Barbera Manages 12th At Assen In Spite Of Grip Issues
The asphalt at Assen is one of the most quick-drying on the MotoGP calendar. Thus, following a wet Moto2 race, the MotoGP riders were able to compete in a dry contest at the Dutch track an hour later. The opening laps of the race were crash-strewn, with four riders falling before the end of the first time around the course. A collision between Marco Simoncelli and Jorge Lorenzo led to a breakaway at the front, as Ben Spies took control of the race and never looked back. At the end of the 26 laps, there had been barely any changes in position, with Lorenzo’s fightback through the field the only real excitement after the victor had been all-but decided.
MAPFRE Aspar rider Héctor Barberá has only failed to finish outside the top ten on three occasions, and the Dutch visit was one of those races. The Spaniard suffered from a severe lack of grip from his tyres and was forced to try and ride around the problem for the duration of the race. In the end he crossed the line twelfth, picking up four points. Instead of getting down about the result, Barberá is raring to go at next weekend’s round in Italy, where he will look to regain the good feeling with the bike that he has lost over the past two rounds.
12th Héctor Barberá:
“I didn’t have any confidence in the tyres, right from the start. The slightest lean on the bike made me uncertain, because the bike was sliding all over the place. I wasn’t able to get the tyres up to temperature and had a hard enough job to keep the bike up under braking. We played around with the geometry a lot here and thought that the problems from Silverstone had been solved a little, but it seems as if that hasn’t been the case. Having seen that we hadn’t found a great setup here, our aim for the next race is to reset things to zero. We will go back to what we were working with during the winter tests in Malaysia and see if we can take things in the right direction. I gave my all and I think that that was the only thing that I could have done for the team. They are working 200% to try and help me with whatever they can in every session. I will try my best at Mugello to avoid a repeat of this race.”
Source: Aspar Media