Top 3 for Barbera – lucky Baz walks away unhurt from a a 290 km/h
02/02/16 Avintia Racing MotoGP – Official Test MotoGP Sepang
The second day of testing at Sepang has being very intense for Avintia Racing. In the morning, Hector Barbera did a great lap and moved up to the top five in his first run and Loris Baz also improved his lap times from yesterday quite easily. But before reaching the first hour of the session, Baz had a problem on the main straight and crashed out at 290 km/h. Fortunately, he walked away without injury and after analysing all the data of the bike, no mechanical failure was detected on his Ducati Desmosedici GP. It is now up to Michelin to analyse in detail what was the cause of this tyre failure. Avintia Racing has always followed the recommendations of the engineer assigned to the team by the French tyre manufacturer.
On the same lap in which Baz crashed, Barbera improved his lap time even more and moved up to second place in the classification, a position he held until the last few minutes of the day, when world champion Jorge Lorenzo edged ahead. In the end, Barbera finished in third spot with a time of 2’00.387, less than two tenths of a second behind Danilo Petrucci, who was fastest today in Malaysia.
HECTOR BARBERA #8 / @HectorBarbera 2’00.387 P3
It was a positive day and I’m really happy with the third place. The improvement with the soft tyre was incredible and my lap was 1.7sec faster than yesterday, so I think we did a great job. After the problem with Loris’ tyre, we had to use the harder compound and I’ve been basically all the day inside the garage as he bike was set up for the soft tyre and we had to change it completely. I went back on track in the last two hours and, although it was a little bit difficult to get the rhythm, but the feeling was good and I feel really strong on the bike. We are in the right way and although I know this is not my real position, I also know that nobody makes presents in this championship.
LORIS BAZ #76 / @lorisbaz 2’02.611 P18
The start of the day was good. We used the soft tyre to try to improve the lap times and, although the lap was not incredible, we were able to improve the lap time from yesterday. But then we had a problem with the rear tyre and I crashed out at 290 km/h and my bike was destroyed. Fortunately I was unhurt, but you always loose energy after this kind of accident, because even I you don’t have anything serious, you feel all your muscles like if you have been training during 20 hours. My mechanics made a great job to put the bike back on track for the last two hours. It was not bad, but I felt a little bit tired riding the bike and I didn’t want to push and crash again. But I matched the same lap time from yesterday testing some suspension parts that I didn’t like too much.