to finish with the bike. There’s not much to say.
After the incident in the Sprint race, Binder had to make a decision regarding the issues he was facing, as he explained: ‘To be honest, on Saturday I had a big front-end lock-up, it was the first one I had and I crashed. And on Sunday I had a few and it was a good warning, because it was happening again. So I had to decide if I wanted to end up like on Saturday or finish the race‘.
The South African explained afterwards: ‘It seems that when we are rolling into the corner entry, at the moment you try to reach full lean angle, it just overloads the front tire a bit. I had some lock-ups in that situation and thought, “Well, I didn’t hear this warning on Saturday, so I should probably wake up a bit.” And if you can’t attack to that point, you ride slow and that’s what we did‘.
Asked if these problems are related to aspects such as setup, bike balance, or weight distribution, Binder replied: ‘I’m not really sure exactly what we need, to be honest, because when we have rear grip it works well. But as soon as the rear grip starts to drop and we rely only on the front tire, we have a lot of difficulties‘.
