Team Aspar Qualifying Report

Spanish GP

Barbera Wants More From Sunday Warm-up

Hector Barbera of Aspar Team

Photo by: Hazrin Yeob Men Shah

he Spanish MotoGP race at Jerez will begin with Casey Stoner on pole position, denying the fans a home poleman this year. The Australian was fastest in qualifying on Saturday, ahead of Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa. There were problems for a host of riders in the afternoon runout, with an unknown cause for most incidents. A great number of participants hit the deck during the hour-long MotoGP outing to decide grid positions. After yesterday’s problems with wind on track, there is a prediction of rain at the track for the race itself.

MAPFRE Aspar rider Héctor Barberá avoided crashing in qualifying, but was still left wanting more from his performance in front of the Spanish spectators. The Valencian rider used every minute of the session to look for solutions to issues encountered with his Ducati, but was still some way off feeling truly comfortable come the end of the hour. The most prevalent problem for the MAPFRE Aspar man has been a lack of grip on the exit of the twisty Jerez turns, and he lost time when opening the throttle between corners. His times saw a minor improvement, and he moved up to thirteenth. His final time was 1.460 seconds off the pole time. Barberá knows that there is work still to be done, and will thus work hard in the warm up in order to best prepare his bike for the task ahead.

13th Héctor Barberá 1.40.217 (28 laps):
“I wasn’t worried yesterday, because it was the first day and we still had a lot of time to work on things, and I wasn’t expecting to be up at the front after so many changes and tests with worn tyres. Things were different today, because I didn’t finish off as I had wanted. I think that we have the potential to have done better in qualifying. Our problem yesterday was a lack of grip coming out of the corners, just as I hit the throttle. We tried to rectify that today, because the bike was sliding about a lot. Unfortunately we were unable to find an adequate solution today, so I struggled with it in both the free practice and qualifying sessions. I wasn’t able to feel totally comfortable. Myself and the team are working at 200%, and in the warmup we will keep on experimenting in order to get the bike as good as possible for the race. It isn’t going to be easy, starting from thirteenth, but if I manage to feel good on the bike then I know that I can go quick.”