After a hot and sunny opening day and a sunny morning, thunderstorms and drops of rain influenced proceedings at the Mugello Circuit on Saturday afternoon for the eighth round of the 2022 MotoGP World Championship. Thereby, the WithU Yamaha RNF MotoGP Team experienced mixed fortunes in the course of the day.
Darryn Binder started the day well with a significant improvement in Free Practice three. He went 0.724 seconds quicker than in FP2 on Friday, but unluckily hit something on track after another rider crashed and went down as well. For crashing under yellow flag the MotoGP rookie was penalized with a long lap for tomorrow’s 23 laps race.
Yet, he delivered a strong Qualifying. Although the track was slightly wet, the South African switched to slicks in the second part of Qualifying and did the tenth fastest lap. Therewith, he secured his best Qualifying result so far with P20.
In the meantime, Andrea Dovizioso struggled to make the right step in order to get closer to the top. The local hero, who has the strong desire to do well in front of his home crowd, improved on his fastest lap from Friday by 0.560 seconds but bet on the wrong horse in the latter parts of Qualifying one.
He remained on wet tyres, while the majority of riders was quicker on slicks. Therefore, he ended up in P16 and will have to proof his home honor from the back of the field tomorrow when the red lights go out at 14:00 local time in the Tuscan hills.
