Avintia Racing Ducati’s Loris Baz took a season-best 10th place in qualifying at the Sepang International Circuit, but admits that he’ll need tomorrow’s race to be wet in order for him to secure a strong result.
The French rider has been lacking in confidence at the Malaysian track in the dry, a problem that has plagued his entire season. Baz was second from last in this morning’s FP3, despite making minor gains with bike set-up, almost three seconds off of pace of fastest man Marc Marquez.
Yesterday, in the damp FP2, Baz showed a vast upturn in pace in the wet and mercifully for him rain fell prior to this afternoon’s qualifying. Despite a late crash at Turn 2, Baz still managed to progress through to the second part of qualifying.
In QP2, the drying track caused Baz’ wet Michelin’s to overheat and this led to several errors being made on his flying laps. But, he dug deep and produced a 2m13.452s to go 10th fastest. This is his best Saturday results since he was 12th in Jerez back at the end of April.
“This is the first time we have something to celebrate since the fourth place at Brno, so I’m very happy. You can always make it better, but conditions for Q2 were not the best,” said Baz.
“There was not enough water to get the best out of the wet Michelin tyres, and they got overheated, but the water was too much to use the intermediate option. So we tried to get the best out of the conditions we had. But I made some mistakes and finally we’ll start from tenth place, which is still a good position. I pray for rain, because although I improved this morning in the dry, I am still missing more than one second to the top.”
It wasn’t such a good day for his teammate, Hector Barbera. The Spaniard came into qualifying fifth fastest on the FP3 time sheets, and was strong in Friday’s damp FP2. But, and engine problem during qualifying meant that he could only manage two flying laps as his second Desmosedici GP14.2 wasn’t set-up for the wet conditions.
The Spaniard was left down in 12th place on a 2m13.973s, but he feels that he could have been much closer to the front of the grid had it not been for this issue. Although disappointed, Barbera says that he is prepared for whatever the conditions may be tomorrow afternoon.
“The weekend was perfect until we started Q2. We had an engine problem and this was the only bike we had ready for full wet conditions, so I just did two laps in qualifying.,” said the Spanish rider.
“The only positive thing is that we are fast in dry as well as in wet conditions, and I think that in Q2 I would have been able to qualify closer to the top. I have a bitter-sweet taste, but I’ll try to change this feeling tomorrow. The race is the most important part of the weekend, and we are ready to race, no matter the conditions.”
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