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For the first time this season, he risked not winning a race weekend. But, in the end, Alvaro Bautista didn’t want to contradict himself and, in the final round of the Magny-Cours weekend, he staged a performance that was nothing short of extraordinary. A major victory for the world champion, who dictated the law from the first to the last lap.
The Spanish rider took credit for what happened Saturday and Sunday morning, but from a different angle.
“I’m very happy with what I did today,” he said. “It’s not bad at all. On Thursday, I spent the day in the bathroom, due to an intestinal virus. Instead, today I’m on the top step of the podium. After what happened yesterday, I knew I had a good pace. I feel bad about the superpole race, where I hit Michael. I was sucked into Rinaldi’s slipstream and couldn’t avoid him. I’m really sorry about what happened.”
Regarding his maneuver, Bautista wasn’t penalized.
“I consider today’s accident a racing accident, since I had no space inside. I tried to stop the bike, but Rinaldi was in front of me. In the past, I was forced to accept the decisions of the race direction. But, this time, it was different. Sometimes, it’s difficult to understand what’s happening from the outside, because everything is different from the inside. In the end, however, race direction has many cameras at its disposal to assess the situation, and that’s what they did.”
Getting back to the race: the Aruba rider proved he was incredible.
“I rode just like I wanted today. I had fun riding the Ducati. Maybe I wasn’t perfect, but I gave it my all for this victory. After all, if I don’t push to the limit, it’s useless for me to come here to race.”
At Magny-Cours, he progressed even further after the recent Aragon tests.
“Aragon’s work paid off, since we've improved with the front, and the confidence was high, especially in braking. I felt very good in changes of direction, especially in the Q1. I think we made serious progress.”
In all this, Pedrosa came within a breath of the podium in Misano.
“The level of our generation is very high. So we’ll see what happens in Sepang. After today, Dani has put some pressure on me,” he said jokingly.
