RW-Idrofoglia Racing GP poised for special season restart at Silverstone
This weekend, the tenth Grand Prix of 2024 will be held at the Silverstone Circuit in Great Britain. It is the first race after the summer break where the 75th anniversary of the Motorcycle Racing World Championship will be celebrated extensively. After some difficult races, Barry Baltus and Zonta van den Goorbergh are keen to regain their form from earlier in the season.
At 5.9 kilometres in length, the Silverstone Circuit is the longest circuit on the MotoGP calendar. With 10 right turns and eight left turns, interspersed with a number of straights, it is a complex circuit and quite a challenge for the rider. Despite the forecast indicating that it will remain warm and dry, a rain shower is never far away at the English circuit.
After several difficult Grand Prix weekends before the summer break, this break came at the right time for RW-Idrofoglia Racing GP. Barry Baltus and Zonta van den Goorbergh took advantage of this period to return to the start line fully fit and motivated for a challenging second half of the season with 11 Grand Prix weekends in 15 weeks.
Barry Baltus: “I cannot wait to jump back on the bike again. It’s been a long time since I last rode the Moto2 bike, although I did a lot of riding during the summer break. I took part in the Suzuka 8 Hours and that was a very nice event, I enjoyed it a lot. Now I’m very motivated to go back to Silverstone and race my Moto2 bike, last year I had a good result there. We’ll have to wait and see how things go but I’m ready for it. Let’s get back to where we need to be.”
Zonta van den Goorbergh: “After a pleasant summer break, we can finally climb back on the Moto2 machine this weekend. For me, the summer break was not really about improving but mainly about recovering, especially because I suffered for a long time from the knee injury I sustained in Assen. Now, fortunately, that is going much better and I am very happy about that. For the second half of the season, the goal is to keep making progress and get some strong results now and then. First we still have some races in Europe before we have the overseas races ahead of us. It will be a busy and hectic period but I am very much looking forward to it.”
Jarno Janssen – RW-Idrofoglia Racing GP team manager: “After the weekend at the Sachsenring we had our planned three-week summer break. It was nice to spend some time doing other things than racing as well. Now, however, it’s back to business at Silverstone, a circuit that has brought us great moments in the past. Last year Zonta was third on the grid and Barry finished sixth in the race.
It is important for both riders to make big strides in the second half of this season. The first half of the season has been with ups and downs where we started strong but then it became very difficult to achieve the intended results. Let’s hope both riders have fully recovered and got enough rest, both physically and mentally. Hopefully we can pick up the results from the beginning of this season and ride a strong second half of the season.”
The race weekend at Silverstone starts with free practice on Friday morning, followed by the first official practice session in the afternoon. The second official practice session will then take place on Saturday morning after which it will be clear which riders will have to take part in Q1 or Q2. Qualifying starts Saturday afternoon at 13:45 local time (14:45 Central European time), while the 17-lap Moto2 race will be run after MotoGP this weekend for once. It will start Sunday afternoon at 14:30 local time (15:30 CET).