Bautista replaces departing Redding at Ducati

After two years of constructive collaboration, in spite of the many difficulties caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic, Honda Racing Corporation will bid farewell to Alvaro Bautista at the end of the current Superbike World Championship season.  Bautista will return to defend the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati Team colours aboard the Ducati Panigale V4 R in the 2022 WorldSBK season.

After becoming World Champion in the 125cc class in 2006 with 8 wins and a total of 14 podiums, Alvaro Bautista took part in the 250cc World Championship in the following three seasons, scoring 8 wins and a total of 24 podiums.
The Spanish rider – born in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo, Spain) on November 21, 1984 – landed in MotoGP in 2010 (scoring three podiums between 2012 and 2014) before climbing aboard the Ducati Desmosedici GP in the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

In his debut season in WordSBK (2019) with the Panigale V4R of the Aruba.it Racing – Ducati Team, he obtained 16 victories (24 podiums in total), finishing second in the championship standings. In his time with Honda the Spaniard has failed to make any significant inroads with the Honda project, has only one podium to his name, and is currently 11th in the championship standings. He finished ninth in the World Championship with Honda last year, 2020. With Ducati in 2019 Bautista looked set to romp to championship victory only for Jonathan Rea to have a storming second half of the season that left the Spaniard in his wake.

Bautista replaces Scott Redding in the Ducati squad while the Brit will join BMW.

Source: MCNews.com.au