With about four laps to go in Sunday’s Moto3 championship-deciding race at the Algarve Grand Prix, I posted what may be my most prophetic tweet ever, pointing out that when you’re Pedro Acosta and Dennis Foggia, both fighting for a title in first and second, the very last thing you need is a rider whose nickname is ‘Divebomb’ in third.
Worst possible scenario when you're one-two and fighting for a title: having someone nicknamed 'Divebomb' in third 😅
— Simon Patterson (@denkmit) November 7, 2021
And sure enough, it was a reckless move from 2022 MotoGP rookie Darryn Binder that in the end decided not just the race but the championship, once again prompting the question of whether the South African racer is ready for a direct promotion past Moto2 and straight to MotoGP next season with the newly-formed WithU Yamaha squad.
In his defence to an extent, this was a move that wasn’t entirely Binder’s fault. Coming up a ferocious last lap, Foggia had just stuck his Leopard Honda up the inside of Acosta with a spectacular overtake, and the Red Bull KTM rider had to respond.
Block-passing, and disturbing the Italian as he did so, the rookie took the lead again going onto the final lap – and Foggia was forced to take avoiding action in the process, running through the corner slightly slower – and straight into the path of Binder, not just hunting down the leaders but seemingly carrying far too much speed to make the turn.
Trying to pass Sergio Garcia with a similar move to Acosta’s on Foggia, Binder was way too fast to make the turn, colliding with the slower Foggia, wiping him out and firing him into the path of Garcia to boot – and handing the title to Acosta as the Red Bull KTM rider rode off to victory.
ASTONISHING!!! 😱@DarrynBinder40 and @dennisfoggia71 are down!!! 💥#Moto3 | #AlgarveGP 🏁 pic.twitter.com/2OrCrLYO5r
— MotoGP™🏁 (@MotoGP) November 7, 2021
Binder was immediately disqualified from the race for irresponsible riding, but with the title already gone, that’s little consolation to Foggia – and, if history shows anything, it’s unlikely to make any difference to Binder’s riding.
Simply put, the South African has shown time and time again that he’s reckless on a bike. One of the most frequent visitors to the stewards office even with the inconsistency in punishments they’re notorious for, his race disqualification marks the seventh time in the past year that he’s faced sanction.
And given that track record, the most recent of which was for smashing wildcard Joel Kelso off the track while Binder was on an outlap during qualifying for the German Grand Prix in July, his rather pointless disqualification from fourth place doesn’t exactly look like it’s going to finally be the punishment that makes ‘Divebomb’ see the light.
Which begs the question: who on earth thinks that he’s ready for a promotion directly to MotoGP for next season? There’s no doubting that he’s talented, of course, and beneath a rather chilled out surfer persona there’s a genuinely intelligent and well-liked person – but the simple fact of the matter is that he has never showed that he’s learned any lessons from his time in Moto3.
He remains loose, wild and inconsistent. He’s got only a single win to his seven-season long career so far. He has scored just two podium finishes in 2021, at the opening races of the year, and right now sits sixth in the championship standings with one race to go.
There’s a reason that grand prix racing has a set structure for promoting riders first into Moto3, then to Moto2 and finally directly to MotoGP: a route that’s been followed by all but two of the 22 riders on the grid.
One of those, Danilo Petrucci, came from the World Superbike paddock, resplendent with plenty of big bike experience, while the other, Jack Miller, preceded Binder’s move from Moto3 to MotoGP – but did it after winning six races and losing out on the championship by a mere two points.
And even then, Miller (pictured above in 2015 in his infamous clash with team-mate Cal Crutchlow) didn’t shine immediately, spending his first seasons mainly crashing out of races, making rookie errors and only eventually honing his racecraft on bikes very different from Moto3 machines: a learning curve that would arguably have been far easier to achieve with an intermediate step in Moto2 first.
At the end of the day, that’s the point that I’m trying to make regarding Binder, too. No one is saying that he doesn’t have the talent to be a MotoGP rider, because he’s definitely fast and he’s undoubtedly somewhat handicapped on a Moto3 machine by his height and weight.
But there’s a reason that we have a very well defined road to the top – and taking shortcuts on that road is very rarely a good idea. Sure, he’s going to get to say that he was a MotoGP rider – but there’s a very real chance that it’s something that comes and goes far more quickly than if he had done things right and looked for a Moto2 seat for 2022.
