The changing weather conditions continued throughout the German Grand Prix weekend. In practice, the MotoGP riders had to deal with dry and wet sessions, so the riders were ready to race in any condition.
The Reale Avintia Racing riders were fast in all wet sessions, with Hector Barbera leading the pack on Friday and Loris Baz fighting for Q2 in qualifying on Saturday. But although the rain was forecasted for today’s race, finally all 30 laps took place in dry conditions.
Hector Barbera only completed one third of the race. The Spanish rider did jump the start and was penalized with a Ride Through. But he didn’t see the messages in his bike dashboard and the pit boards of his team and the Race Direction. Finally he was black-flagged and disqualified.
Loris Baz was 14th on the grid and he gained some places in the opening laps. The French rider was confident to score some points today, but after some laps he struggled with rear grip and was not able to show the same pace of practice. He finished the race in 19th place.
The MotoGP World Championship takes a summer break now and the action will resume in August with the Czech Grand Prix in Brno.
“I really don’t know what happened in the race. It was the same problem we had all weekend. The first laps were quite good, the feeling with the new tyres was perfect and I was able to overtake some riders and I was in an interesting group. But after ten laps, I lost all rear grip and the feeling was like riding with wet tyres. In just four turns, I was losing 1.5s and I was having big moments on every lap. I decided to calm down and try to finish the race, and in the final laps I still managed to do quite well in the righthand corners with some grip, but the problem is that here you only have three of them… This is not the result I was hoping for in this race, but I think that the first half of the season was quite good overall. I’m happy with the job we have done so far and now I will get surgery in my right arm to come back stronger for the second half of the championship.”
“I went to Race Direction to watch the images, because I was convinced that I didn’t jump the start. And I was right, the problem is that at this track the start is uphill and I moved the bike with the red lights on, and that is why they have penalised me. In the first laps I was fighting in a big group and I couldn’t see the messages on my dashboard and also the pit boards for Ride Through, so I was black-flagged. It is a shame because today I had good feeling with the bike and I think that it was possible to gain some positions and score some good points. But when things are not going well, everything gets tough. We have to keep optimistic, because we have one month to train hard and change this situation in the second part of the season.”
