Loris Baz endures horrendous 180mph crash at Sepang
Rennie Scaysbrook | February 2, 2016
Baz admits he was very, very lucky to walk away from that crash.
MotoGP sophomore Loris Baz suffered the fastest crash of his life yesterday during day two of the Sepang MotoGP test, when it was reported the soft compound rear Michelin tire he was using broke up down the ultra fast front straight. The rear wheel subsequently locked up, pitching the Frenchman down the road at over 180mph. Amazingly, he walked away unscathed.
Not what you want to see if you’re Michelin right now.
The crash caused new MotoGP control tire supplier Michelin to withdraw the soft compound tire for the remainder of the test as it conducts an investigation as to the cause of the failure.
“The start of the day was good,” Baz said. “We used the soft tire to try to improve the lap times and, although the lap was not incredible, we were able to improve the lap time from yesterday. But then we had a problem with the rear tire and I crashed out at 290km/h and my bike was destroyed. Fortunately I was unhurt, but you always loose energy after this kind of accident, because even I you don’t have anything serious, you feel all your muscles like if you have been training during 20 hours. My mechanics made a great job to put the bike back on track for the last two hours. It was not bad, but I felt a little bit tired riding the bike and I didn’t want to push and crash again. But I matched the same lap time from yesterday testing some suspension parts that I didn’t like too much.”
Parts of Baz’s tire littered the Sepang front straight.
A statement from Avintia Racing said, “Fortunately, he walked away without injury and after analyzing all the data of the bike, no mechanical failure was detected on his Ducati Desmosedici GP. It is now up to Michelin to analyse in detail what was the cause of this tire failure.”
Baz finished day two of the test 18th fastest.
Photography by Gold & Goose.
