After a hot and sunny opening day and a sunny morning, thunderstorms and drops of rain influenced proceedings at the Mugello Circuit on Saturday afternoon for the eighth round of the 2022 MotoGP World Championship. Thereby, the WithU Yamaha RNF MotoGP Team experienced mixed fortunes in the course of the day.

Darryn Binder started the day well with a significant improvement in Free Practice three. He went 0.724 seconds quicker than in FP2 on Friday, but unluckily hit something on track after another rider crashed and went down as well. For crashing under yellow flag the MotoGP rookie was penalized with a long lap for tomorrow’s 23 laps race.

Yet, he delivered a strong Qualifying. Although the track was slightly wet, the South African switched to slicks in the second part of Qualifying and did the tenth fastest lap. Therewith, he secured his best Qualifying result so far with P20.

DARRYN BINDER

“It’s been a bit of a tricky day today. FP3 was good, but at the end of FP3 on the final lap, I was just basically coming around to finish the lap as there was a yellow flag. Unfortunately, I rode over something and ended up crashing where the yellow flag was, so I ended up been given a long lap penalty for tomorrow, which is really disappointing. Anyway, FP4 was not easy, we didn’t get too many laps because of the weather and then also going into the Qualifying it was a bit tricky. I managed to put in the slicks at the end and do a couple of laps. Overall, I feel good, I feel like I made a step forward this weekend, I feel confident with the bike and I’m ready for the race tomorrow.”