Loris Baz Seventh at the Opening Race at Phillip Island

29-02-2020

Loris Baz Seventh at the Opening Race at Phillip Island

Loris Baz and Ten Kate Racing Yamaha started the season with a seventh place in the opening race of the season on Saturday at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit.

After several excellent winter tests, Baz and Ten Kate Racing Yamaha were scheduled for the opening race of the season at the 4.445km seaside circuit.

After qualifying seventh earlier in the day, Baz had an excellent start to the race. The Frenchman managed to hold his own in the first group until he was pushed off the track at turn one on the Australian circuit and lost some time.

From eleventh position Baz had to fight back to the front. With excellent lap times the Yamaha rider managed to make up for a few more places during the remainder of the race and finally crossed the finish line in seventh place. With seventh place the Ten Kate Racing Yamaha rider was able to report to the parc-ferme after the race, because of the result as best classified Independent Team rider.

Loris Baz

Position: 7th

The season has finally started. Of course we always want more, but it’s the way it is. We had a good qualifying session this morning, we have certainly improved compared to last year and that is a good sign. The first laps of the race also went according to plan until I came into contact with Alex (Lowes) as I was entering turn 1 and hit the track. I lost more than 6 seconds and had to fight back from P11 to the front. In the end I crossed the finish line in seventh place at 4 seconds from the winner. I think we can see this as very positive, and we have to stick to that. Tomorrow there will be another two races and we will show our best side again.

Kervin Bos

Team Manager

Quite frankly, this seventh place feels a bit like a disappointment because we managed to stay in the top five throughout the preseason. However, the race went pretty well until Loris was pushed off the track in turn 1, losing a lot of time and falling back to P11. To finish seventh and four seconds behind the winner shows that our racing pace is good. Another thing we have to find out tonight is that our top speed in the race was not as good as usual, we will have to find an answer to this. In short, it wasn’t very easy for us today, tomorrow we will have two chances again and hopefully we can maintain our position in the first group without any incidents.