Red Bull KTM Factory Racing honored MotoGP past and showed their dedication for MotoGP present at Silverstone today. Jack Miller took the one-off 75th anniversary design for the KTM RC16 to 12th place in Great Britain. Brad Binder was forced out of the running as the season entered the second half of the calendar with the trip to the UK.
Sunday at Silverstone was cool and cloudy but, thankfully, dry for the 20-lap British Grand Prix. Brad Binder and Jack Miller had grabbed 4th and 7th positions in the Saturday Sprint at the long course and collection of fast, flowing corners. The team then changed the colors of the factory KTM RC16s to run the company’s special livery to join MotoGP’s 75th anniversary celebration (see HERE for a concise explanation behind the design). The duo logged P1 and P3 in morning warm-up to begin the day at full tilt.
Binder launched from 6th and the second row of the grid but it was immediately clear he had a technical issue and could not complete the lap. Miller was a little further back as the MotoGP pack had to run a smart pace and conserve race tires for the full 118km distance. Jack fought for the top ten but eventually had to ease to 12th. Miller gathered 4 points and sits 16th in the table. MotoGP heads to another historic venue with the trip to the Red Bull Ring in Austria and the eighth year of premier class home Grand Prix action for the company.
Jack Miller, 12th: “I was trying to get the rear tire to work and was cycling through the maps I had. It was tricky to get the bike to stop: a weird one, maybe because of the lower temperatures. Some points on the board anyway, and some info in the books so hopefully we’ll keep getting better. We’re trying our best every weekend and we have really strong points and I hope we can take advantage of them in Austria.”
Brad Binder, DNF: “Not much to say. Unfortunately, I had a small clutch issue and could not get away from the line. I tried to get back to the pits to change bikes but had to park it. This morning we’d made some changes to the bike and it was the fastest I’d been all weekend on the medium tire. We know it would have been a hard race all the way to the end but we’d been fastest in warm-up, so that’s something at least. My crew are working so hard, and we tried something different for today. We’ll have to try again in Austria.”
Francesco Guidotti, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing Team Manager: “Sometimes we are reminded that this is motorsport! The weekend started so well and then did not finish as we wished. I think we have to look towards the positives and that we had good feedback on the parts we tested, qualifying was strong and we had good speed. Today was obviously not what we expected, including Jack’s lack of rear grip because we were quite sure about the tire choice. We’ll look forward to the next race – our home race – where we will concentrate all our efforts. We’ll also have Pol [Espargaro] with us. Let’s go for it.”
