The younger brother of fellow MotoGP rider Brad Binder will make his premier class debut next year aboard a 2021 Yamaha with the new WithU RNF Racing team, taking over from the defunct Petronas Sepang Racing Team.
Darryn Binder’s move to MotoGP has been heavily criticized in recent weeks after he was involved in a controversial incident in Portugal that helped decide the Moto3 world championship in favor of Pedro Acosta .
Binder’s arrival in MotoGP to share a team with Andrea Dovizioso is understood to be largely due to the significant financial support he can provide.
Last week, in the two days of the Jerez test, he finished last in the time table, 3.069 seconds behind the best time set by Pecco Bagnaia, although he improved 1.8s from one day to the next.
Asked by Motorsport.com if he felt pressured ahead of testing, given that his direct jump from Moto3 to MotoGP has been in the spotlight, Binder replied: “Not at all. The team has helped me a lot with that.”
“Everyone has been super calm, they have only come to take this first shakedown test as an outing to ride the bike, and we will start working next year”.
“We have the shakedown for rookies in Malaysia, and then when the official test starts there, we can start working.
“Until then, it’s just about building up bit by bit, learning what I have to do to ride this bike, learning as much as I can about it and slowly starting to put it into practice.”
“There’s no rush, there’s no point. If I was doing a 1:39 or I got to a 1:38, it’s still two seconds apart, there’s no difference.”
(Before reading on, click on this link or on the image to see the photos of Darryn Binder’s debut in MotoGP)
The South African’s second day was interrupted by a highside in the afternoon, which in his opinion slowed down his progress a bit, as it prevented him from taking advantage of the better conditions.
“At the beginning of the day we just put tires and fuel on and went out, and it was getting faster and faster,” Binder said at the end of Friday. “And just when we started getting on the holeshot and things like that, unfortunately when I got to lunch I had a pretty big fall.”
“That slowed down the progression unfortunately. So I spent an hour or so on the floor of the truck stretching.”
“In the afternoon we managed to get back out and started working again because I wasn’t feeling well. But in the end we tried some electronics stuff and the height device and things like that and I just kept getting better.”
“We tried the medium and soft tyres, just to find out things. I feel like we could have taken a bigger step if I hadn’t crashed, because we lost a lot of valuable time in good temperatures.”
