Fieten Olie Racing GP recharged and ready to start second half of the season at Silverstone

This weekend, the ninth round of the FIM Moto2 World Championship will be held at the Silverstone Circuit in England. After a five-week summer break, the Fieten Olie Racing GP team has been able to get the rest it needed to be fully prepared for the start of a busy second half of the season with Barry Baltus and Zonta van den Goorbergh at the helm.

A five-week break in the busy 2023 Grand Prix calendar began after the main event of the year for Fieten Olie Racing GP with the Dutch TT at the TT Circuit Assen in the Netherlands. After Barry Baltus and Zonta van den Goorbergh showed some great things during the first eight Grand Prix weekends, the focus is now fully on the coming twelve Grands Prix.

Baltus is currently fifteenth in the championship with seventh place in Le Mans as his best result. The Belgian rider has already shown several times that he can compete with the fastest riders in the Moto2 class and the goal in the second half of the season will be to show this on a regular basis.

Van den Goorbergh is still aiming for his first world championship points but has proved with two entries in Q2 that the speed is there. After a heavy crash at the TT Circuit Assen, the 17-year-old Dutchman has had time to recover and will now be fully fit at the start to head towards the points’ paying positions.

Barry Baltus: “I really enjoyed the summer break but I am very much looking forward to get back on the bike again. It will be nice to start riding again but also to see everyone in the team again and all the other people who are involved. It’s always great to see everyone again after a long break. Although I have never had great results at Silverstone, it is a track that I like a lot. The weather is not looking great but it will be important to get the feeling back after a long break and to enjoy riding again.”

Zonta van den Goorbergh: “I am very happy to start again. We have had a long summer break even though it has flown by for me. I have been working hard to be even stronger for the second half of the season. We are starting relatively easy with a couple of races with a weekend off in between, but at the end it will be really busy with many races in a row. The weeks will be busy but we will do everything we can to perform in the best possible way. Now we have to wait and see what the weather conditions will be next weekend at Silverstone, it doesn’t look like it will stay dry but we have already shown that we can be fast in the rain. Hopefully this summer’s hard work will pay off, we’re going to do our best either way.”

Jarno Jansen – Fieten Olie Racing GP team manager: “After the break we’ve had since the Dutch TT in Assen, it’s finally time to race again. It was nice to be home for a while but now another busy schedule awaits us. We can be moderately positive about the first eight race weekends in which Barry has achieved some very nice results and Zonta has shown good progression despite a few times of bad luck.

The weekend in Assen was tough so it was also time to recharge the batteries. We still have 12 races ahead of us and we start next weekend in England. Looking at the weather forecasts, it looks a lot like what we have seen recently in the Netherlands so we will dress warmly and see what the weekend will bring.”

The race weekend at Silverstone begins with two practice sessions on Friday and one practice session on Saturday morning, followed by qualifying on Saturday afternoon at 13:45 local time, 14:45 Central European Time. The 17-lap race will start Sunday afternoon at 14:30 local time, 15:30 CET.