WorldSBK Phillip Island: ‘Difficult to ride the bike’ - Bautista

It was down to earth with thankfully just a small Friday bump for Alvaro Bautista at Phillip Island, as the new WorldSBK Champion had a small crash on day one and tough first race on Saturday.

With limited tyre choices (harder ones than many wished for) and one wet rear option, he was not that comfortable in the wet, which first came along in FP3 on Saturday morning.

“Yeah, the feeling was a bit worse than this morning on the wet, but I was able to be there,” Bautista said about Saturday’s race. “When we switched to dry, the problem is that the setup is for wet. For me, with this bike, with the wet setup, it’s difficult to ride because front was like I lose the bike all the corners.”

It’s all to do with his weight, and the changes needed because of that between wet and dry conditions. “Yeah because for my weight, we need to go very, very soft on the wet - very, very soft. So for that, when we put dry, it’s like a big difference between the dry and the wet.

“So for me, it was very difficult to ride the bike. The bike start to move a lot. Also the rear grip at the beginning of the first lap was terrible, so I can’t put some weight on the tyre. I struggled a lot but at the end it’s what we have.”

Simply put, there was no opportunity mid race to change the springs and fork internals. “The springs and everything, you have to take out everything. So, they do a more pre-load, but at the end it’s like, you give me a lot of pre-load, the bike is like this [mimes bike sitting front high relative to the rear], but then when you arrive to the entry, it’s like this [mimes bike on its nose because the springs are so soft]. So, it’s not easy.”

In the wet FP3 session Bautista’s bike was doing a bit of weaving from the back end, as the