For the second day of the Malaysian Grand Prix on the Sepang circuit, rain once again arrived, disrupting the action on the track.
If some suffered from these conditions, Loris Baz managed to do well. Despite a fall during Q1, the Frenchman made the right choice of tires and then comfortably settled at the top of the provisional ranking, thus winning his entry ticket into Q2.
The track conditions were very different at the start of this second session. Loris set his best time there in 2'13.542, almost five tenths ahead of his teammate from the Avintia Racing team. The Ducati rider will therefore start from tenth place on the starting grid on Sunday, his best result since his arrival in the premier Grand Prix category.
The Haut-Savoyard would prefer a race in these same conditions on Sunday to try to score many points at the finish and end the overseas tour on a good note.
« This morning, the track was dry and we took the opportunity to improve certain things. We are still a little far behind in the rankings, but we are making a lot of progress. This afternoon, the conditions were really complicated. They changed from one session to the next, making tire choice difficult.
After a very good FP4, we just had to make the right choice for qualification. Between the soft and the hard, it was complicated to choose. Adrien (Morillas) advised me to choose the soft at the rear and the hard at the front for Q1. This combination worked well despite a small fall at the start of the session. I managed to advance to Q2.
By this time the track had dried out significantly and, in my opinion, these were the worst conditions since there was not enough water to pass the wet tires and not enough to use the intermediate tires. I was only able to complete one decent lap without making any mistakes, but I think there was room to do better.
This remains my best result in a Grand Prix and the first positive point for us from this overseas tour. I am very happy with this result. For the race, I would prefer it to rain before the race and I think we can achieve good results. »
