WorldSBK Phillip Island: ‘Perfect weekend’ for Bautista

Aruba.it Ducati’s Alvaro Bautista celebrated a clean sweep of the WorldSBK top step at Phillip Island’s season opener last weekend.

With three races wins and a 28 point championship lead over second placed rider, Andrea Locatelli - who is not seen as his number one rival in 2023 - Bautista could be excused for being emphatic in his answer to the question of whether PI had been a perfect race weekend.

“Yeah, we can say has been a perfect weekend because three races, but three very different races. I’m happy because I felt good on each one and I can be competitive in each one.”

When asked what made him strong in this particular track, where he won all three races in his first rides with Ducati way back in 2019, the Spaniard said: “I don’t know. Maybe I like fast corners. This track only has two slow corners, the rest are fast. So, I don’t know if maybe for that.

“But this season, if you see the winter test, I was quite fast in all the tracks so I don’t think that it’s only in this track.

“I think I made a step forward also because I know much better the bike,” he continued of his updated Panigale V4R. “I know much better the tyres with this bike, the reference. The new bike gave me a little bit more of an easy ride on the exit from the corners, so it’s the combination of everything. I think we did a step forward from last year. We’ll see in other tracks, but in the moment, in the tracks I rode, Jerez, Portimao and here, I was quite fast, quite competitive, so let’s see.

“I look forward for Indonesia because last season… not that I struggled… but I didn’t feel that I can fight real fight for the victories. So I look forward to go there and see how is my feeling there.”

The relative mid-corner weakness, that seems to be