Hector Barbera Interview
The summer break of the World Championship comes to its end and one week before the start of the second half of the 2016 season, we spoke with Hector Barbera analyzing the first part of the year and trying to understand what to expect from the next nine races.
The Avintia Racing rider currently holds seventh place in the classification and is, alongside with championship leader Marc Marquez and Eugene Leverty, one of only three riders to have scored points in every race.
His remarkable consistency and highlights like the last Grand Prix in Germany, where he scored second place on the starting grid ad battled with the top riders of the category in the race, made Barbera move up ahead of the Ducati factory riders in the overall classification. But nevertheless, he real goal of the Avintia Racing rider is to end the year as the best rider of all the satellite teams. Nine races are ahead and he is ready to battle.
We are at the halfway point of the season and so far, things went well. How do you look back on the first nine races?
“The way I look at it, we have been very consistent and this consistency has been the key. But even though we are in seventh place in the championship, which is very good, we haven’t made the best out of our opportunities to score a good result. In the races where we could, whether it was with a bike change, in the rain or whatever circumstance, we maintained our consistency, but we didn’t score an outstanding result. We did very well in practice and we did well in the races, but just not very well. That’s the first part of the season in a nutshell. The consistency got us a good spot in the classification, but we never really shone in a race. We started strong into the season, then we got a bit lost, but then we got back on the right track and I think our second half of the season could be even better.”
Apart from the changes to the technical regulations that leveled out some of the differences between the bikes, we also saw a change in you as a rider. When did you realize your potential to be so close to the top?
“In the pre-season. Right now, things are more level and this enables riders like myself, that never had competitive bikes before, to fight closer to the top of the category. This means a boost of motivation. You prepare yourself better and you change your attitude, because you see opportunities opening up and you want to take advantage of them. When we started last year, we knew that we could do well, but we also knew that we had 12 official bikes ahead of us and that it was almost impossible to aim at more than at winning the Open Class. This year, we still have a lot of official bikes in front of us, but there are more similarities with the satellite bikes and our equipment is closer to that of the factories.”
Your riding style also changed. In former times, you were hardly hanging off in the corners and now you scrape your elbows on the tarmac. Is this one of the novelties of the year?
“It’s obvious that you have to adapt. I used to have a riding style more suited to two-stroke motorcycles, with the bike leaned over for a long time. This year, I’ve started to change that indeed. I don’t know if this style is more efficient or not, but the rest of the riders do it the same way and that’s why we are working on it. When something comes natural to you, it’s hard to change, but with every day, it’s getting easier.”
Did you ever dream about seventh place in the championship, ahead of the official Ducati and some more factory bikes, with a Desmosedici from 2014?
“When you compare the budget, the amount of engineers and all the other resources of our team with a factory line-up, there are enormous differences. Therefore, with the bike and the means that we have, seventh place in the championship was something unthinkable before the start of the season. But we achieved it and we are doing well. It’s something that we never set as our goal, because even though we started very strong in the pre-season, we knew that when the races started, the factory bikes would improve and everything would get more difficult. And they did improve, but we managed to hang on and to continue to fight. We started from second place at the last race, and on tracks where the bike doesn’t make such a difference, smaller tracks without so many changes of direction, we can still do very well. We showed this in Germany, on a track with these sort of characteristics, and I think that in Austria we can be close to the front again.”
During the pre-season you said that your goal was to be within the Top Ten in all races. You achieved this goal almost everywhere.
“The goal is anything from fifth to tenth place. If everything goes really well, a fifth place is achievable, and if things go bad, we are twelfth, but if this happens, we all get really upset. But so far, we were within the Top Ten in practically all races and, most importantly, we took points everywhere. Then there are also situations where the outcome doesn’t depend from you as a rider, like with what happened to us in Barcelona. After taking fourth place in practice, it got to the race and everybody had massive tyre problems. We couldn’t ride the way we had done all weekend long, but these things happen, that’s racing. In Assen, we were way back in the first race, because we went wrong with our tyre choice, but we turned things around and moved up to sixth in the second part of the race. Now, we have to continue to be smart and to make the best out of every opportunity, otherwise it would be impossible to be on this level with our bike.”
Another thing that you said in winter was that anything better than a fifth place would be a prize win. Did some of these prizes slip away?
“Yes, in Germany, with the bike change. We didn’t do it when we should have, but if a few rain drops more had come down, who knows what would have happened. I had Valentino and Dovizioso in front of me, two factory riders with a lot of experience. Nobody imagined that after riding in second place ahead of Valentino, we would end up in ninth position after the bike change. But in these kind of races, everything depends from the right strategy, and in this case I was sure that staying with these two was the right thing to do. But we learned for the future. In motorcycle racing, you always hear the same words, “if only”, or “if it hadn’t rained”, or “if he had come in a few laps earlier”…but this is idle talk that is meaningless for us. What means a lot is what we achieved, like a fifth and a sixth place in the races and a second and a fourth place on the starting grid. And all of that with a bike from 2014 amongst many official bikes and newer, more evolved satellite machines. My team never failed, they are always giving 200 per cent, and so we came out of the first nine races with success, which gives us extra motivation for the nine that are still ahead of us, especially since the tracks that we are going to now should be better for us.”
