Barbera takes top CRT honours for the first time with 10th place at Laguna Seca

Hector Barbera (Avintia Blusens) took a first CRT win of the season for himself and for FTR in today’s USGP at Laguna Seca, the Spanish rider taking the chequered flag in an excellent tenth place overall to secure valuable MotoGP World Championship points that move him up one place to fourteenth in the standings at the halfway point of the season.

After qualifying thirteenth on the grid Barbera dropped a couple of positions on the opening lap to fellow FTR riders Colin Edwards and Claudio Corti (Forward Racing) but after Corti retired with an engine failure on just the third lap he became embroiled in a race-long battle with the American, finally making his move with six laps to go.

After then winning an exciting final lap scrap with Ducati Desmosedici prototype rider Alex de Angelis, Barbera was able to equal his best result of the season from Mugello and head into the summer break on a high.

The season resumes on the 18th August at Indianapolis, where FTR’s Moto3 and Moto2 riders will also be back in action.

Hector Barbera (10th in MotoGP): “Finally first CRT and first time that we have been in the parc fermé next to the three first riders of the race. I am very happy because it is a great result that the team deserved. It has been a long race and we knew that with our tyres we were going to suffer because it was hotter than the last couple of days and we went with the softs. I have had a very nice fight with Colin and especially with De Angelis, who I had to overtake four times on the last lap to achieve tenth position. It is true that Espargaró has fallen and that has helped us to get the win in the CRT category but anyway I think that it is a very good result and a well-deserved one. It is the result of a job that the Avintia Blusens team has been doing since the start of the season and today it has been proved that we are a team and that we do not give up, despite fighting against a factory.”

Source: FTR Moto