After he enjoyed riding at the Mugello Circuit from the first minute on, Darryn Binder scored his best starting position in the premier class to date with P20. Once again, South African had a rocket start and made up three positions on the first lap. But after he crashed under yellow flag in FP3 yesterday, he had to do a long lap in the third lap of the race, which threw him back to P22.

But in only one lap he managed to recover three places again, had a solid pace and therewith came closer and closer until he even passed his Yamaha colleague Franco Morbidelli on the final lap to see the chequered flag in 16th, finishing on the rookies podium again.

In just a few day’s time, the WithU Yamaha RNF MotoGP Team will be back in action for the ninth round of 2022 at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, in Spain.

DARRYN BINDER

“It was a good race for me. I’m really happy with how things went. I managed to get a good start and in the first couple of laps, I was in quite an alright position. Unfortunately, I had to take a long lap, which lost me a couple of seconds, but I managed to come back in and fight my way up a little bit further. I had quite a good pace throughout the race. I feel like I’ve made a step forward in the right direction. I’ve found that front feeling that I was looking for, and I was able to just ride the race like how I wanted and push every lap and be precise. I was really close to the points, I feel like if I didn’t have to do the long lap, I would have scored points today. But overall I think I did a good job this weekend.”