Moto3: The point of view of Alain Bronec (CIP Green Power) at mid-season

At the end of the Argentine Grand Prix, where he brilliantly finished second, Darryn Binder was among the top five in the provisional ranking of the World Championship. The rest was less sparkling, with eleventh place at Jerez and tenth at Mugello. He has finished five out of nine Grands Prix.

The other driver of the team, the Briton Tom Booth Amos continues his learning, with a fourteenth place in Catalonia.

Alain, Darryn binder showed that he could be very fast, like in Argentina, but also in Assen where he was third with four laps remaining and almost won. What do you think of his start to the season?

“We had a very good start to the season because Darryn was always at the forefront. We now absolutely have to finish the races. Darryn was once hit by another competitor in Barcelona when he was fourth. Another time at Assen he was third and he added a little while braking and crashed.”

“We are in a situation where he is going very fast, but it is true that we have to achieve a little more. We let big points slip away regularly and we need to pull ourselves together during the second part of the season.”

Darryn seems to have a good burst of speed, but also some shortcomings. What do you think are his strengths and areas in which he can improve?

“Its main strong point is undoubtedly braking. He is not afraid of anything and is not stressed in groups! But that's a small problem too. That is to say that today we realize that in qualifying practice, we have difficulty progressing directly to Q2. Sometimes, during somewhat difficult sessions, Darryn has a tendency to brake very hard and forget that the speed of passing curves is important in FP1, FP2 and FP3. And he starts driving again, a bit like a race. We thus lose passing speed and top speed. To his credit, Darryn is one of the heaviest drivers in his category.”

Thomas Edward “Tom” Booth-Amos is difficult to place because he had good results like 5th in Albacete in CEV Moto3 last year. He won the Motostar Cup in Superstock 600 in 2017 with 19 victories, 10 pole positions and 16 fastest laps in the race. How do you rate his Grand Prix debut?

“Tom is a very interesting driver, but he is already 22 years old. So he's a little impatient. He wants to perform all the time and it’s true that it hurts his progress a little because we need a little serenity.”

“We saw that in Argentina he finished ten seconds behind the first, which was very good for us because it was a circuit he didn't know. In Barcelona he also finished about ten seconds behind the winner, but often his races were handicapped by falls, such as for example at the Sachsenring where he fell at the start, then started again, and this did not allow him to recover. fight in a group.

At the World Championship, the fight is of extraordinary intensity, with only two points difference between the first two Lorenzo Dalla Porta et Aron Canet. However, they have each won only one Grand Prix this year, but are far ahead of the others (Antonelli third is 38 points behind). What do you think of this first half of the season?

“It is important to note that the top two in the standings finished every race, even if it was not always in first place. On the other hand, we see that Kaito Toba, who won the first Grand Prix, is one of the drivers who fell the most subsequently. There is a really wide distribution of podiums and victories. “It’s important because the first two places in the Championship will be difficult to catch up with or even covet, but I think there will be good places that will be accessible if we have a good second half of the season.”

Among the manufacturers, there are only two points difference between the Honda of Dalla Porta and the KTM of Canet. Do you think the two bikes are of roughly equal value, or is the difference more between the rider and his team?

“Honda's policy is to help teams that have signed interesting riders. So there are a few more experienced drivers on the Hondas. Canet, for his part, took the opposite route and went from Honda to KTM and it was quite successful for him.”

“So it’s quite shared, but also homogeneous because there have been several different race winners.”

How do you see the second part of the season for your CIP Green Power team in particular, and for the Championship in general?

“Our goal is now to work a little differently with Darryn because we now know that he has speed and is capable of putting in good performances. We have to dedicate ourselves to regularity. But we also need to improve the speed of cornering, to compensate for Darryn's weight which is handicapping us. And ultimately the goal is to finish all the races until the end of the year.”

“As for the World Championship, we can think that it will be really competitive. We arrive at circuits where KTM has done tests like at Spielberg. There are going to be some very technical circuits, and we are confident about the tracks that await us.”

“At the Championship, the cards will be redistributed because there will still be different winners each time.”

Photos © Lukasz Swiderek, Mateusz Jagielski / PSP / www.photoPSP.com

Video: The last lap of the Italian GP in Moto3 with commentary from Lorenzo Della Posta: