Reale Avintia Racing riders Loris Baz and Hector Barbera did not meet their expectations in the second round of the MotoGP World Championship at Termas de Río Hondo circuit. Loris Baz, who started from ninth place on the grid following a solid performance during free practice and qualifying, lost all his chances of battling for a strong result when Jorge Lorenzo crashed in front of him at the first corner. The 24 year-old French rider was last after the incident, and although he was able to recover and pass many riders, he couldn’t fight as he consumed his front Michelin tyre when he pushed to regain positions. He was close to finish inside the top ten, but still held eleventh place when the chequered flag came down.
For Hector Barbera, the Grand Prix of Argentina was not easy either. He worked with his team all weekend long to find a good base set-up of his bike, but he has never been comfortable riding his Desmosedici. Finishing 13th was a positive result considering his difficulties.
The MotoGP World Championship will head to the Circuit of the Americas in just two weeks, where both Reale Avintia Racing riders will try to come back stronger. The championship has just started and Barbera and Baz know that they are able to perform much better.
“I’m disappointed because I think that we missed a great opportunity today. I’ve lost all chances when Jorge crashed in front of me and I was forced to run off the track to avoid running over him. I lost too much time and although I gave my best to recover when I caught Miller and Abraham, my front tyre was destroyed, so I couldn’t attack. It is a shame because today I had the pace to be with Folger and Petrucci. But overall the weekend has been quite positive, my team did a superb job and we improved every time I went out. I hope to be lucky in Austin.”
“It was a really difficult weekend for me, and I was not able to tame ‘the beast’. We tried all possible settings on the bike; I didn’t get out on the track with the same configuration twice over the whole weekend and now it’s clear that we can’t adapt this bike to my riding style. So it is me who has to adapt to the bike. When I raced with this bike last season, it was already hard for me to get the right feeling and during the winter test I had the same issues again. The first race at Qatar was not a reference as I was recovering from my collarbone injury, but still, the feeling was bad. Here I was back to full fitness and the feeling was the same. In 25 laps I never did a single corner as I would like to. Riding like this is really difficult, because I’m fighting with the bike all the time.”
