Few WorldSBK races have ever been as comprehensively dominated by one rider and bike than the first race at Phillip Island in Australia today.
‘Rookie’ Alvaro Bautista and the all-new Ducati V4R Panigale won by more than 14 seconds, but he had been leading by 16 seconds until he slowed up over the line, and made everyone else look faintly silly.
The man himself, the first to win his debut WorldSBK race since the legend that is Max Biaggi at Losail in 2007, explained his victory in a matter-of fact-way, despite grinning like he had just won a Lottery draw on a rollover week.
“If you see my pace in the race was a bit slower than in practice and also a bit slower than in the tests,” he told bikesportnews.com. “Then I did 23 laps in a row and everything was quite strong at the beginning – 30s, mid-30s and 30 high until lap 14.
“But then in the last three laps I had a bit of problem from the tyres, which dropped a little bit. So today my target was to take the lead as soon as possible because I knew my pace was strong, and get my rhythm. I knew if I could do that not a lot of riders – I saw from practice – can follow that pace. Maybe I saw Leon very strong on the pace but for the rest of the riders nobody can make that rhythm.
“So yes, I tried to make a bit of a push at the beginning and I saw that the gap was increasing lap-by-lap, so I decide to stay on the same rhythm and not use any more the tyres. Save them to do the race as consistently as possible. So I did it and I won,” he laughed.
With the rest of his rivals running a tyre conservation policy of their own, which was simply much slower than Bautista’s, the diminutive Spaniard’s riding technique – backing into the Honda hairpin, sliding his tyres around the fast final curves – showed that his confidence in a new bike and a completely different tyre package compared to what he was used to in GPs, was total.
He stated, “It is true, If you are not confident in the bike you cannot do it. Especially in this track, where you need to feel the tyre and feel the bike. To be one - you and the bike. Fortunately, we have started to understand better the bike and the change we did in the test started to help me a lot to have more and more confidence.
“I think the confidence I have in this bike is even more than I had with the MotoGP. I feel that we can improve because the bike is too young and we need to improve many things, but for a start, I think the bike is quite competitive.”
Winning first time out as an ex-GP rider, brought out some instant choruses of how much even midfield MotoGP riders are than WorldSBK’s best guys, which is entirely understandable given the nature of Bautista’s epic victory.
He disagrees. “I don’t think that the level here is low. For example, last year, here with the factory (MotoGP) bike I did in Q1 first, and my lap time was 1’29.8. Today, with this bike, without qualifying tyres this morning, I did a 1’29.7. So one tenth faster than a MotoGP bike. That means that it is very important to have confidence with the bike.
“Fortunately I had that confidence to allow me to go fast, but I think the level here is higher than I expected. I watched the races at home and I saw like Jonathan was a step forward from the rest. I thought, ‘OK, maybe the rest are slow.” But no, no. Here, everybody is pushing and the level is quite high. I was lucky that I got the confidence very quick with this bike.”
