Improved qualifying the aim for Barberá

Héctor Barberá outlined the importance of a good qualifying session after he finished his fourth premier class race, the Gran Premio d’Italia TIM, in 12th place on Sunday. It was another promising ride from the Páginas Amarillas Aspar rookie and continued his development in the elite class on board the satellite Ducati.

Having scored an eighth place in the previous round at Le Mans Barberá’s hopes were high going into the Mugello weekend, but he maintains that he will need to qualify higher than the 13th he started from in Italy to give himself the best possible chance of registering more top-ten results.

"The same thing that happened to me in Qatar and Jerez occurred here,” he said. “On the opening laps I saw that I could ride in eighth or seventh, but I got ahead of myself. It's what you get for qualifying low down the order, keeping me away from the others at the start and requiring me to push harder to recover. That's when I make mistakes. So now I've learnt that I have to do a single fast lap in qualifying to avoid this situation.”

“At the start of the race I overran my braking point, but I returned to the track and tried to take a progressive approach in finding a strong pace. It gets my back up a bit, because I could have done a lot better. I can't wait for Silverstone in order to keep working on this."

Mugello was the best qualification performance of Barberás fledgling premier class career so far, and he scored his Le Mans result from 15th on the grid.