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Davies hits back at Bautista's Portimao WorldSBK 'enemies' quip

Aruba Ducati’s Chaz Davies has hit back at team-mate Alvaro Bautista after the little Spaniard quipped that ‘with friends like him, you don’t need enemies…’

Davies sat Bautista up into turn one on the first lap of WorldSBK race one on Saturday but maintains they never touched, adding that the clash Bautista had with Toprak Razgatlioglu was much worse.

“I thought that was pretty strong. I think he has made bigger mistakes than me in the first corner in the past and I have seen a couple of incidents where he has taken riders out of races. It was quite a strong comment but I understand that he is a little annoyed,” said Davies.

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But, the fact is that I did not actually touch him at all and I made the apex. It was not that I was blowing trough turn one in a reckless move and cleaning out multiple riders. From what I saw of Alvaro he is a little timid in the first lap and we saw that in both races today and I think that that may be more to do with it.

“From my side there are no hard feelings and for sure it was on the limit yesterday, But I repeat, that I did make the apex and I did not actually touch him, so I felt it is a slight an over-reaction on his part. And I apologised because I sat him up and disturbed him.

“But I don’t actually think that if that was another rider in that position, I am not sure that they would have sat up quite so much. I feel like he is a little timid, maybe after what happened to him in Laguna.

“I am not checking his press release comments, but I felt after Laguna that was quite a hard move and he injured his shoulder, which is obviously quite a big deal because he ended up crashing from it but I did not see the same comments as for me yesterday. Comparing the two incidents, I felt that Laguna was way worse an incident than yesterday.”

Davies subsequent second in the first race could not be replicated in either the sprint or race Two, as he finished tenth and then 16th, after being halted for a time with a technical issue, but not the same gear shifter issue he had in Misano.

I had a problem with the shifter, the mechanism up and down. It was more electronic in Misano but here was mechanical. I was being really gentle on it but it broke on lap ten or 12, something like that then I was being as gentle as I could. Very slow, and then on the last lap I pushed about more but the travel was about 15cm up and down, so it was a little bit awkward to ride, ” said the Welshman.

Davies lost points in his fight for third in the championship, but was philosophical about that.

“A couple of races ago I was not even looking at that so if it comes to me it comes to me, if not I just want to get competitive with this bike in different circuits. If we lose points through technicals and bad races then so be it. But yesterday it was really good to have that podium here and prove that we are on pretty much the right track.”

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