BAUTISTA IS HE WSB’S NEW CONQUISTADOR?
If you were putting your last tenner on this year’s World Superbike Championship, you’d be tempted to give Alvaro Bautista a shot. Ever since the Spaniard jumped back on the Ducati, straight after flying back from the Indonesian season-closer, his confidence has gone not just through the roof but to the moon and back. He really could be a title challenger this season but – and we say this through gritted teeth
– he needs to avoid the crashes he endured in his first Ducati campaign.
Rewind to 2019. Bautista joins WSB from MotoGP and dominates the first 11 races on an all-new Panigale V4 R. Then it all goes very wrong thanks to a series of mishaps which he now admits was down to a lack of understanding of the bike, coupled with the damage limitation of Jonathan Rea and his Kawasaki who almost continuously finished second. Saying Bautista needs to avoid crashing is no joke, as he suffered a big one in the Portimao, with more at Misano and Barcelona.
There’s no doubt about it, though, for Bautista jumping back onto the red machine was like slipping into an old pair of slippers on your return from holiday – and a much-improved pair of slippers at that, following two further seasons of development.
Paddock rumour has it that, so confident were the Bologna team after Bautista’s first test, they went back on a gentlemen’s agreement which would have seen all manufacturers allowed additional updates to their machines.
During this year’s Misano test, MCN went trackside with Chaz Davies, who confessed Bautista’s debut as his teammate was the most impressive thing he’s witnessed in racing. Across that afternoon at Misano, we watched in awe as Bautista was scarily fast and inchperfect as if on a Scalextric track. Those miserable two years with Honda could not have been further from anyone’s thoughts.
Ducati haven’t won the title since 2011 – the year of Spain’s sole title thus far with Carlos Checa. Is that barren run about to end?