MotoGP | Binder leads in a test ruined by rain at Mugello

There was great anticipation for the official MotoGP test day at Mugello, but the main protagonist was the one that no one would have wanted: the rain. In fact, within the 8 hours available between 10am and 6pm, there were several storms that wet the asphalt of the Tuscan ups and downs, preventing the teams from testing the innovations they had prepared. The best was undoubtedly what happened in the paddock, with the bombshell announcement of Jorge Martin’s hiring by Aprilia.

In the end the fastest was Brad Binder, but his performance has an absolutely relative value. The KTM rider got it around lunchtime, in one of the few windows where the sun had arrived to dry the track. In any case, his 1’47″617 is a very distant reference from those that were set during the weekend of the Italian Grand Prix.

Those who were able to make the most of this parenthesis were the KTM riders, because behind the South African was his future boxmate Pedro Acosta, who finished just 33 thousandths behind on the GasGas Tech3 RC16. .

In third position is Luca Marini, who was the last to give in to the rain, even running late in the afternoon when the other six had already stopped for some time. The Honda rider was the one who ultimately took the prize for being the most active, having completed 40 laps of the Tuscan track.

The mileage put together by Jack Miller was also decent – 33 laps – who follows him in fourth position with his KTM. The last to achieve a performance close to the leaders was Joan Mir, even if we are already talking about a gap of over two seconds for the Honda rider. From sixth onwards it is almost superfluous to talk about the ranking, because Maverick Vinales finds himself 7″. It must be said, however, that the Aprilia rider said he was satisfied with the work he managed to do in the wet, the historic Achilles’ heel of the RS GP.

The Yamahas also lapped mainly in the wet, although the commitment of Alex Rins and Fabio Quartararo was very limited: the Spaniard completed 17 laps and the Frenchman one less. A shame, because today they should have evaluated a new engine specification and electronic solutions.

There are only two Ducatis that have put a time on the scoresheet and they are those of Franco Morbidelli, who probably needed to discover the GP24 in the wet, and Alex Marquez. Pecco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini didn’t even hit the track, while Marc Marquez, Marco Bezzecchi and Fabio Di Giannantonio only did one out lap before deciding that it would be useless or almost useless to run today.