Michele Pirro to replace Loris Baz in Barcelona
Michele Pirro will replace injured Loris Baz in the Avintia Racing team at the Grand Prix of Catalunya.
The Italian rider is the official test riders for Ducati since 2013, but he has been always in touch with the competition doing several wild card appearances and some other races replacing injured rider in the past few years both MotoGP and World Superbike.
The last time out was in the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello and he finished the race in the top 10 riding a Ducati Desmosedici GP16.
But in the seventh round of the MotoGP World Championship, scheduled for the 3rd to the 5th of June at Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya, Pirro will race the Avintia Racing GP14.2, one bike that he also knows really well.
Agustin Escobar – Avintia Racing Team Manager
“First of all I want to wish a speedy recovery to Loris. We are looking forward to see him back in our garage, because is part of our family and we’ll be supporting him for his come back, hopefully in Assen. And I want to say big thanks you to Ducati for letting us Michele Pirro to replace Loris in the next race. We couldn’t find a better rider and I think that will be very important that he rides our bike in Barcelona. He is a fast rider and he knows all the Ducati bikes. It will be interesting to work together and I’m sure that he will give some valuable information tour engineers to improve the bike set up and the electronics.”
Regular Avintia Racing rider Loris Baz went under the knife to fix his right foot fractures yesterday in Switzerland. Baz got injured after crashing during the start of the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello last week. The intervention carried out by Dr. Adrien Ray, Dr. Finn Mahler’s team foot specialist, at the hospital La Tour Meyrin / Geneve, was successful, despite a fracture was more complicated than it seemed at Mugello’s hospital. Dr. Ray needed one hour and a half to fix the fractures with three titanium plates, plus two nails and fifteen screws.
The bad news are that the rehab estimated process will be long, four to six weeks, so it will be impossible for Loris Baz to get on the bike for the next round of the MotoGP World Championship scheduled for next week at the Circuit Barcelona-Catalunya. He left the hospital today, but Loris will have to wait one week before starting to work with the physiotherapist. Even so, the 23 year old Frenchman is eager to come back for the Dutch TT at Assen in four weeks time.
Loris Baz
“It’s a shame, because the injury is quite big, not in terms of health risk, but it will take some time to heal. Is not just one broken bone, are all foot, because the one that is not broken, the ligament does so. It was a tricky injury but I’m happy with the great job made by Dr. Mahler’s team. Unfortunately miracles don’t exist, and my bones won’t heal in one week, so it’s impossible to be fit for Barcelona. Want to be back in Assen, and we’ll work together to make it happen. Now I’ll go home and rest for a couple of days, because I can’t do any exercise for one week. Then I’ll start to work with the physio, also trying to keep my physical condition. I wan to say big thank you to my team, Bocha, Raul, my mechanics, also Hector, who is always calling asking for news. Is difficult when you are at the hospital when you want to ride your bike, but when you know the team you have, that believes and support you, is something I really appreciate. Of course I want to thank my family because they have been with me every single minute. And also big thank you to the staff of Mugello’s hospital, the MotoGP Medical Team and the Clinica Mobile, because they did a great job to set the dislocations.”
