Alvaro Bautista crashes three times in Italian WorldSBK practice: “Not my best Friday”

WorldSBK’s second visit to Cremona Circuit saw an eventful day one, not least for Alvaro Bautista who crashed three times across the two Friday sessions.

Bautista crashed on his second flying lap in FP1 which cost him almost the whole session, only re-emerging for an install lap and a practice start at the end of the morning session.

A crash in the opening 15 minutes of FP2 complicated his day further, and then he crashed again on his out-lap after rejoining the session.

He ended FP2 fifth-fastest, but it was nonetheless a complicated day for the two-time World Superbike Champion.

“It hasn’t been the best Friday in my life, but I’ve had worse so I’m not unhappy,” Bautista concluded, speaking to WorldSBK.com.

“At this track, you have some areas that are bumpy, and [in FP1] I passed over the bumps and lost the front.

“Then I couldn’t make any more lap times in the morning, so I lost the whole practice.

“In the afternoon, the target was to get the feeling again to recover the confidence and to start to build up with the setup and the reference of the track.

“It’s a new track for everybody, just the second year so we need some references.”

He added: “The feeling straight away in the afternoon wasn’t too bad, maybe I felt like I was missing some feedback on the front.

“We were using the same tyre as in the morning crash. I don’t know if maybe there was something wrong.

“The fact is that we started to build up my pace and my confidence, and my pace wasn’t too bad.”

Bautista said that his first FP2 crash was actually on his in-lap.

“On the lap I slowed down to go to the box, I just crashed,” he said.

“I don’t know why because I was slower than in all the laps before.

“I entered the pits and we made some small changes to the setup because the bike was quite aggressive in some areas, so we tried to make the bike smoother and easier to ride.

“I exited and on the first lap, I crashed again on the front without doing anything. It was very strange. In the end, we changed the front tyre to see if there was something wrong on the tyre.

“Straight away, I felt much better with the feedback; it was like normal feedback and not so bad with the grip. I was able to recover a bit of confidence after those crashes.”

<H2> “I don’t know what my potential is”

The complicated Friday meant that Bautista was unsure where to place his expectations for the meaningful sessions on Saturday and Sunday.

“I’m not sure what my goals are; I missed one practice, and we worked in FP2 with two crashes and strange feedback from the front practically all session, just at the end I recovered a better feeling,” he said.

“I don’t know what my potential is. We’ll try to work tomorrow to have a good Superpole as grid position is very important here.

“After that, I’ll think about the races.

“First, we need to understand what happened today, if there was something wrong on the front and try to restart again and hope for a better or more normal day tomorrow.”