BINDER SAYS MOTEGI’S BACK-UP TYRE COULD HAVE LASTED THREE RACES

Brad Binder believes Red Bull KTM’s cautious setup approach cost him at the Japanese Grand Prix, after the rear tyre the team had expected to be vulnerable proved far more durable than anticipated.

Michelin introduced a hard-option rear as a precaution for Motegi’s newly resurfaced track. It paired the soft tyre’s rubber compound with the more heat-resistant construction used in Austria. The concern was prompted by problems in Saturday’s Sprint, where some riders experienced blistering on the soft rear that caused its centre to break up. Michelin consequently withdrew that tyre from Sunday’s allocation and advised riders to use the hard.

The back-up option had not been tested before race day. All 22 riders sampled it during an extended Sunday morning Warm Up, but the short session offered little chance to assess its performance over anything close to a full race distance. The initial response was encouraging, and the entire field selected it for the Grand Prix, though teams still had to make setup decisions with limited information.

Binder said his first impression was positive. “Straight away out the pits already I was like, ‘These aren’t bad’. So I was pleasantly surprised, it was pretty good actually.” But KTM had prepared for the possibility that the tyre would struggle in the centre, and Binder felt the team dialled back its settings too much in response.

“In the race, everything was quite okay. I mean, I think we toned everything down a few steps thinking that we need to save the centre of the tyre,” he said. “The reality was I think we could have done three race distances on it.”

That conservative choice was not the only setback in Binder’s weekend. He finished 11th and said his crash in Q1 had made the rest of the event more difficult. “It wasn’t really the finest move we’ve ever made, but it happens, and unfortunately the best I managed today was 11th. So, not a great Japan,” he said. “I thought it would have been a little bit better, to be honest, but I think I kind of screwed myself a little bit when I threw it down in Q1 – definitely made the rest of my weekend more challenging.”