Brad Binder: “Last year was chaos, I ran over Miguel's foot!”
"...And then the second long lap, I rode over Miguel's foot. That was 100% my fault!"
Brad Binder returns to Indonesia this weekend hoping for a less eventful Sunday than at Mandalika a year ago.
The Red Bull KTM MotoGP rider received two separate long-lap penalties on the way to sixth place but has positive memories of his pace.
“Last year I had a bit of chaos, I got two long lap penalties. The first one, I lost my brakes and then I wiped Marini out. And then the second one, I rode over Miguel's foot. That was 100% my fault!” Binder said at Mandalika on Thursday.
“Without the long lap penalties, though, if we look at our pace, we would have been able to fight for the podium at least. I'll just give it a try again this year, hopefully we can at least fight at the sharp end.”
Binder and Pedro Acosta put their RC16s on the second row of the grid, and inside the top six during last weekend’s Misano Sprint.
But both then crashed out of the Sunday race. A sign, Binder said, of the riders trying to compensate for “missing a little bit of speed”.
“We need that little bit extra and when you're trying to keep up with the guys in front, even though all weekend you haven't, it's sometimes easy to go a little bit over the limit,” said the South African.
“It's clear we are all trying really hard and sometimes shit happen. You can lose the front. For sure we have crashed way more this year than last year. So we need to figure that out.”
Binder added that, rather than any obvious strength or weakness, the RC16 needs to make a general step in performance.
“I think the biggest thing that we need at the moment is to have a strong point. Because our braking is not really great. We don't carry the same corner speed as the others because our turning is not fantastic and we spin a lot on throttle!” he explained.
“We used to be able to kind of roll a lot more mid corner speed. Brake, come off the brake and throw it in. And that was our point where we could always catch up. But this year the others have improved that area, so we haven't got that strong point anymore. But we need to just keep working and figure out a new one.”
Binder starts the first of the flyaway rounds eight points ahead of future team-mate Acosta in the battle for fifth in the world championship and best non-Ducati.
