Baltus achieves personal best qualifying result with fifth place at Phillip Island, Van den Goorbergh qualifies nineteenth

Barry Baltus qualified fifth for the Moto2 race at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit on Saturday. It is the best qualifying result of his Grand Prix career so far with which he will start the Australian Grand Prix from the middle of the second row. Zonta van den Goorbergh qualified 19^th but will start the race from 18^th position on the grid.

This weekend’s Australian Grand Prix is being held at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit and so far the weather conditions have proved to be very changeable and unstable. The first two days have mainly been characterised by heavy showers in the morning and relatively dry conditions in the afternoon, for Sunday it seems to remain dry for now.

Because of those changeable weather conditions, Barry Baltus and Zonta van den Goorbergh were both not among the first fourteen after the practice sessions, meaning they had to take part in Q1. In this session, Baltus set the fourth fastest time and Van den Goorbergh finished fifth, allowing the Belgian to advance to Q2 and the Dutchman to qualify nineteenth. Due to a grid penalty for another rider, Van den Goorbergh gained one more place and will start from P18 on the grid on Sunday.

In the second qualifying session, Baltus made himself known and with a fifth time he achieved the best qualifying result of his career. This gives the Belgian rider an excellent starting position for tomorrow’s race, while Van den Goorbergh also showed before that anything is still possible from the sixth row of the grid.

Barry Baltus – P5: “It was not an easy day with the weather conditions but I am definitely happy with the result. It’s the best qualifying result of my career so that’s a very positive thing. In the morning I rode all session in the wet conditions and in the afternoon I managed to go to Q2. We secured a good position on the grid but it’s only Saturday. Let’s enjoy the race tomorrow and we’ll see what is possible.”

Zonta van den Goorbergh – P19: “Today was a slightly more difficult day than expected. We started the day again with wet conditions so qualifying was actually the first time we could ride properly on a dry track. We still lack some stability which holds us back, especially in the fast sections. For example, in qualifying I was very fast in the first two sectors but lost that time again in the last two sectors. We need to see if we can improve that so we can hopefully get towards the front in the race tomorrow.”

Jarno Janssen – RW-Idrofoglia Racing GP team manager: “We are left with mixed feelings about this second day in Australia. After yesterday we already knew it was going to be difficult today, including going straight to Q2 which we just failed to do. Because of the weather conditions, that simply wasn’t possible today so we had to go to Q1 with both riders.

Barry was just on the right side of the cut-off point and could go through to Q2 while Zonta was just outside. Then you immediately see that going through to Q2 can suddenly give a very positive turn to the qualifying result. If you can bring that rhythm from Q1 then you are also immediately strong in Q2. Barry did an excellent job and with fifth place on the grid, he achieved his best qualifying result ever.

The conditions remain tricky but there are still some improvements to be found for us in that respect, so in the case of Zonta in particular, we can make another step forward. He too performed well today but it just wasn’t on his side this time. It will certainly not be an easy race for either rider as it never is at Phillip Island. It will be a hard battle and hopefully we can all make the best of it, and get results in line with what we have achieved in the past races.”

The 23-lap Moto2 race at the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit kicks off Sunday at 12:15h local time, 06:15h Central European time.