WorldSBK Argentina: Bautista ‘confident but not relaxed’

When you score full points in a race and your rivals scores next to nothing, it is like doubling up your win. After Alvaro Bautista had overcome the initial scare of seeing Toprak Razgatlioglu’s bike slide quickly past him in a shower of scrapes and sparks, the Spaniard lost his lead and had to work his way from fourth to the lead, and then to another assured winner’s circle celebration.

Bautista’s bike is proving to be easily adaptable to various track conditions, and also he seems to have more tyre possibilities than some others. He used the SCX tyre in race one, but could have opted for the SC0.

“Sincerely, yesterday the idea was to use the SCX, but this morning I tried SC0,” Bautista explained on Saturday afternoon. “I did a really good pace on the morning. I thought, SC0 is nice as well but also we changed a little bit the bike from yesterday. This morning I felt much, much better than yesterday, felt more confident. I can ride more like I want. I can ride myself the bike, not the bike rides me.

“Today the feeling was fortunately much, much better than yesterday. At the same time, I was using SC0 tyre, so, the idea was to use SC0, but in superpole with the SCQ tyre with more grip, I had really good feeling but not feeling just for one lap. Just a general feeling with the bike. So I said, maybe SCX, temperature is higher and higher. Maybe could be an option. So at the end, I did the out lap from the box, I did two laps because I put SCX tyre and tried to push in that lap to see how was the feeling. In those laps I felt good, so I just said, ‘let’s play a gamble and see what happens’. It worked really well from the beginning until the end, very stable. So, I can be fast. I can be consistent. Also, the feeling was