Just outside the Spanish city of Valencia, the Circuit Ricardo Tormo is surrounded by stadium-style grandstands that line the 4.01-kilometre race track. Tens of thousands made the pilgrimage to the track for qualifying on Saturday to witness the thrilling battle for the fastest times live for the last time this season.

Darryn Binder has two challenging days of practice behind him. The South African invested a lot of time and energy in the fight for further tenths, but even after qualifying, the 25-year-old said that there was still a lot of work ahead of him and his crew. He feels that there is potential for more, but now it is a matter of teasing it out before the final Grand Prix of the year. Darryn hopes to finish the season within the points.

Darryn Binder

“Today was a pretty tough day, even though I was able to make a small improvement in Practice three this morning. But it seemed that I got stuck in a certain lap time and couldn’t improve from there. On the other hand, I was quite consistent, but I couldn’t find any more speed. In qualifying I repeated the same time and did the same lap time as this morning, although I felt I could do a better lap to make a small improvement, but overall, something was missing. So, I still have some work to do and will look at things for tomorrow and try to find an improvement. Let’s see what happens in the last race of the year. I definitely want to end this difficult season with a little personal highlight.”