WorldSBK Phillip Island Test: ‘Fun day’ for Bautista despite ‘stupid crash’

Alvaro Bautista was narrowly trailing his Aruba.it Ducati teammate as WorldSBK testing kicked off at Phillip Island on Monday.

Just 0.134s separated Bautista from pace-setter Toprak Razgatlioglu after the reigning champion recorded a 1’30.808 best on Monday afternoon, Michael Rinaldi slotting into second with his penultimate strike of the opening day, 0.035s ahead.

“Today was a really fun day because I enjoyed a lot my bike,” Bautista commented from Australia. “We just check again the test we did in Portimao, especially with the swingarm, with the different setup, that they are working really well but today, in this track, with this kind of tyre that are a bit harder than in Portimao I didn’t notice a difference. In fact, I think I prefer the base setup instead of the new setup.

“For the race, also we try some setup on the front part of the bike. We didn’t find something much, much better but at least step by step I get more confidence during this day so I’m quite happy with my feeling with the bike.

“For tomorrow, we have to work on the tyres because today we use the hardest compound. Tomorrow we have to make some setup for the race tyre, the tyre we raced last season and I think will be better. Not too much to test, just to prepare the weekend and try to have the best feeling possible with the bike.”

While the Spaniard sounded confident, it wasn’t all plain sailing on day one. A crash at turn four saw the number one plated Panigale down in the opening ten minutes, shortly after Kawasaki rival Jonathan Rea had suffered a similar fate. While local wildlife also brought out the red flags on numerous occasions.

“We have some problem with the wild animals but the problem is if it’s happened in the races,” Bautista