BARBERA IN CONTENTION AT BRITISH 125 GP
24 July 2004 - Aprilia

WORLD championship contender Hector Barbera strengthened his bid for a second successive British 125 GP success by claiming second place on the grid in today’s final qualifying session.

The Spaniard, who won his first GP at the 2.5 miles circuit a year ago, improved dramatically from yesterday when he had qualified his Aprilia machine down in seventh place on the provisional grid. Overnight changes to the set-up though on his Seedorf machine proved critical as he missed out on pole position this afternoon by just 0.034s. The 17-year-old finished with a best time of 1.37.245s, which was close to 1.5s faster than he’d managed during the opening qualifying session.

Barbera, who goes into tomorrow’s 25-lap race, round nine of the 2004 world championship, lying in third place just nine-points adrift of the series lead, has been a model of consistency so far this season. In fact, the last time Barbera failed to score points in a race was at Catalunya over a year ago. He now has an impressive run of 18 consecutive points-scoring finishes and said: “We made a very big improvement from yesterday and we are on the front row which is important. We had some problems with the set-up which we were able to solve but it will be a tough race.”

Fresh from his stunning victory at the Sachsenring less than a week ago, Roberto Locatelli will start on the second row of the grid in seventh position. Locatelli improved by over 0.5s from yesterday and finished with a best time of 1.37.831s. Although he wanted to be higher up the grid, the experienced Italian isn’t overly concerned about tomorrow’s race, as he started from 10th on the grid in Germany but came through to win.

After two days of dry qualifying, forecasts are for unpredictable weather tomorrow, with rain showers likely to play a key role in proceedings.

www.aprilia.com

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