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When it comes to Darryn Binder’s surprising, scepticism-generating move from Moto3 to MotoGP in 2022, the one obvious comparison that crops up is Jack Miller doing the same to start his premier-class career – a move that proved initially ropey for the Australian but did ultimately become part of a path to him becoming a MotoGP frontrunner.
But while the intermediate Moto2 step that Miller skipped is traditionally something of a must, there are also those who spent the bare minimum time in the class before swapping it for the bigger category.
If the merits of Miller’s Moto3-to-MotoGP hop can be debated, spending just a single season in Moto2 clearly paid off for the likes of Maverick Vinales and Joan Mir, both Suzuki hires.
Vinales rewarded Suzuki’s faith with its breakthrough win, while Mir – who didn’t even have a particularly strong intermediate-class campaign – went one better in bringing it a title, just three years on from when he contested his final Moto3 race.
When those examples are put to Binder at the RNF Yamaha launch by The Race as a possible source of inspiration and some optimism amid the (let’s be frank, very understandable) criticism, he’s happy to concur: “Like you say, looking at other riders, like Jack jumped straight and he’s made it work. Yes, he took long, but it’s very different circumstances for him. There’s been riders, like you say, that have gone through Moto2 in one year and jumped and been good.”
But Binder has a more surprising rider in his mind to take inspiration from.
“But it also even gives me confidence when I look at, like, Raul Fernandez – yes, he became very strong at the end of Moto3, but up until those last couple of races he hadn’t done anything crazy, and then he jumped into Moto2 and did amazing things.”
Fernandez, as a Spanish CEV Moto3 champion and Red Bull Rookies Cup frontrunner, had a much stronger pedigree coming into the Moto3 world championship than Binder, and had proven himself as one to watch with a few standout one-off appearances in the class before joining the paddock full-time – yet Binder’s point rings broadly true.
It took Fernandez until his 38th Moto3 start to secure a first podium – and yet a year on from that he was making waves as arguably the greatest rookie in Moto2 history and being fought over by KTM and Yamaha.
Though by that first podium he had established himself as a regular on the front row, it was quite the departure from a largely unsatisfying rookie season with Aspar/Nieto – the team that would win the following year’s Moto3 title with Albert Arenas – that left him 21st in the standings.
“For example, in Moto3, it was really difficult because I am a big boy, and with the weight on the bike was really difficult,” Fernandez told MotoGP.com. “I couldn’t eat nothing.
“Later in Moto2, that was more like my category, I could eat but I couldn’t train like now, because if I took too much weight, later the bike would be not weight-correct for Moto2.”
Fernandez is a prodigy that any MotoGP marque would probably take in a heartbeat, while Binder is someone who – as affable as he is – still needs to show he belongs in the premier class, with just one win in seven Moto3 seasons. The disparity in their times in the end-of-2021 Jerez test clearly reflects that.
But it doesn’t mean that Binder is wrong to look at Fernandez’s affinity for larger bikes as a source of optimism. MotoGP.com has Fernandez measuring at 177cm of height and weighing 63kg; for Binder, it’s that same 63kg against 175cm.
“I struggled in Moto3 with my weight and size a little bit, so I feel that I do suit a bigger bike better and that I should be more comfortable on this bike,” Binder said.
“And I’ve literally got everything I could ever ask for in a motorcycle, all the tools, I just need to learn how to use them in a correct way. And I believe that I can do that, and I’ll be able to go fast.”
Team manager Wilco Zeelenberg took a similar stance when speaking to MotoGP.com: “We know Darryn quite well, we did a test in Brno [in 2021] on a big bike, on an R1 [Yamaha], and he’s capable because he has the style to hang off the bike and he has the physical muscle as well to ride these bigger bikes. We did that choice because there’s a lot of potential in him.”
Zeelenberg also expects Binder, who will be riding a 2021-spec M1 MotoGP bike, to be transformed as the season goes on, claiming “we’ll see another Darryn than we saw in Jerez [in 2021 end-of-year testing]” after a few races. But there’s also clearly an understanding that this is a risky move – with team owner Razlan Razali, who wants to see Binder fight for rookie of the year honours against the likes of Fernandez, admitting it is “a big risk for us, and for Darryn especially”.
When those words were put to Binder by The Race, he said: “100%, it’s definitely a big risk to jump straight. It’s not always about how fast you can get to MotoGP, it’s about how long you can stay there. That’s where you want to be, it’s the pinnacle of the sport, you want to get there and stay there for as long as possible.
“It is a big risk, but at the same time, I could never reject this offer, and it doesn’t really bother me. It’s been my dream my whole life, to ride a MotoGP bike, and it’s a lot of people’s dreams, and there’s a lot of people that don’t ever get to live that dream.
“So I’m going to go there and do my absolute best, and as long as I know that I gave my absolute all, I believe in myself that I have enough to do well.”
