Speaking after a fifth place in 💛Sunday’s main grand prixꦏ race, the South African smiled:

“Honestly, I haven't hit the limiter yet, so clearly there's still a 🔴couple of ks ther💙e for us!”

Aside from the top speed itself, Binder and KTM als꧋o turned heads by being 12.1km/h faster than his best 🦩speed during last year’s event (354.0km/h)

For comparison, the highest 2022 Mugello speed was a 363.6km/h by Ducati’s Enea Bastianini, who was also the quickes🐬t Desmosedici this time around with a simila🐻r 364.8km/h.

“It's weird. You don't feel 3-4-5 ks extra. The place where you really feel it is when you sit up to 𒆙brake at the same place and you're going 10-15 ks faster [in a slipstream],” B🎀inder said.

“That’s when you feel the difference and when you notice, ‘I came in pretty fast th🎃ere’.

“But it's impressive. In the Sprint race ♔I got some really good slipstreams and my bike was hauling! The guys have done an amazing job and it's quite cool to have that record again.”

Binder and team-mate Jack Miller then topped warm-up with 362.4 and 360.0km/h respectively, but the afternoon grand prix ‘only’ 💯saw a peak of 358.8km/h from the RC16.

“We had a headwind on the main strai🅺ght. I 🐻think that's where the speed goes,” Binder explained.

Binder in a spin on Sunday

Binder, eleventh in the Sprint after serving a Long Lap, switched from the soft to medium rear tyre for the full-length race. With hindsight, and the knowledge that team-mate Miller (seventh) had no real endurꦑance issues with the soft,ꩵ it was perhaps a mistake.

“About 10 laps in and I started to think maybe I have a shot of trying to 🐟cജatch the guys in front of me and then lap after lap, I was just going a little bit slower, little bit slower, a little bit slower… And it was all down to just rear grip,” Binder said.

“I was spinning so much and by the time I got to 5 laps to go, I had absolutely zero tyre left on the right hand side and the thing was spinning up straight. So it was really tr🎐icky to get the bike home.

“We used the medium tyre thinking it would last a 𓂃bit longer, even though we didn't really have to if we looked at the wear from yesterday. But I think with less grip I had maybe a little bit more spin and if you spin a lot you also destroyও the tyre. So I think maybe that's what happened today, but I actually don't know.

“Mugello was a little bi🐠t more of a challenge than I expected for us, but it is what it is.

“Everyone's here to win but at th🐼e end of the day, when things aren't going well, a fi꧂fth is not bad. But when things have been going a hell of a lot better [for us this season], fifth don't feel so great.

“So it's funny how [expectations] evolve, but that's sport, when you feel like you have more aܫnd ꦅyou can deliver more of course, you always get that sense of a bit of disappointment.”

Binder has now dropꦬped behind Jorge Martin for fourth place in the world championship standings heading into t♉his weekend’s German Grand Prix.