Alvaro Bautista returned to Ducati as a replacement for Scott Redding in 2022, after two years of poor success at Honda. This season he has won half of the 12 races so far riding the Panigale V4R.
This allowed him to have a substantial 36-point lead over six-time champion and 2019 title rival Rea before Race 1 at Donington Park (later reduced to 16 after a crash on lap 16, which caused him to crash in the first zero seasonal).
With a weight of only 60 kg and a height of 1.69 m, Bautista is undoubtedly among the smallest riders in the Superbike paddock and compares with Rea (70 kg), Razgatlioglu (68 kg) and above all with Redding, who weighs 78 kg.
The British BMW driver asked for a minimum weight to be included that takes into account both the bike and the rider, believing that Bautista’s small size automatically made him the favorite in the fight for the title with Rea and Razgatlioglu.
“If I weighed 20kg less, I would have been world champion two or three times in my career,” Redding told GPOne.com.
“Bautista is the favorite, but what is happening is not right in my opinion. Alvaro has a clear advantage over the other riders. Just look at how far Rea and Toprak are from the edge. Bautista has an impressive advantage on the straight and that’s not fair.
“In my opinion, Toprak is more talented, but he loses a lot on the straight and it is not right that he is penalized in this way, like Johnny.”
“It would take a weight limit for bikes and riders, as is the case in all other categories or in F1. I’m not here to point the finger at Alvaro, but that’s what I think.”
Alvaro Bautista, Aruba.it Racing Ducati
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Bautista responded strongly to Redding’s comments on Friday at Donington Park, stating that the British rider should lose weight if he is to be more competitive in WSBK.
“For me it’s just bullshit,” he told GPOne. “For me you always want more speed. Look at Aleix Espargaro in MotoGP, he is very tall like Scott, he trains hard and weighs maybe six kilos more than me.”
“If Scott wants to be faster on the straight, he just has to lose a little muscle. But then he has to move the bike with less muscle and less strength, and in my case, too, there are positive and negative points.”
“For me it is a stupid thing to put a minimum weight on a bike of this weight. In most races we don’t use all the power of these bikes,” he concluded.
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