Although he is not entirely satisfied with his result, Brad Binder made a solid comeback in Brno and is gradually returning to the front.
Brad Binder has often put on a show with solid comebacks in races, and demonstrated this once again at the Czech Republic Grand Prix this weekend. He seems to be starting to get his head above water after a particularly complicated start to the season, even if he still lacks a little something.
Having had his best weekend of the year in Germany last week, the South African arrived in Brno highly motivated, especially after securing his first MotoGP victory there last year in 2020. However, his good momentum seemed to have stalled as he struggled in practice and qualifying, both in the wet and dry. Still near the bottom of the standings, he qualified 19th and knew he would need to make good starts to move up.
He achieved this on Saturday in the sprint race, but finished just outside the points in tenth place. He did even better on Sunday in the main race, gaining seven places in just the first two laps. He then continued his climb little by little, up to eighth place. Battling for much of the race with Fermín Aldeguer, Jack Miller and Luca Marini, he finally finished ninth, but gained a place thanks to the penalty received by Aldeguer.
This result is obviously far from what he wants, but also from his teammates, Pedro Acosta and Enea Bastianini having each reached the podium this weekend. But Binder wants to see the glass half full given its start to the season, and hopes to continue its momentum when the championship resumes in mid-August.
“I managed to move up from 19th to eighth place, so I still didn’t have the pace I was hoping for, but we still did a bit better today. I found a way to be better in the middle and exit of corners, but I was losing a lot of time braking and entering. That’s something we need to work on to find the right combination. If we manage that, it can be very positive.”, did he declare.
“We tried something completely different with the bike, a little bit with the engine behavior, and it improved the sidewall grip and traction. I feel like it was easier to control, so I'm really happy with that. I'm not at all happy with eighth place but, even if it doesn't look like it, we're slowly starting to come back. The positive thing is that Pedro and Enea were both super fast this weekend, so I have some good information to check to understand how they're doing.”
Czech Republic Grand Prix Results :
Classification credit: MotoGP.com
