The British Grand Prix weekend started bad for Avintia Racing and finished in the same way. On the first lap of the race, Loris Baz suffered a scary crash in turn two, when he touched with Pol Espargaró, and the race was red flagged. The French Avintia Racing rider lost his conscience and was evacuated in an ambulance to the Silverstone circuit medical centre. Fortunately, any serious injuries were ruled out after the X-Rays, Baz escaped from the crash with nothing more than a sprained right ankle. Tomorrow, he will have a head scan at the Geneva hospital in Switzerland, to make sure he has no concussion after the heavy impact. If everything is fine, Loris will be back on track next week at Misano.
Hector Barbera finished the race, but not in the position he would have liked to. He never was comfortable riding his bike during the weekend, and although he was twelfth in the final stages of the race, he lost two places in the last two laps and finished 14th.
A weekend to forget for Avintia Racing, but the whole team is now looking forward to the next round of the MotoGP World Championship which will take place next weekend at the Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli.
HECTOR BARBERA #8 P14
“This weekend was a complete disaster. It was one of the most difficult weekends of my career. I was not comfortable riding the bike, I had no feeling and as a consequence, I never found the right confidence to push. Silverstone is a circuit with a lot of grip and I don’t know if it is my riding style or whatever else it could be that I never felt comfortable. I can neither learn nor take any other positive experiences with me from this Grand Prix. The race was also mentally tiring, because if you ride in such a poor way, the result is a disaster as well. We all had a frightening moment with Loris and the most important thing today is that he is okay!”
LORIS BAZ #76 DNF
“Up until the race, this weekend had gone quite well. I was very confident for the race and the crash was a really pity because I could have done well. When I arrived at the second turn, I was running parallel with Pol and just about to overtake him, but then the guys in front of us braked very early, especially Petrucci. I pulled over to the right a bit in order to avoid a collision, but Pol entered the turn from the outside and we touched. After banging into him, I don’t remember a lot of what happened. I woke just before getting into the ambulance. I don’t remember the crash itself, but the consequences could have obviously been worse because it looks pretty bad. I have a sprain in the foot that I was operated on, but they did an X-ray and I there is nothing broken, even though it hurts when I put pressure on the foot. The most important thing is that Pol, who also doesn’t have any fractures, and myself are all right. It was a race incident that shouldn’t have happened, but this corner is quite narrow. I don’t think I did anything stupid!”
