Aspar Ducati’s Eugene Laverty ended his final MotoGP race outside of the points in 16th, though remains upbeat about his season as a whole.
The Northern Irishman announced earlier in the year that he would be making a return to the World Superbike Championship in 2017 with the Milwaukee Aprilia team, after the Aspar squad failed to offer him equal machinery with Alvaro Bautista.
Laverty made his premier class debut in 2015 with the Spanish outfit, but a pretty average Honda RC213V-RS saw results mostly elude the former WorldSBK runner-up. A switch to Ducati for this season made an immediate impact, Laverty scoring more points in the first two races than he had done throughout the entirety of 2015.
Having failed to finish in the points only twice, one of which through no fault of his own, Laverty was keen to bow out with a decent result for the Aspar team. However, his Valencia weekend was one to forget. A crash in qualifying left him down in 19th place, and a lack of pace hindered him in the race in his battle with Marc VDS’s Jack Miller. In the end, the Australian pipped the Aspar rider by just over two seconds.
Despite this, Laverty still ends the season 13th in the standings on 77 points, placing him as the fourth-best Ducati rider. To his credit, he was only 25 points off of fellow GP14.2 runner Hector Barbera in 10th and he finished ahead of both Pramac GP15s, an achievement he is proud of.
“We just missed out on the points. I wanted to get fifteenth on the last lap with Miller but I was just lacking a bit of pace. It has been a great two years with the Aspar Team and I wanted to finish on a high,” he said.
“We tried our best this weekend and even though the result wasn’t our best one I think we can be happy with our effort. I think thirteenth place in the championship is quite respectable, if you look at the points we have scored compared to last year, and the fact we have finished above two GP15 Ducatis. As a team we can be proud; we improved from last year and that’s always the aim.”
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