Reliability woes continue for KTM in Mugello MotoGP practice

KTM’s run of reliable woes continued during Friday practice at Mugello.

Brad Binder brought out the red flags when he was forced to park his RC16 at the side of the home straight with twelve minutes to go.

The South African later revealed it wasn’t his only technical problem of the day.
 

“Unfortunately, today we had two mechanicals. The guys know what it is and they're fixing it,” Binder said, confirming: “Two different bikes.”

“They just seemed to stop,” added Binder, when asked if there had been any warning.

Friday’s issues followed on from team-mate Pedro Acosta’s engine problem while leading at Catalunya, which triggered Alex Marquez’s huge accident.

Binder and Tech3’s Enea Bastianini also experienced reliability woes in Catalunya, but the South African insisted it’s not something that’s starting to play on his mind.

“Not really. As far as I know, it was something different to Barcelona. I think it's just super unlucky, to be honest. Like it's just been a bit of a bad run. I wouldn't say there's any concern,” he said.

Binder switched to his second bike - with a different setup - for the final run and finished in 18th place, on a day when Bastianini was the stand-out RC16 rider in third.

“Clearly Enea was on fire!” said Binder. “He looks super good, so we can have a look if there's something he's doing different to try to avoid [the chatter] maybe. And see how he's making the time.

"That's the bright side. He's doing a really good job. So we can try and have a look and try to match that.”

Team-mate Acosta also missed out on direct Qualifying 2 access with 13th place.