'I did it' - Bautista claims Aragon double on Ducati return, leads championship

On his first weekend back as a factory Ducati WorldSBK rider, Alvaro Bautista has made the best possible start after taking a Sunday double.

Robert Jones

10 Apr 2022

After narrowly losing out to six-time WorldSBK champion Jonathan Rea in race one, Bautista wasn’t to be denied as he returned to the same form that saw him win 11 consecutive races in 2019.

Bautista’s first win was his most dominant as he pulled the pin early on during the ten-lap Superpole race.

Toprak Razgatlioglu, who started on pole, managed to fight the Ducati rider for a lap, but after allowing the 37-year-old some breathing room on lap two, Bautista showed a turn of pace that will worry the rest of the field.

Bautista eventually won with a margin of over five seconds, a gap he nearly matched during race two.

Speaking after race two, a jubilant Bautista said: "For sure, today the track condition was a bit different from the best days and also it’s much warmer.

"My idea was to see how the condition was and how much I could push. At the beginning Jonathan [Rea] made a great start and I went behind him for a couple of laps. But I felt like I could brake as hard as the morning, and also it was much more slippery.

Alvaro Bautista, Aragon WorldSBK Superpole Race, 10 April

"I tried to be in front and to do as much as the conditions would allow me. I’m happy because I did it. This morning was more fun, but this afternoon it was important not to push beyond the limit. I now understand how much I can push."

Hearing those words are precisely what the likes of Rea and reigning world champion Razgatlioglu would not have wanted to hear, as Bautista was also mistake-free all weekend, something we haven’t been able to say much of during the last two seasons.

Rea unable to rival Bautista after complicated races

While his pace was just as good as Saturday, Rea was embroiled in back-to-back race fights with Razgatlioglu and Michael Rinaldi, which on both occasions allowed Bautista to escape.

Although winning those races would still have been very difficult had the Kawasaki rider not been challenged as hard as he was, keeping the Spaniard within reaching distance could certainly have been possible.

Rea, who was pleased with his overall performance despite being on the edge with tyre grip all weekend, alluded to not wanting ‘to get involved’ in the intense tussle, which led to him letting off the brakes and running wide more than once.

"If you’d have given (one win, three podiums) me that coming here then I would have signed up for it straight away," claimed Rea. "To have a weekend like we’ve had makes me really happy.

"Just, in my head, attacking the race the way I wanted I felt like I could have been a little bit faster. But that race had a lot of big lunges into turn one, going wide and also not wanting to get involved so I released the brakes a few times and got out of trouble.

"Then I let Bautista just go away. There was a point in the race where I thought I could maybe catch him, after I got rid of Toprak [Razgatlioglu]. But I got to Rinaldi and again it was to-and-fro.

"I felt like we maximised our weekend even though the bike felt a bit different today."

18 laps felt like qualifying, but why?

"Honestly, I was thinking this on the slow down lap; I felt like I had an 18 lap qualifying tyre. The tyre didn’t move and I had so much grip, today was the same and it was sliding and spinning and not really going forward," added Rea.

"The Temperature was maybe three or four degrees (higher). That’s a small working window and is something to look at. But yeah, a very positive weekend."