After the Sachsenring Grand Prix, discussions started about the possible use of radios to communicate with the pit crew in these types of races. What’s your take on that?
“Honestly speaking, I can’t see myself talking while I am riding the bike. But if they talk to you just on one part of the track, like on the straight, where they could talk to you in addition to what they tell you with the pit board, that would make sense to me. Otherwise, it would have to be limited, only to certain situations like an emergency or a mechanical failure, since sometimes they can see things from the garage that are out of your control whilst you are on the bike. Nevertheless, talking whilst racing a motorcycle can even be dangerous, because it can affect your concentration.”
Apart from the single ECU, new Michelin tyres were introduced this year. Many riders claimed they were difficult to understand and, as a matter of fact, there were many crashes this year. As far as we know, only Marquez and you took points in all races…
“Yes, that’s true. Especially the front tyre doesn’t give you any indication of when you reach the limit. Even though it luckily never happened in a race, I crashed more often in the season so far than in the entire last year. Maybe also because they are in their first year as a single tyre supplier, Michelin needs more experience to understand what the bikes and the riders in MotoGP need. All in all though, I think they are doing well and anyway, it’s the same for everybody. Whenever we get to a circuit this year, nobody knows which tyre works better or worse, but next season, we will have much more information and we won’t see as many falls as this year. I see it all as normal and logical, because Bridgestone had spent many years in MotoGP and had produced some very good tyres, but we also have to recognize that Michelin managed to develop tyres that are as good or even better in a very short period of time.”
Many people are surprised about you riding with the front runners, even though you battled with Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Dovizioso and many others in the 125 cc and 250 cc categories. What happened that Barbera wasn’t to be seen that much in MotoGP until now?
“It’s quite normal that the people are surprised. The reason is that in the other categories there weren’t as many differences than when I arrived in MotoGP. In 125 cc and 250 cc, I battled with the others, sometimes with a better bike, on other occasions with an inferior motorcycle, sometimes they won, other times I did. Then we arrived in MotoGP, with a new team in the category and with a Ducati that was technologically on a downhill path. One year later, Valentino arrived and the problems became obvious. In the following season, the same story repeated itself, despite lots of chassis changes and lots of changes in the factory. Nothing worked out the way it should have. After that, I raced for several years with bikes that were more or less street bikes. I never had an opportunity to ride a bike that gave me a chance for a real success. But it’s just the way things were and we can’t complain. Now we have a bike that allows me to fight for top positions, even though we are still handicapped, because two years mean a lot in the development of a bike…next year though, I will have a bike that is on a much higher level.”
At the last race in Valencia, you will have one of the factory GP16. Does this give you extra motivation for the remaining races?
“Yes, most certainly. I would be lying if I said that I’m not thinking about having this bike, and more so, when I am on the track and I see how well the run! I’d like this bike now! But there are nine races to go, the other half of what we did up until now. I don’t want to lose neither my concentration nor my energy with thoughts about the future. I have to be aware of what we have, keep my feet firmly on the ground and think that we have nine races ahead of us. With the experience of all these years in the World Championship, I learned that you must always just think of the next race. Starting on Friday, going from practice session to practice session, to the race and then to the next Grand Prix. You always have to go step by step.”
What role did Avintia Racing play in all the changes we talked about?
“A fundamental role. To arrive at where we arrived, I can’t emphasize enough how important the teamwork was. We work in and enjoy an incredible environment, from the guys that work in the hospitality to the last mechanic. We are like one family, and this puts my mind at ease, makes me feel good and allows me to concentrate on the competition. I am so competitive thanks to Bocha, the team manager, and to Jarno, my chief engineer. They are with me day in, day out, and triggered a change within myself, which can be seen on the track. The other, most important driving force behind our success are Raul and Antonio, because at the time, they decided to support the change to Ducati, and thanks to their decision, we are where we are today.”
What is Hector Barbera’s goal for the remaining races?
“To end up as the best rider of the satellite teams. I am seven points behind Pol Espargaro, but we have to be realistic and see that this I not a mission easily accomplished. We are up against a Yamaha that is very close to the factory bikes of Lorenzo and Rossi, with a world champion as a rider. This makes it very difficult to reach this goal. But we keep on dreaming, and every day I prepare myself to the maximum, as does the entire team, so we can keep trying until the curtain comes down after the last race!”
