Reale Avintia Racing rider Hector Barbera fought his way through from 20th place on the grid at Assen – and he was catching the group of teammate Baz in the final part of the race.
But when the rain started, he took the decision to swap bikes and he did the last six laps on rain tyres. This was not a winning bet and he struggled with rain tyres to finish the race 16th.
The MotoGP World Championship heads now to Sachsenring for the German Grand Prix, which will take place next week. It will be the last race before the summer break.
Hector Barbera | P16
“Today I lost the bet. The rain started towards the end of the race and when it rains at Assen it usually rains hard, so I thought that if I swap the bike and go out again with rain tyres, maybe I would have an advantage. When I saw Zarco going into the pits I took the risk to change the bike as well. With these decisions you sometimes win and sometimes you don’t, and today it was not the best decision. In this kind of races I’ve always been quite conservative and I stayed out until the final moment with bad results. Today I did the opposite and took a big risk, but is turned out disastrously. We had the worst possible conditions in the race, but at least we learned a new lesson for the next time we’ll have a flag to flag race.”
