Alvaro Bautista (Ducati): Hitting the live / Superbike World Championship

World Superbike champion Alvaro Bautista finished Friday’s practice in Assen as the fastest. “No one can predict what conditions we will have in the race,” says the Ducati star about the weather chaos in Drenthe.

With 16 minutes remaining, the second free practice session was interrupted because an air barrier item had to be repaired. As the riders waited in the pits for the start, it started to rain on the TT Circuit – once again. As things progressed, the wet tire pilots were initially about 17 seconds slower.

The best times in the combined list of FP1 and FP2 therefore did not change in the last quarter of the hour world champion Alvaro Bautista (Aruba.it Ducati) finished Friday ahead of Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW) and Remy Gardner (GRT; Yamaha).

Dominique Aegerter

Sam Lowes

Alvaro Bautista

Remy Gardner

Andrea Iannone

Michael Ruben Rinaldi

Alex Lowes

Michael van der Mark

Scott Redding

Iker Lecuona

Ray and Öttl

Toprak Razgatlioglu

Nicolò Bulega

Garrett Gerloff

Jonathan Rea

Dominique Aegerter

Nicolò Bulega

Remy Gardner

Michael van der Mark

Axel Bassani and Alex Lowes

“After the session my fingers were white, it was very cold,” Bautista told a small group of reporters. “The track was not completely dry in the morning or afternoon, there was little grip due to the small ball on the track and the wind was blowing hard. On the back straight I had to hang on to the bike, otherwise I would have ended up on the grass. In such conditions it is hard to develop a memory score. I couldn’t do two laps in one line. But in any case, being first is better than ten. This shows that everyone is getting used to the situation present as well as possible.

Similar changeable weather is forecast for Saturday; on Friday there was everything from sunshine to clouds.

“This weekend is more about survival than preparing for the race,” Alvaro said. “No one can predict what conditions we will have in the race. This makes it very difficult to get a good set-up or to work with the tyres. Whatever comes, comes, you have to be ready for everything. I keep riding the Ducati, I haven’t changed the shape like some of my rivals or from a different type, which is an advantage. But for reasons I don’t understand, my setup from last year doesn’t work anymore, so I can’t use it. The important thing is that my feelings are as good as it was in Barcelona.

The 60-time race winner won there in the sixth race for the first time this season. Good sign for Bautista.

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