Slow start for Barbera at Assen

With its slightly modified Ruskenhoek corner the Assen circuit continued its long and unbroken tradition as the home of MotoGP in Holland today with the slate wiped clean in terms of lap records – allowing Jorge Lorenzo to set a new benchmark of 1’35.169. The Spaniard dominated the opening session, along with Casey Stoner, with just 0.011 seconds separating the pair at the end of a good day for Ducati as the Australian’s factory colleague Nicky Hayden lapped third fastest.

Páginas Amarillas Aspar rider Héctor Barberá used the first hour of the GP to test a variety of set-up solutions for his Ducati. The Spaniard felt that he could not have done any better at Silverstone and went in a new direction today as he looked to make further progress. It was a time-consuming process but in the final twenty minutes he began to reap the fruit of his labour, clocking his fastest time on his 20th lap of 26 and finishing up just a second and a half off the fastest time – a margin he will look to reduce tomorrow.

12th Héctor Barberá 1.36.735 (26 vueltas): “When I arrived at Assen I spoke with my engineers in order to define some of the modifications we tried today. It seemed there was no way to improve at the last race and we had reached our limit with what we had, so we decided to go with a different setting. I am happy with the result although we still have a lot of work to do. I’m hardly losing any time to the top guys through T2 and T3 so I have to focus on improving through T1 and T4, especially the first section because I am losing six tenths through there. In general I’m pleased with the first day here at Assen because even though we have lost some time making the changes we are feeling the benefit.”

Source: Team Aspar