Brad Binder, a South African motorcycle racer, has experienced a significant improvement in his performance after making adjustments to the front end of his RC16 motorbike. Despite a challenging start to the season, Binder has found renewed confidence with the changes.
In the United States, Binder struggled to make it out of Q1 and only managed to rise to ninth in the grand prix. However, after making tweaks to his bike’s front end, he says his feeling on the bike has completely transformed.
Binder said, “We changed something on the front end of the bike in the morning for the second run, and it felt like I had my bike back. I had the confidence again with the front end in braking and entry. That was awesome. I was really fast the whole afternoon, I felt really good.”
During the second practice session at Jerez, Binder crashed late, but he believes he would have qualified for Q2 if not for the incident. He explained, “I was giving it a push to make sure I had a strong lap and unfortunately I washed the front. I just got caught out by the wind coming in hotter than the previous lap and clearly too much. Bit unlucky because of that.”
Binder suffered a minor foot injury in a training incident before the Americas GP but was fortunate to walk away unscathed from his crash at Jerez. He commented, “I’m really lucky. When I crashed there, I slid for a long time and slid pretty square, and then I had a few roly-polies when I had already slowed down. Yeah, when I stood up, I was more lucky than I could have been.”
With the improvements to his bike, Binder is optimistic about his performance in the upcoming races. He said, “To be honest, the best day I’ve had all year apart from the last run. It’s the first time I’ve felt this good in a long time, and it’s unfortunate that I bailed because it cost us a spot in Q2. But my ideal lap time just from those first two sectors alone was 0.5s quicker than the lap time I did. So, I think we will be okay.”
