The Reale Avintia Racing team have announced that Jordi Torres (MV Agusta Reparto Corse) will be replacing the injured Tito Rabat at the Aragon GP that takes place next weekend at MotorLand Aragon. The Spanish rider will take Xavier Simeon’s GP16, while the Belgian will pick up Rabat’s machine for the weekend.

On the same day that he returned to the WorldSBK tracks and put in a blistering Free Practice performance, the announcement was the icing on the cake of a perfect Friday for Torres. After a difficult first half of the season for the MV Agusta rider, full of ups and downs, he now faces a new challenge to follow his battles this weekend at Portimao.

Torres of course already has plenty of experience in the MotoGP™ paddock, racing in Moto2™ full-time from 2012 to 2014. In the middle class, Torres managed a race win at Sachsenring and multiple top ten finishes, before making the move to Aprilia and WorldSBK in 2015. This will be his first experience in the premier class.

Torres is excited for his maiden GP experience: “First of all I want thank the team for this opportunity. Right now, I am excited but also terrified, but it is always a challenge to be able to try a MotoGP bike for the first time. It will be a unique experience that one day I will be able to tell my grandchildren. Now seriously, I really want to try the bike and see how I evolve. I know that the championship has a very high level and in a race weekend it is very difficult to assimilate all the things you need to be fast, but I will try to learn as much as possible and take advantage of my experience. I think it’s something positive, I know the team very well and I will try to put everything, and we will see what comes out during the weekend. It’s more difficult than the people think, but I’m going with a positive attitude and looking forward to getting the best out of this opportunity. I also want to thank my manager for his work and MV Agusta for giving me permission to be in Aragon. At the moment it is one race, but it could be two. Above all I want to wish Tito a speedy recovery because he does not deserve that bad accident, but I know he will come back quickly, because he is a fighter”.

Catch Torres’ reaction to the announcement and follow his progress at the Nolan Portuguese Round on WorldSBK VideoPass.