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Brad Binder feels a MotoGP stewards’ decision he suspects was “rushed” denied him points in the Mugello sprint, and KTM team-mate Jack Miller sees it as senseless.
Binder was handed a long-lap penalty for first-corner contact with Gresini Ducati’s Alex Marquez, who exited the race on the spot.
Marquez and Binder had started the race seven places apart on the grid, but the Gresini man didn’t have the best of getaways and checked up as Miller zoomed past him, the loss of momentum leaving him around eighth place coming into the corner.
He took a wide line through San Donato – wider than those ahead of him but relatively in line with several of those behind, but came up on Binder while moving back towards the apex as the South African was carrying huge corner speed and himself washed out ever so slightly wide (albeit no wider than Luca Marini right ahead of him).
“Marquez goes wide, Brad keeps his line, Marquez then tries to merge back into traffic like nobody’s there, runs into the side of Brad and then Brad gets a penalty that, for me, is f***ing senseless,” was Binder team-mate Miller’s heated verdict on the incident.
Serving the long lap on lap four of 11 relegated Binder from seventh to 14th, and he could only recover to 11th – with the points only awarded to the top nine.
Drama at the very first corner! 😮 @BradBinder_33 and @alexmarquez73 made contact resulting in a long lap penalty for the South African! 🔄#TissotSprint | #ItalianGP 🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/ElSQqVh0JT
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) June 10, 2023
After the sprint, Binder said he ‘100 percent’ disagreed with the penalty.
“I don’t think I deserved a long lap by any means. I turned in, I was following the track, going around the corner as normal.
“And I felt a knock on my outside. At the end of the day I don’t feel like I deserved a long lap.
“Yeah, to me they robbed me of an opportunity to score points today.
“When I got the long lap, I didn’t actually know why! I thought maybe I’d been touching the green [violating track limits] somewhere. And then when I stopped, my team explained that Alex crashed in Turn 1. I did feel a bump but I mean, I was looking right [when leaned] and I was where I should be!
“I don’t know where they want me to go or what… to be honest, I think they just rushed the decision a bit maybe. And it’s unfortunate because it cost me points.”
For his part, Marquez – who keeps finding himself eliminated in collisions with other riders in 2023 – lamented the start situation putting himself in that position.
“I had, like, a cross [of trajectories] with Miller, and I needed to close a little bit the gas, but with these bikes if you close a little bit you lose all the performance until the first corner.
“So that’s where I lost it. And nothing more, I think from the helicopter [camera] view it looks quite well what happened in the first corner.
“I was not wide. There we have many different lines. Can happen, but from the helicopter view looks like he [Binder] missed a little bit also the corner.”
Marquez’s brother Marc – though normally laissez-faire when it comes to penalties – said he “completely agreed” with the Binder sanction, but Alex himself was not quite as categorical.
He said only that it was to be a penalty because he himself had been penalised at Le Mans, for a run-in with none other than Binder.
But he also sounded amusedly irritated at the fact Binder’s penalty was the same as Marquez would’ve had at Le Mans had he stayed in the race for long enough – although that move didn’t result in a DNF for the other party.
“So, I mean, honestly speaking, they [the stewards] don’t have a lot of idea. They don’t have a plan.”
Of Miller’s description of the incident, Marquez said: “I think it was the opposite! So he needs to watch the images before talking. It’s what I do.”
