In light of Pedro Acosta’s crash and Jack Miller’s eleventh place, Brad Binder proved to be the best KTM rider in the Assen round. Quite satisfied with the sensations he felt on the bike, particularly in the start phases, the South African highlighted some deficits which are continuing to negatively influence the behavior of the RC16.
“It was quite a tough race – admitted the seventh place of the day – I shot well, even better than expected given the proximity of the first corner, but this didn’t get me anywhere, in the sense that I wasn’t able to recover any positions. We had opted to mount the soft on the rear, in order to gain an advantage in the early stages, however, to stay attached to the leading group, I wore it out a lot and after just ten laps it was declining. Looking on the positive side, we have learned something, especially regarding the changes made to the set-up and the innovations brought in to make the step forward that we need to be able to compete with the best.“.
With a hint of irony, the 28-year-old wanted to highlight another comforting aspect. “Considering how many times I fell over the weekend, seeing the finish line is already a good thing.; also during the race I managed to have more harmony with the front, which was one of our objectives given that up to now in the GPs I had always suffered from that point of view. Now we hope to continue like this“.
Making a comparison with Ducati and its way of using the new rear cover, the Austrian team’s standard-bearer remarked: “There has actually been an overall improvement given by the 2024 tire updates, but the Italians manage to exploit it to its full potential, while we do not, so we will have to try to intercept their trick and adopt it. The heated front? We all used it for the first time and it gave an excellent response, without any type of problem emerging“.
At the end of the race Bastianini elected him a great breakaway and as such hard to overtake. “This weekend I tried them all, however, by braking later and following the same trajectories as the Desmosedicis, I didn’t seem to be able to imitate them, on the contrary I had the feeling of losing the apex point, so I always tried to cut the corners early. Let’s say that I wasn’t able to put on a uniform performance to be able to progress. Vibration problems? Something, but not like in the past“, he concluded his analysis.
