MotoGP Catalunya: Riders of the day
We witnessed some fantastic races in Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP in the CatalanGP races, here are our riders of the day.
Moto3 – Darryn Binder
The first Moto3 race win has been a long time coming for Darryn Binder, currently in his sixth season in Moto3, moving to the Petronas Moto3 team for 2021 on a Honda. By the end of the 2020 season, Binder will have 100 Moto3 starts to his name. Many believed Binder would not win a race in the class, this was due to his tendencies of crashing when it was important not to. He has faced a lot of criticism in the class due to his aggressive style which slowly but surely is being hammered out of his.
The younger Binder has always been compared to his brother Brad Binder, the 2016 Moto3 World champion who has won across Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP, Darryn has never lived up to the expectations which Brad had set, even riding for the same team in 2018 as Brad did when he won the 2016 title, scoring his best points haul yet of 57.
In 2020 however, we are seeing a new Darryn Binder, more calm and collected, he even has beaten his best points tally with 62 after just 9 races, the thing which has hampered his 2020 campaign the most is his qualifying, often qualifying outside of the top 20 meaning he has to work hard to get to the front of races, often crashing or causing incidents which are punished with penalties. This all changed at the Catalunya Grand Prix following a P9 race start, this advantage allowed Binder to catch up to the front within 3 corners on the first lap, battling past riders and putting in a few hard moves to make places up, however, this paid off when he hit the front, controlling the race and showing us all the Darryn Binder we have been missing.
Binder is our Moto3 rider of the day for his fantastic performance, a more mature Darryn Binder was on track and we hope he is here to stay.
Special Moto3 mentions going to Dennis Foggia, Sergio Garcia, Alonso Lopez and Barry Baltus.
Moto2 – Fabio Di Giannantonio
Fabio Di Giannantonio was ecstatic to finish on the podium after a tough season this season in Moto2, the Italian rider has been riding the Speed Up chassis with the new front tyre size which has caused many problems for riders this season. Up to now, it has seemed that the only rider who can properly ride the Speed Up Chassis is the rookie Aron Canet as he has not had to adapt from anything, whilst ‘Diggia’ and his teammate Jorge Navarro have.
For most of this season, he has hovered around the 15th place-mark, not scoring a single point between Andalucia and Styria, however at the scene of his home race at Misano where he scored a podium last season, things seemed to turn around for him, taking a seventh-place finish then P8 in race 2.
This form has followed its way over to Catalunya, taking P2 in FP2 before qualifying in P4, a great result for the rider. But he did not stop here, he was able to fight tooth and nail with the riders around him and clear enough space in front and behind him to take third place, a result he is incredibly happy about. He is more than fast enough to achieve the top step in Moto2, hopefully, this was the motivation he needed to take it further.
Special Moto2 mentions going to Aron Canet, Jorge Navarro, Joe Roberts and Marcos Ramirez.
MotoGP – Alex Rins
Alex Rins, what a race he has had at Catalunya following a difficult season for the 2 x MotoGP race winner this season. In the opening round of the season at Jerez, Alex Rins crashed during qualifying and has been suffering ever since, the pain has been hampering the rider every race, it was the reason he struggled to overtake Valentino Rossi at Misano as the pain was too great, allowing his teammate Joan Mir to come through and do the business.
At Catalunya, Rins qualified in a lowly P13 but this was not stopping the rider from making a whole lot of progress, gaining a huge 7 places on the opening lap to take P6 with phenomenal pace. Rins continued this pace, cutting through the field and picking off riders one by one. Rins had incredible pace and has been motivated by teammate Joan Mir’s huge progress recently, taking 4 podiums in 5 races including Catalunya, Rins wanted some of that glory.
Eventually, Rins arrived at the front, closing down on Franco Morbidelli to take third place, ending the race in P3 with a Suzuki 2-3, a grand result given that the team started in P8 (Mir) and P13 (Rins).
Special MotoGP mentions going out to Joan Mir and Cal Crutchlow.
Featured image – www.motogp.com
