Barbera: “A weekend to forget”

Having had an incredible start to the season, Mugello saw Hector Barbera hit a road block with the GP14.2, reaching the limitations of the bike. As the GP14.2 is a two year old machine, a lot is known about it and Barbera is quite easily able to ride it close to the edge. But the new Ducati machines, the GP15 and Desmosedici GP, are not yet at their limit and are continuing to take steps forward. This quickly became clear in Mugello as Barbera found himself unable to stay close to the leaders as he had done in all previous races.

Sunday offered no respite from the challenging weekend for the Spaniard, only able to finish the race in 12th position, his first time outside the top ten all year. Hope is not lost as Barbera still remains the highest placed Ducati in the championship standings, eighth with 43 points. It looks set to be a tough second half of the year if Barbera wants to maintain that position as Barbera feels they’ve found the limits of the machine.

Hector Barbera: “This was a weekend to forget. Everyday things got more and more difficult and we were not able to show our real potential. I don’t know if its good or bad, but my crew chief says that I have to realize that we are racing with a two year old bike, and we are doing the same lap times that the factory team did in the past. It’s difficult to go more on the limit than the factory team and we have reach the same lap times or even improved them. It’s clear that my rivals have better machinery and to beat them in fast tracks like this is almost impossible. At the end of the day, we finished another race and we are still the best Ducati in the standings, something that we could not even dream with when we started the season. We can’t do more with the bike we have and I think that the team and myself deserve to have a chance, because we always want more.”