SBK | Bautista: “Hard day 1, I was thinking more about the pain than riding”

The minimum weight, the injury… Alvaro Bautista's winter was anything but simple and he showed up at the Jerez tests with the aim of regaining confidence to start again from where he finished the 2023 season. The Superbike starts again with the two days of testing on the Andalusian track, and the reigning champion concluded Day 1 in tenth position, a second and a half behind the leader and teammate, Nicolò Bulega.

“It wasn't the best day for me”, reveals the Spaniard at the end of a complicated first day of testing. The last time he took to the track was at the Malaysian Grand Prix, on which occasion he returned to MotoGP as a wild card From there, his work focused on recovering from his back injury. “I struggled a lot during the winter. After the Sepang race I was in a lot of pain from the injury, I was really sick. I couldn't train well and I worked hard with my physiotherapist to recover. It wasn't easy, because in November and December I was almost always in pain, I had no improvement.”

However, little by little the situation improved and now Bautista is back on his Panigale V4R, presented last Monday on the occasion of the “Campioni in Pista” event, the usual presentation that Ducati carries out in Madonna di Campiglio: “In the last two weeks I started feeling better and working on myself more. Cycling in the morning, arm strength was really good, but the problem was my neck and back. I felt a lot of pain, I was very worried, but fortunately, lap after lap, the situation improved, so I relaxed and managed to do many laps, but not with my best performance. I was thinking more about the pain than riding the motorbike.”

Bautista then goes into detail, explaining what he and the Aruba team focused on during this first day of testing: “We did the work because, after last year's test, we decided to have two different bikes in terms of distribution weights. Today I was able to compare both bikes and it was very clear which direction to take for the future. I'm happy with this and the feeling I have with the bike.”

“I don't know how much weight I added,” says the reigning champion in reference to the ballast imposed by the new regulation which provides for the change in the minimum weight. “Engineers know how much and where to add it. I don't have these details. I'm just saying whether it's better or worse. I do not know! You have to ask Giulio Nava or Marco Zambenedetti. It's much worse to ride because, with more weight, you have more inertia, so it's harder to turn corners and stop the bike. It's more physical and all areas are worse.”