Darryn Binder says he felt no pressure during the first test of his much-debated MotoGP step-up from Moto3 with RNF Racing in Jerez last week.
The younger brother of two-time MotoGP champion Brad Binder will make his MotoGP debut next year aboard a year-old Yamaha with the new RNF Racing team, which has replaced the departing Petronas Sepang Racing Team.
Binder’s MotoGP career has taken a hit recently after he was involved in a controversial incident in Portugal that helped decide the Moto3 world championship in favor of KTM’s Pedro Acosta.
Binder’s appointment to the second RNF seat alongside Andrea Dovizioso is thought to be due to the significant backing he can bring to the team.
He finished last on the timesheets and 3.069 seconds off the pace at last week’s two-day Jerez test, though he did gain 1.8 seconds from the first day.
Binder responded when asked if he felt any pressure coming into the test given how much his MotoGP step has been in the spotlight recently: “Not at all. The team’s been really helpful for that.
“Everybody’s been super calm, they’re just here to take this first shakedown test as just going out and riding the bike, and we’ll start working next year.
“We’ve got the rookie shakedown test in Malaysia, and then when the real test starts in Malaysia we can start to work.
“Until then it’s just build up slowly, learn what I need to do to ride this bike, learn as much as I can about everything and slowly start to put it together.
“There’s no rush, there’s no point. Like the end of today [Friday], if I was doing a 1m39s or got to a 1m38s, it’s still two seconds off – it doesn’t make a difference.”
Binder’s second day was interrupted by a highside in the afternoon, which he thought hampered his progress because it prevented him from taking use of the ideal conditions.
“At the beginning of today we were just putting tyres and fuel and going, and I was getting faster and faster,” Binder said after Friday’s session.
“And just as we started to dive into the ride height device and stuff like that, unfortunately coming up to about lunch time I had quite a big crash.
“That really slowed down the progress unfortunately. So, I spent about a good hour or so on the floor of the truck just stretching out.
“In the afternoon we managed to get back out and we kind of started again just building up into it because I didn’t feel my best.
“But in the end we tried some stuff with the electronics and the ride height device and stuff like that, and I was still improving.
“We tried the medium and soft tyres, just figuring things out.
“I feel like we could have made a bigger step had I not crashed because we lost a lot of valuable time in the good temperatures.”
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