WorldSBK Argentina: Bautista ‘doesn’t feel pressure’ for 2022 title

Although Alvaro Bautista won two WorldSBK races at San Juan, both the long 21-lap affairs, he missed out on winning the Superpole race. He was confronted with the possibility that he decided to leave out any overly hard effort at winning the ten-lap race, but rebuffed it completely.

He just knew that it was a big ask when Razgatlioglu was in such a determined mood. But if Rea had not run off track, Bautista actually thought that it was going to be Rea’s ten lap victory, breaking his long drought.

“No, to beat Toprak today, because I think he wanted to win just for this, after yesterday,” said Alvaro about the eventual real on-track challenge he faced. “The only thing that has to be in his mind is to win. There is no other option. So, he tried. I know that. First of all, if Jonathan didn’t make a mistake, I think he would have won the race because he was stronger than Toprak and me.

“In fact, Toprak was behind him pushing to the maximum, and when Jonathan made a mistake, the pace of Toprak slowed down. So for me, Jonathan today had the pace to win the race. So, when I saw that, and I saw Toprak go slower, I said, ‘let’s try…’ Maybe I can fight for win. But he defended everything. He tried entry, everything, everywhere. At the end I tried a couple of times and in the last lap but he just pushed me out because there was no space.

“I went out, out, out, out, out and I had to wait. I tried to go in a couple of times, but he was there always, so I had to wait. Then he turned, and then I was late. I lost there all my chance to fight for the victory.”

And Bautista underlined that he really does want to fight for the victories, big points lead or not. “In any case, I didn’t think second is OK, just relax. No! Always I see that I