Guintoli out for season

Worx Suzuki boss Jack Valentine says that Sylvain Guintoli could miss the rest of the BSB season as a result of injuries sustained at Donington on Bank Holiday Monday.

Initial thoughts were that he would be out for eight to ten weeks but Valentine says that was assuming it would be a straight forward to pin the broken fibula and tibia he sustained when he was t-boned by John Brookes going into the Melbourne Loop in the sighting lap.

Guintoli underwent an operation to pin the broken bones at 5pm on Sunday afternoon and is expected to have a skin graft tomorrow (Wednesday) to close the wound caused by the compound fracture.

Valentine said: “He’s had the bones pinned but there’s some bone loss and that means the rehab will take longer than we all first hoped and now there’s a good chance Sylvain will be out for the rest of the season.

“One moment (by Brookes) has wrecked Sylvain’s season, our season and completely ruined the championship for the fans.  The sad thing is we’ve not seen the best of Sylvain yet. He was still sroting things out and even on Sunday, we made big strides forward and he was flying in the morning warm-up.

“We’re not going to be rushing him back though. We want him 100% so we’d rather plan ahead for next year. The disappointment is that Sylvain’s not going to get the circuit knowledge we’d hoped for this year.”