Frenchman Loris Baz has raced a lot of different motorcycles on a lot of different racetracks in the world with his background in everything from MotoGP to World Endurance. When he was racing in the MotoAmerica Championship in 2021, he spent his season learning more new racetracks. Thus far in 2024, his return to the series has meant that there weren’t any new ones to learn.
Until now.
With MotoAmerica bringing the series back to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the first time in 10 years, Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati’s Baz had a new track to learn, and he did that on Thursday during the Dunlop official test. And he took to the 15-turn, 2.4-mile track like a duc (sic) to water, ending the one-day test with the third-fastest lap.
“I like the track,” Baz said. “It’s definitely not easy to learn because there are so many blind spots and a lot of places where there is not much run-off area. It’s not the kind of track where you can find the limit really easy because it’s easy to go straight and if you go straight you crash. It’s not an easy track to learn, but it’s like all the tracks here where it’s not easy because of that aspect. In Europe, you now have a lot of tarmac runoff so you can find the limit and you go wide, but here you can’t do that.”
So, does Mid-Ohio remind Baz of any other racetrack that he’s encountered anywhere in the world?
“It’s a bit of everything,” Baz said. “When I walked the track, it reminded me of Pittsburgh, but then when I ride… not at all. I love the elevation changes like Barber, the Ridge, but then it’s really different and a bit slower than those tracks but with more elevation. There are a lot of corners that you start going up and then going down. It’s a bit of everything.”
For more information and/or to purchase tickets, visit https://midohio.com/tickets/motoamerica
To watch on MotoAmerica Live+, visit https://www.motoamericaliveplus.com/
