In bright sunshine and uncharacteristically warm temperatures for Le Mans, LIQUI MOLY Husqvarna Intact GP rider Darryn Binder finished 5th in Qualifying 1, which means 19th place on the grid in row 7 for him.

For Darryn, the weekend at the Bugatti Circuit began with a rather difficult Friday, although things pointed in the right direction again on Saturday. The South African worked intensively on improvements. In Q1, he only just missed out on advancing to Q2 in fifth position. His 1’35.947 ultimately gave him 19th place on the grid in row seven, which will once again make Sunday’s race no easy endeavour for him. In the past, the former MotoGP rider has impressively demonstrated on several occasions that he always has a competitive race pace and can make up a lot of ground and points with a good start and a strong fightback.

The lights will go out for the 22-lap Moto2 race on Sunday at 12:15 (CEST), heralding an action-packed fifth round of the season.

Darryn Binder
P5 (Q1) – 1’35.947 (+0.510)

“Of course, I’m a bit disappointed that I didn’t reach Q2. We’ve had a difficult start to the season, and I have the feeling that we made a small step forward at the test in Jerez, but I wasn’t able to show it yesterday. But today, I had the feeling that we are going in the right direction again. It would have been really nice to get into Q2 and try to build on what we have now for tomorrow. But at least we are so close. It shows that we are on the right path, and I feel like my pace is pretty good for tomorrow’s race. Let’s see what I can achieve in the race. I’ll just keep my head down and try to make up as many positions as possible and score some points.”