Oliveira and Binder look to go into summer break in style at Sachsenring
11/07/2018Red Bull KTM Ajo Moto2 riders hope to end the first part of the season with a great result at the German GP.
Only 66 thousandths of a second denied Miguel Oliveira the win at the German GP last year. This time around, both he and teammate Brad Binder hope to achieve great results at a favourable track, after struggling at the previous round in Holland. This will be the ninth race of the season and will mark both the halfway mark of the calendar and the start of a two-week summer break.
Resolving the difficulties that prevented him from being among the fastest riders in the last set of Free Practice sessions and Qualifying will be the primary objective of Miguel Oliveira and his crew this weekend, after demonstrating that his performance on raceday is almost exclusively excellent. Starting from the top positions on the starting grid should be key to getting back onto the podium at Sachsenring, where he placed on the rostrum last year. Second in the overall standings, only 16 points behind the leader, a sixth Top 3 finish of the season would round off a very good first half of the year.
Brad Binder has similar feelings coming into the race. He needs to take a final step forward to get closer to the top positions he has been targeting at recent races. Sachsenring could be a feasible circuit for this, since it is very special for him, being the scene of his first World Championship podium in 2014. In the standings, the Red Bull KTM Ajo rider is just 9 points off the Top 5.
This ninth round of the season will follow the usual schedule for European Grands Prix, with the Moto2 race taking place at 12:20pm on Sunday.
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
44 MIGUEL OLIVEIRA
“We reach Germany after having worked very hard and we want to continue doing the same thing to solve the difficulties we have had at recent Grands Prix -especially in the practice sessions. Last year we were very competitive at this track, taking second position after fighting for the win until the last moment. I hope that this year we can find ourselves in a similar situation and return to the podium to continue adding points in the overall standings, and finish this first half of the season feeling good.”41 BRAD BINDER
“At Assen I managed to make important progress on Sunday that allowed me to feel more comfortable on the bike and have a good race. We hope that this weekend the feeling is just as good from the first Free Practice on Friday. It seems that this year we are finding some tracks very easy to be fast at, whilst others are more challenging, but at Sachsenring I already had a good race last year as a rookie in Moto2 and I think it suits the characteristics of our KTM very well. The goal is to be 100% focused to get a great result with which to go into the summer break.”