Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Racing – Ducati) remained positive on Friday after claiming second place in the combined classification at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve despite a Turn 11 tumble in Free Practice 2 for the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship. After declaring he and the team had found ‘something’ at Most to regain the feeling he had last year, the #1 stated after Friday’s action for the Pirelli Portuguese Round that what they found was working in Portugal too.
Despite the positive feelings coming from Bautista after Friday’s action, he did lose some running in the evening Free Practice 2 session following a crash at Turn 11. Speaking after the track action concluded, the double Champion explained what happened and how he was feeling after his tumble, which was after he lost the front of his Panigale V4 R and fell into the gravel to end his session prematurely.
Explaining the crash and his Friday, Bautista said: “Physically, I’m okay. Just a bit of a bruise but nothing bad. It was because, especially after mid-practice, the wind started to be stronger. In that corner, it pushed me a lot and I arrived there a bit faster than the lap before. I tried to brake at the same point and lost the front. Better to crash on Friday, searching the limits, than the next day. In general, I’m quite happy. This morning, I felt very similar to Most with the bike and that means similar to last year as well. We tried some different gearing for the wind but, in the afternoon, we didn’t find any improvements. We went back in the middle of practice to our gearing from the morning. We also compared the tyres, front and rear, and definitely the front I like more the SC1. I used the SC2 in the morning, but the feeling was not, even with this high temperature, as I expected. The SC1, at the moment, will be good choice for me. At the rear, we compared the standard SC0 to the new one. There’s not a big difference, but maybe the new one has more positive points compared to the standard one. It’s not 100% clear but it’s more in the direction of the new SC0 tyre.”
In terms of Bautista’s pace, the #1 was rapid throughout the day. He set a 1’41.299s in FP1 to claim third place – behind Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) and Garrett Gerloff (Bonovo Action BMW) – while he improved his time by half-a-second to claim second in FP2. This time, he was behind fellow Ducati rider Danilo Petrucci (Barni Spark Racing Team) after the #9 set a 1’40.681s. Bautista was just 0.023s behind his stablemate. However, the Spaniard was keen to point out how his feeling with the bike was the same here as it was in Most, believing that what the team found was working.
On this, Bautista explained: “It’s the first time this season that I arrive at the next circuit and have the same feeling. That’s because we found something in the bike that helped me recover the feeling like last year. It worked there but it also worked here. I’m really happy for that because it means it will be our base for every track. We’ll need to adapt the bike for every track for the demands of the corners but the base setup, I think we’ve found out. It’s just about the setup about the bike.”
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Source: WorldSBK.com