Red Bull KTM riders reach midway mark of 2017 season looking to take a step up from Dutch GP results.

At the end of last Sunday’s race at Assen, Miguel Oliveira and Brad Binder were not entirely satisfied with their hard-fought fifth and thirteenth places and were hungry for more. This week they head to the Sachsenring for a Grand Prix that will mark the halfway point of the Moto2 World Championship season.

Oliveira has been in the Top 5 six times from a possible eight, including the last three in a row. He had even led the Dutch GP, giving him reason to believe that this weekend he can make a return to the podium. Sachsenring has not been the kindest circuit to him over the last three years, and it was in 2013 that he achieved his best result: A fourth place in Moto3.

Binder has finished inside the Top 10 in four of the five times he has raced at this track. The Sachsenring was also the scene of his first Grand Prix podium, in 2014. The South African is in form coming into the German GP, after his best qualifying performance in Moto2 to date in Assen -seventeenth. He has the desire to improve his best race result, the ninth place he took in Argentina.

The Red Bull KTM Ajo riders will ride with the KTM Moto2 bikes for the first time at the track, which has relayed asphalt this season, on Friday. Sunday’s race will return to the traditional time of 12:20pm.

Circuit information – Sachsenring
Length: 3.671 m / 2.281 miles
Width: 12 metres
Left corners: 10
Right corners: 3
Longest straight: 700 m / 0.435 miles
Constructed: 1996
Modified: 2003

41 BRAD BINDER
“I got my first podium in the World Championship at Sachsenring, in Moto3 in 2014, so I have very good memories of the track. I feel confident about this weekend, but I’m a bit worried, because as I haven’t had strength in my left arm over the last months, I have noticed that I have pushed my right arm a lot and I’m feeling it. I think that the characteristics of this twisty track will not help much, but in any case I have tried to rest and prepare over these past three days to get as fit as possible. At Assen we took a step forward, so this weekend we must give more to get in the positions we want.”

44 MIGUEL OLIVEIRA
“We left Assen with a bittersweet taste because I think we had the potential to finish on the podium at least. The fifth position was not enough to leave happy, but honestly I think we learned the lesson. It was an important weekend because we once again got a positive result from a track where we had never run. This weekend, we are again in the same conditions as in Sachsenring we have never been with the KTM. We will see what conditions we find, because it seems that it will rain some day and in Assen on wet I was not comfortable. The goal will be to follow the same line as last week and fight to keep us up there.”