‘He knows very well what happened’ - Bautista

Alvaro Bautista is still the clear championship leader after the seventh of twelve WorldSBK rounds, but the Aruba Ducati rider was enraged by what he saw as a deliberate attempt on behalf of Jonathan Rea to collide with him on the entry to T13 on lap two of race two at Magny-Cours.

“If it’s a mistake from riding, okay,” Bautista said. “Everybody makes mistakes and push out other riders, and okay, this is a race incident. But, I think today was clear that it was intentionally that he went to me. So, that’s the problem. If they said this kind of manoeuvres but without mistake, that is he did what he wanted to do. I think they cannot say this kind of thing.”

Bautista said he had not personally raised anything with the Race Commission. And although Rea went to him, he had no intention to go and speak to Rea - or hear his apology either way. “No, I don’t have interest,” Bautista admitted.

“He knows very well what happened. I know very well what happened. That’s all. Now, fortunately I am okay, so I will be ready for the next races.”

He expected Race Direction to do something more than give Rea a long lap penalty, especially when Bautista lost a possible 25 points. He had won race one on Saturday, after all… “Yeah, these kind of things, I think nobody has to go to Race Direction to say, ‘look at this. He pushed out a rider. You have to give him more penalty.’ The Race Direction has to do this. They have to go, ‘Oh, you put out this rider? Black flag. Intentionally.’ Because you arrive and do a mistake, you crash, okay. Things can happen. But, today it was not the case and they had to do it themselves. Not because I go to say, ‘You have to, have to, have to.’ They have to do this.”

When asked if something was going to happen