An emotional weekend at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya came to a thrilling end on Sunday as the MotoGP™ World Championship put on a great show to honour Luis Salom. There was battling throughout the field, tyre life more important than ever in the hot conditions. Eugene Laverty (Aspar Team MotoGP) was well aware of this and tried to go easy on his tyres in the opening laps; despite a great start this saw him overtaken by several riders early in the race. In the final five laps Laverty’s plan paid off, moving from 15th up to 13th and easily passing the likes of Tito Rabat (Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS) and Michele Pirro (Avintia Racing). Points in every round have Laverty 11th overall, only two points back on Andrea Iannone (Ducati Team). Aspar Team MotoGP elected not to test on Monday.
"I wanted to be 10 seconds in front of that, in the Top 10"Eugene Laverty: “I made my best start of the year. Whilst it was a good start, I just couldn’t hold my position and was overtaken a few times. I knew it was going to be important to preserve the tyres, and in the end I had a little more left in them than other riders who were going backwards, but it was a test of endurance. Thirteenth place isn’t where I wanted to be; I wanted to be 10 seconds in front of that, in the Top 10. I thought we could be there, but we had more tyre problems than we had expected. Some people had much bigger problems than us, but we did what we could.”