Aspar: “I trust we will start the Championship with a bike that’s 100% competitive”

The Aspar MotoGP Team will be present at the second official premier class test of the year at Sepang next week, and team boss Jorge Martínez ‘Aspar’ was present at the Circuit de Catalunya this week to monitor the development of his Moto2 project where motogp.com spoke with him about his MotoGP venture with rider Héctor Barberá.

“We haven’t set any goals from the outset, in terms of results, but things are going well, better than I expected,” Martínez said. “We must take it step by step, continue working hard and when we have the first race we can analyse where we are. But for the moment Héctor is finding a very good feeling with the bike, and the team are also comfortable with the Ducati.”

Like rival manufacturers such as Honda and Yamaha, Ducati are also adopting a policy in 2010 whereby they are providing satellite teams with bikes that are equal to those of the factory teams at the start of the season. On this point, Martínez said: “What they have told us at Ducati is that we’ll start with a bike identical to that of Stoner and Hayden. Later everyone will bring their own electronics, but the bike is the same. We will arrive at the first race with a bike that’s 100% official and competitive as theirs is.”

On the test at Sepang (February 25-26) Martínez stated: “In the last test we made good advancements with the tuning of the GP10, so we’ll start this test at a good point. We’re very happy with the direction that Barberá is taking (in the preparation of the bike), which seems quite similar to Stoner, and I think that’s very positive.”

The head of the only team to have representatives in all three categories of this year’s World Championship also shared his views on the work of Julián Simón and Mike di Meglio on the RSV prototype at Montmeló, where the weather has played a part over the past three days.

“The truth is that the weather has not helped us and we had two crashes yesterday,” he commented. “It’s a little early to assess the bike yet as it’s completely new and everyone has different engines, so it’s hard to know where everyone stands. I believe that in Valencia (official test March 1-3) we will know a little more.”