Thunderstorms and rain made Saturday tricky at the Motegi circuit. After just one session on Friday, the MotoGP class faced yet another challenge today. Although Free Practice two could take place this morning on a wet track, FP3 became a victim of the heavy rain, yet with delay they managed to start their Qualifying.

Darryn got steadily used to the conditions in the practice session of this morning. The MotoGP rookie though slipped away during Qualifying in the afternoon and was left unable to improve, although he picked up his bike quickly to come back to the garage and go out again with his number two machine. He will need to start tomorrow’s Grand Prix of Japan at 15:00 local time (08:00 CET) from row eight, right next to his teammate.

DARRYN BINDER

“Today has been a really tricky day with FP2 this morning in full wet and unfortunately, due to the heavy rain, they cancelled FP3, so we went directly into Q1. I honestly, really struggled. I did only three laps and on the fourth lap I had a small crash. I managed to get the bike going and come back to the box to get out again, but I could get in only one more timed lap at the end and never improved. I’m a bit disappointed, I expected a lot more after FP2 this morning. I didn’t feel too bad in the rain, but in Qualifying I seemed to struggle a bit more, I think it could have been because there was more water on track than this morning. I’m not entirely happy, especially after I had a strong day yesterday in the dry and I wanted to at least try to get a good grid position for tomorrow, as it’s expected to be dry. Anyway, it is what it is and we just have to do our best in the race tomorrow.”