Brad Binder finished the MotoGP Americas Grand Prix Sprint race in 12th place. The South African recovered from a difficult qualifying session where he could only manage 17th, after struggling to find a competitive pace up to that point.
The Red Bull KTM rider started by talking about the qualifying session and what led him to be so far down the grid: ‘What a Saturday! In the morning we tried something a bit different from Friday, but it wasn’t good at all. In qualifying, I crashed on my first flying lap and unfortunately destroyed my fairing and other things, so I took the bike back to the pits and there was no time to change everything. So I went back out on my bike with a setup that didn’t work at all. And I had to put on a front tire with 12 laps from the morning and it doesn’t work when you put on a new rear tire and a front one with 12 laps. I did my best, and unfortunately it was just terrible. So that was my qualifying, 17th place’.
The improvements in the Sprint race were evident and Binder confirmed them: ‘In the race, we made a huge change to the bike and the feeling was much better. It’s just that I didn’t really understand what I had underneath me in the first three/four laps, so it took me some time to figure out where I was. After that, I started to feel better, but clearly we found the direction we need to work on for Sunday’.
The #33 stated that, despite the difficulties, the scenario is better than it seems: ‘We had some small problems throughout the weekend, which made all sessions seem shocking, but the reality is not so bad. In Saturday’s race, well, I started from 17th and it’s complicated, you lose so much time in the first laps. I felt like I was understanding things as we progressed, but it’s still not satisfactory‘.
