Following a Friday full of mixed conditions, Saturday’s action at the famous Red Bull Ring in Austria took place in the dry. Although Darryn Binder managed to improve on day two, he’ll have to launch round 13 of the 2022 MotoGP World Championship season from seventh row on the grid.

Darryn increased his confidence with each session. In the third practice session this morning, the premier class rookie improved his lap time from Friday by 1.103 seconds and went another 0.144 seconds quicker in Qualifying one, which helped him to find a good connection to the rest of the field. The South African was eventually only 0.243 seconds slower than his team mate to finish Q1 in P11, which means he will line up in the seventh row when the lights go out for his 13th MotoGP race tomorrow at 14:00 local time.

DARRYN BINDER

“Today has been a positive day. We made a nice step forward this morning. I felt good in FP3. In FP4 I had quite a good pace on the race tyres, in race conditions, so I was really happy. In Qualifying I was looking for a bit more, but I still managed to improve a little bit. Overall, I’m happy, feeling confident and quite comfortable on the bike and I feel we are heading in a good direction, so I’m looking forward to the race tomorrow. I hope it’s going to be a good one.”