Round 04 #GBRWorldSbk SUPERPOLE RACE & RACE 2

A very strong performance in today’s Tissot Superpole race at the British track of Donington Park where Alvaro Bautista clinched a top ten finish in Race 2, just behind his teammate.

The morning’s 10-lap sprint race brought differing results for the Team HRC pair largely owing to their tyre selection. Bautista had a tougher time keeping pace with his rivals, the decision to opt for rain tyres not paying off on a drying track. The Spaniard crossed the line fifteenth.

Sixteenth on the grid for the weekend’s final 23-lap Superbike race, Alvaro made up several positions through the first turns, eleventh by the end of lap one. Holding twelfth for the best part of the race, the Spaniard was able to up the pace slightly in the final stages, pushing to make up two positions and round out the top ten.

After this fourth round, Bautista places tenth in the championship standings with 57 points.

Team HRC will be back in action over the weekend of 23-25 July for round five at the Assen TT circuit in The Netherlands.

Alvaro Bautista #19  

“Overall, it has been a tough weekend. On Friday we tried something different with the set-up just to verify a few things and collect some information, but it didn’t work as we’d expected so we went back to a more base set-up. Then yesterday, mixed weather conditions limited the time we had available to define the best set-up. In the end our best day in terms of feeling with the bike was today, but our gamble with rain tyres in the sprint race didn’t pay off. In Race 2 we actually improved our pace over the course of the 23 laps and were able to achieve a top ten finish, but honestly this isn’t what we are aiming for. We need to improve from here on in, because we really want to be doing better of course.”