KTM’s two factory riders enjoyed a much-improved qualifying result at Assen – but both remain clear that the gap to MotoGP frontrunners is still daunting.
On the back of a run of five successive weekends in which none of the four KTMs reached the second qualifying segment, the marque looked under threat of extending this run after none of its riders came particularly close to the top 10 in third practice.
Yet Brad Binder and Miguel Oliveira snapped the unfortunate streak by both advancing through Q1 – and doing so with relative comfort, with nearly a quarter of a second in hand.
“I think we stand a good chance to have a strong first few laps,” said Binder of starting 10th in Sunday’s Dutch TT, having posted his best qualifying result of last nine race weekends.
“Makes a big difference starting a whole lot further up. I’m excited, it’s been a while since I’ve started that far up.
“I didn’t feel like I really took full advantage [in qualifying], I feel like I missed a couple of tenths – but other than that everything else is looking better for tomorrow.”
Yet the South African made it clear that the 0.863s gap to poleman Francesco Bagnaia weighed on him.
“It’s better than it has been,” he said of KTM’s qualifying form. “In reality we’re 0.8s from the first. So, not good at all.
“To find 0.8s, it’s a country mile. Okay, FP4 [in race pace simulations], I don’t know what we were – half a second [off]?
“But we’ve got work to do still. This is definitely not the end of the road.”
Team-mate Oliveira was a close second to Binder in Q1, but outpaced him by a tenth in Q2 to claim eighth on the grid – just one place away from matching his best qualifying result of the year, which had come at Mandalika, where he would go on to win in the wet.
He described his Saturday as “not a disgusting day”, saying: “Definitely a lot of potential in terms of pace – I don’t know what to challenge for, but for sure the starting point is already quite better than the previous races.”
Binder claimed there was “not really” anything new compared to the Sachsenring that would account for the qualifying improvement, while Oliveira said: “To be honest, it’s just the approach of more preparing the electronics to use more the potential of the tyre. The bike’s the bike, we just can’t really get the extra grip that the soft gives.”
Oliveira then acknowledged that he and his crew had been “a bit afraid” coming into qualifying after seeing that he was actually three tenths quicker in race simulations on the hard rear tyre in FP4 than he had been on the soft rear in FP3.
“But then there was actually some more potential in the soft,” he continued.
“Not as much as we would like, and not enough to really challenge for more. I mean, the reality is, we are seven tenths behind pole position. It’s quite a gap.
“It’s what it is. But there are people worse than us.”
