Loris Baz says he can be pleased with a top ten return to World Superbike Championship action after seven months on the sidelines and a dramatically destructive start to his weekend in Jerez꧂.

Making his first appearance of the season after securing a deal with the reformed Ten Kate SBK team – this time running Yamaha machinery – Baz’s Jerez comeback got off to a ‘flying’ s𓆉tart with an accident in FP2 that sent his R1 airborne and necessitated a sizeable repair job.

Nonetheless, an unharmed B🍌az was back on track for race one to score points in 12th and while technical i🥃ssues stopped him from getting out at all for the Superpole Race, his run to ninth in race two was a positive end to an eventful weekend.

“It wasn’t so much fun at the start of the day, but we definitely finished with a smile,” the former MotoGP rider said. “We had a technical issue with the bike in warm up and we weren’t able to fix the problem ahead of the sprint race, unf﷽ortunately.

“We managed to resolve the issue for Race 2, but I started with a bike that was set up completely differently to yesterday, so the first laps were all about understanding the bi﷽ke.

“༺I was feeling more confident than yesterday and able to go faster as the race progressed. I’m happy; I still need to improve a little bit, but it was a good start after seven months off the bike.

“Thanks to the team, as it’s taken a lot of hard work to get us here and thanks also to Yamaha, who gave us a good direction with t♒he set-up of the bike💦. Now I can’t wait to get to Misano.”