Sunday’s long race in Indonesia had many points of interest, some for good reasons, others not so much. In the case of Brad Binder, he was under the eyes of the race direction not once, but twice, for colliding first with Luca Marini and then with Miguel Oliveira. In a debrief, Brad Binder started by mentioning that he felt good and with a good pace, and that at an early stage everything seemed better than in the Sprint:
– Yes, I think it was a difficult race for us. I was fast on fresh tyres in every session, but I was only able to find good pace in the race, especially today. Yesterday I was struggling a bit at the beginning and today I felt a bit better. I didn’t have a bad start, everything was fine, I was just trying to get into my rhythm and figure out the medium tyre, because I hadn’t used it since Friday, so I was trying to figure out where the grip was and how much I could push for it.
The South African KTM rider later explained what happened when he collided with Luca Marini, stating that there was little else he could do:
– Unfortunately, I had a little jolt at turn 8 and when I went to grab the brakes, the lever got stuck to my fingers and I started to panic because there were two riders on the outside. And when you’re only having 5 bar of pressure, you don’t stop very well, so I just slammed on the rear brake and tried to get around the riders, and I’m sorry because I ended up hitting Luca destroying his race. I apologise to him and the team for destroying what could have been a great day for them.
Binder would thus suffer a long lap penalty, something that would be repeated laps later after colliding with Miguel Oliveira, something that the #33 admits was a “miscalculation”:
– After that, of course I was pushing hard to try to get to the peloton and when I had the moment with Miguel, it was a little lit up and I had to dive inside at the last moment, and I hit him as well. I really deserve the two long laps and I apologise to both riders and their teams. (…) I had some advantage for them under braking because I was using the medium, and I think they were already going over the point with the front soft. So the braking point I was using at turn two was a little bit later than his (Miguel Oliveira) and I didn’t expect that, so I didn’t anticipate it. When I grabbed the brakes I started to go towards the rear of him and decided to go inside to try to avoid him, but unfortunately I hit him on the side.