WorldSBK Catalunya: Bautista dominates at home for ‘special weekend’

Aruba.it Ducati’s Alvaro Bautista won all three WorldSBK races at Catalunya, underlining the dominance he is beginning to show after he, Jonathan Rea and Toprak Razgatlioglu had been greedily sharing most of the podiums until the midway point of the year.

They have all had their moments of brilliance and bad luck or bad decision making, as may be expected from even the best. But something changed at Catalunya, as nobody could lay a glove on Alvaro no matter what they tried. If he does go on to win the championship, this could be thought of as his step-change, where he moved on as the Yamaha and Kawasaki lead riders struggled, in relative terms. Bautista’s Barcelona form - scoring his first triple since he put on a Ducati team fleece once again this year - after two almost fallow Honda seasons, is at least partly the culmination of all that combined experience and Bautista being able to manage any situation that is thrown at him. He also has the best bike again, as he had in the early part of 2019, before it all went wrong. Down the straight, it was hard work for all who tried to follow.

His only slight black mark, more pale grey than black, was qualifying on row two for Superpole. The races were all controlled by him and he was in a class of his own.

“Yesterday in Superpole, I felt like I can’t feel the performance of the tyres,” explained Bautista. “For the Superpole race, for sure the bike doesn’t care about the tyre life so we did a different setup in the morning. I felt more or less what I expected to feel so I use it in the Superpole race and at the end I can be fast. Not consistent, but also fast this morning. I’m more happy for that because in race two, more or less, it was more than the speed, it’s the