Positives for Baz in Texas – and the save of the year?

Reale Avintia Racing rider suffers a DNF in the race but pulls off the impossible in Q1

Loris Baz (Reale Avintia Racing) pulled off the almost-impossible at the end of Q1 in the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas, under the cut-off point and pushing hard to graduate to Q2 before a moment in the final corner saw the Frenchman attempt the save of the year – and pull it off!

Loris Baz: “You don’t have too much time to react. It’s a Little bit of luck but also you have to react fast when these kind of things happen… I think it will be in the contest for the save of the year. Marc and this one will be in the game for sure!”

The Reale Avintia Racing rider’s fortunes in the race weren’t quite as good as Baz suffered a DNF following an issue with the brakes – but there’s positives to take as data is analysed and the pace points in the right direction.

LB76: “I am disappointed because we suspected there would be many crashes. So the objective was to stay on the bike and score as many points as possible. We were really confident at the start of this race. I did a solid first lap but also made some mistakes that cost me some time. I was still able to stay in a good group. Then I experienced a problem on the brakes. The team is yet to analyse if it was an electronic or mechanical issues but I still lost contact with the group. I lost concentration and crashed a few corners later. On such a difficult circuit like this, we still managed to show our potential.

“We will try to confirm this in the next race in Jerez, where we hope to be in the same position as in Argentina. Although we had a test in Jerez in the winter, this circuit depends heavily on weather conditions. It is difficult to know what to expect but we will give our maximum and aim for a place in the top ten as usual.”